New Books in Politics and Polemics

What happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become vectors? As human rights organizations have increasingly embraced information technologies this ‘datafication’ of rights has become both a reality and a pressing concern, one inextricably tangled up with questions regarding the broader political valences of human rights.In The Informational Logic of Human Rights (Edinburgh UP, 2022), Josh Bowsher resituates recent critiques of human rights within ongoing theoretical discussions concerning informational capitalism, digital culture and the politics of data.Critically analysing the contemporary human rights movement as an informational politics, Bowsher provides a new conceptual agenda for both exploring and overcoming the limits of human rights in an era shaped by the data flows, network infrastructures and informational logic of late capitalism.Louisa Hann recently attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres. She has published work on the memorialisation of HIV/AIDS on the contemporary stage and the use of documentary theatre as a neoliberal harm reduction tool. She is currently working on a monograph based on her doctoral thesis. You can get in touch with her at louisahann92@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

The first two episodes of this series told stories of technocrats who tied themselves to a muscular state. They believed the state could remake society, if it had the right expertise.However, the state under neoliberalism doesn’t have the technocratic ambition it used to. zIs technocracy dead, then? No, technocracy is just moving into the private sector. More and more of our lives are governed by unaccountable private tyrannies—tyrannies that employ ruthlessly efficient technocratic systems, with even less democratic input than the technocracies of old.For instance, many modern workplaces function like technocracies. The Amazon warehouse is the most technologically-sophisticated and totalizing manifestation of this. Their algorithmically-managed systems micro-manage workers’ every step, turning their bodies into machines. On part #3 of our technocracy series, we take a look inside the new frontiers of digital Taylorism.Plus, what is the future of technocracy? An emerging slew of Peter Thiel-funded neo-reactionaries want to install a Silicon Valley CEO as our new techno-monarch. We discuss Thiel and Blake Masters, their broader intellectual trajectory from seasteaders to techno-populists, and the technocratic liberal disinformation machine that wants to defeat the neo-reactionaries.SUPPORT THE SHOWYou can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.ABOUT THE SHOWFor a full list of credits, contact information, and more, visit our about page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

A search for new ways to talk about race in Aotearoa New Zealand brought together this powerful group of scholars, writers, and activists. For these authors, attempts to confront racism and racial violence often stall against a failure to see how power works through race, across our modern social worlds. The result is a country where racism is all too often left unnamed and unchecked, voices are erased, the colonial past ignored and silence passes for understanding.By 'bringing what is unspoken into focus', Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, 2022) seeks to articulate and confront ideas of race in Aotearoa New Zealand – an exploration that includes racial capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. A recurring theme across the book is the inescapable entanglement of local and global manifestations of race.Each of the contributors brings their own experiences and insights to the complexities of life in a racialised society, and together their words make an important contribution to our shared and future lives on these shores.Contributors to this book: Pounamu Jade Aikman, Faisal Al-Asaad, Mahdis Azarmandi, Simon Barber, Garrick Cooper, Morgan Godfery, Kassie Hartendorp, Guled Mire, Tze Ming Mok, Adele Norris, Nathan Rew, Vera Seyra, Beth Teklezgi, Selome Teklezgi and Patrick Thomsen.Arcia Tecun (a.k.a. Daniel Hernandez) is a storyteller (film maker, podcaster) and Pouako (Lecturer) at Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland) in ethnomusicology and social-cultural anthropology. His research and teaching interests include Indigeneity, race, class, gender, religion, food, and popular culture/music in Oceania and the Americas.Lana Lopesi is an author, art critic, editor and multidisciplinary researcher based in Tāmaki Makaurau. In September, she became an Assistant Professor Pacific Islander Studies in the department of Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon.Anisha Sankar is a Chennai-born, Te Awakairangi-raised South Indian Tamil living in Pōneke. She is currently working on her PhD, which studies the contradictions of colonial capitalism.Key Point About the Book:• Arrives at a time of burgeoning questions around race, identity, and power• Provides readers with new ways of thinking and talking about race in Aotearoa New Zealand• Addresses New Zealand’s local connections to global and international discussions of raceEd Amon has a Master of Indigenous Studies from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is a columnist at his local paper: Hibiscus Matters, and a Stand-up Comedian. His main interests are indigenous studies, politics, history, and cricket. Follow him on twitter @edamoned or email him at edamonnz@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi KleinWe are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways. What does this moment of danger mean for the environment and for justice? What can we learn from environmental justice struggles? Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger (U California Press, 2020) examines mobilizations and movements, from protests at Standing Rock to activism in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Environmental justice movements fight, survive, love, and create in the face of violence that challenges the conditions of life itself. Exploring dispossession, deregulation, privatization, and inequality, this book is the essential primer on environmental justice, packed with cautiously hopeful stories for the future.Julie Sze is Professor of American Studies and Founding Director of the Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Davis. She has authored and edited three books and numerous articles on environmental justice and inequality, culture and environment, and urban and community health and activism.Padmapriya Vidhya-Govindarajan is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU Steinhardt. Her research interests lie at the intersection of environmental justice, digital and film cultures, and community media-use practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new normal of a 24/7 online life. What happens when your home office starts to feel like a call center and you’re too fried to log out of Facebook? We’re addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the frivolous age of decentralized networks. How do we make sense of the rising disaffection with the platform condition? Zoom fatigue, cancel culture, crypto art, NFTs and psychic regression comprise core elements of a general theory of platform culture. Geert Lovink argues that we reclaim the internet on our own terms. Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet (Valiz 2022) is a relapse-resistant story about the rise of platform alternatives, built on a deep understanding of the digital slump.Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organisation after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018) and Sad by Design (2019). In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). His center organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), The Future of Art Criticism and MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing experiments, critical meme research, participatory hybrid events and precarity in the creative sector. In December, 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the Art History Department, Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam for one day a week.Reuben Niewenhuis is interested in philosophy, theory, technology, and interdisciplinary topics. Subscribe to his interviews here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama (Henry Holt, 2022) New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti reveals an inside look at the historically close, complicated, occasionally co-dependent, and at-times uncertain relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama. Delving far deeper than the simplistic “bromance” narrative that’s long held the public eye, The Long Alliance reveals the past, present, and future of the unusual partnership, detailing its development, its twists and turns, its ruptures and reunions, and its path to this pivotal moment for each man’s legacy. The true story of this relationship, from 2003 into 2022, is significantly more layered and consequential than is widely understood. The original mismatch between the veteran Washington traditionalist and the once-in-a-generation outsider has transformed repeatedly in ways that have molded not just four different presidential campaigns and two different political parties, but also wars, a devastating near-depression, movements for social equality, and the fight for the future of American democracy. The bond between them has been, at various times over the past two decades, tense, affectionate, nonexistent, and ironclad — but it has always been surprising. Now it is shaping a second presidential administration, and the future of the world as we know it.Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

With the Biden Administration's student loan relief coming down the pike, Annika sits down with Dr. Beth Akers, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who specializes in higher education finance. Beth discusses the issue of student debt, and what the Biden relief plan will and will not achieve. You can find more information about Dr. Akers and her recent writing and appearances here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, violent disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the Culture Wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions. Does a concern with race, gender, and sexuality, with unacknowledged power and privilege, with identity, give present critics the right to criticize the great works of the past? If we have learned to see those works in terms of historical differences rather than universal truths, how is it that they speak to us at all? In the study of the world's cultures, there is more than one way to avoid being Eurocentric; which way should we choose? Re-examining key thinkers since 1970, including Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Edward Said, Hortense Spillers, Fredric Jameson, and Stuart Hall, Bruce Robbins' book Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction (Stanford UP, 2022) offers both a non-specialist introduction to recent cultural theory and a strong new interpretation of how this theory applies to the everyday issue of what cultural critics do and how they should feel about what they do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

On part #2 of Technocracy Now, we tell stories of cybernetic technocracies.First, we hear the story of Charles A. McClelland, a liberal political scientists who proposed a cybernetic computer system that claimed to predict conflicts before they happened. With this information, US policy makers could usher in a new age of peace and stability (and forever ensure a US-dominated global order). The project never accomplished everything it set out to do, but it is now being resurrected behind closed doors by Lockheed Martin. It's a techno-utopian dream of mathematical certainty in an uncertain world.Then, why not cyber-socialism? In Salvador Allende's Chile, they were building a cybernetic computer network that connected factories to state planners. It seems technocratic, but these cyber-revolutionaries saw it as anything but. The short-lived Cybersyn Project promised using science to develop a more rationally-ordered economy. However, it also promised to guarantee the freedom and autonomy of workers. The project was destroyed in the brutal coup of 1973. However, did it work, and is it a dream worth resurrecting?SUPPORT THE SHOWYou can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.ABOUT THE SHOWFor a full list of credits, contact information, and more, visit our about page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

America is on the brink of disaster. You've seen it -- on television, social media, at work, and even in your personal life. We're in the midst of a cold civil war, and the tension is mounting. We've lost friends and damaged relationships over opposing political views, and many of us now struggle with anxiety, anger, media addiction, or depression as we cope with the toxic weapons of cancel culture, unfriending, shunning, doxing, intimidation, and even threats of violence.The Second Civil War: A Citizen's Guide to Healing Our Fractured Nation (RH Press, 2021) is a guidebook for every American troubled by our growing national divide. Peter Montoya provides meaningful tools and practical strategies you can implement to end political bigotry, repair broken relationships, recognize misinformation and resist fearmongering, use social media in a way that it doesn't use you, coexist with those who hold opposing views, embrace positive patriotism, and help reunify the United States of America.While the wars of the 20th century were waged by countries or institutions, the rise of unethical media, combined with the accessible power of technology, has placed us, as individuals, both on the front lines and within the command bunkers. We're not just fighting this war; we're running it -- and it's up to each and every one of us to end it. The Second Civil War shows you how. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics