New Books in Critical Theory

Robert R. Janes, author of 'Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat', discusses the role of museums in addressing societal collapse and the need for urgent action. They explore reevaluating the purpose of museums, challenging traditional assumptions, and advocating for community connection. The podcast also delves into the positive impact museums can have on communities and the moral dimension of museums in activism.

Patrick Ffrench, author of Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics, discusses Barthes' ambivalence towards cinema and his engagement with films and directors like Fellini, Antonioni, Eisenstein, and Hitchcock. Focusing on Barthes' essays and book Camera Lucida, Ffrench examines Barthes' exploration of space, material aesthetics, and the pull of narrative in film. The podcast also explores Barthes' concepts of myth, eroticism, and the poetics of cinema, as well as his association of cinema with ideology and the importance of detachment and immersion.

Laura Briggs, an author and historian, explores the history of American terror through child abduction as a strategy. She discusses the systemic issues leading to the loss of parental rights, the hyper-criminalization of drug use, and the disenfranchisement of Black and Latinx communities. Briggs also sheds light on resistance efforts and the impact of debt on women and children's lives.

Many major political questions today revolve around questions of human nature; what sort of people we are and what sort of people we're capable of being constitute both the goals and limits of the sort of society we can and ought to try and create. Jason Read's The Politics of Transindividuality (Haymarket Books, 2017) looks at a number of figures who've used trandindividuality to explore the ways in which our social context generates various forms of subjectivity, and how those forms of subjectivity can in turn generate the society they occupy. The book covers a variety of figures in topics, going as far back as Spinoza, Hegel and Marx before turning to contemporary thinkers such as Balibar, Simondon, Virno and Lazzarrato, and interrogates the sort of people we are being made into.Jason Read is a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. In addition toThe Politics of Transindividuality, he is also the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx on the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY, 2003). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Dr. Nicole Seymour, author of Glitter, explores the multifaceted history and significance of this often-dismissed substance. She discusses glitter as a political tool, its connection to queer and communities of color, and its portrayal in popular culture. The chapter also examines children's fascination with glitter, its evolution from natural to synthetic, and the ban on plastic-based glitter. The podcast also touches on the author's project on conservative camp and a book recommendation for right-wing comedy.

D.B. Maroon presents a personal biography of America, Blackness, and racial politics. The essays explore the impact of the book on people of color and allies, resilience within the community, choosing love and overcoming trauma, failures of institutions, addressing institutionalized injustice, and the impacts and possibilities of new technologies.

When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readings in that course, the one which most clearly explained the 2008 crisis and the financialized economy, was written by an English professor. It was Annie McClanahan’s Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture (Stanford University Press, 2016). The book is a masterful exploration of the cultural politics of the financial crisis and a powerful mediation on how to make sense of an era of unrepayable debts. As a review in the LA Review of Books notes, McClanahan has resurrected and repurposed the rich tradition of Marxist literary criticism which brought us Raymond Williams, analyzing post-crisis literature, photography, and cinema as cultural texts registering “a new ‘crisis subjectivity’ in the wake of the mortgage meltdown’s shattering revelations.” Dead Pledges is a must read. For whom? Well, anyone living in the 21st century, concerned about insurmountable debts, thinking of how culture and the economy transect each other, and striving for a radical politics fit for the mortgaged times in which we live.Aparna Gopalan is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how managing surplus populations and tapping into fortunes at the “bottom-of-the-pyramid” are twin-logics that undergird poverty alleviation projects in rural Rajasthan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Historian David Courtwright discusses the global commodification of vice and the rise of 'limbic capitalism'. He explores the addictive nature of substances like tobacco and alcohol during the food drug revolution. Courtwright also examines the dangers of capitalism's influence on neuroscience and public health and offers strategies to combat it. In his book, 'The Age of Addiction', he raises stimulating questions about consumption and free will.

How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwick, follows up his book on Foucault’s Last Decade with research on Foucault’s work from the late 1960s to the middle 1970s. As with Foucault’s work at the time, the book is focused on the emergence of a new understanding of power, alongside detailed engagements with archival materials and the recently published College De France lecture series. The book offers an alternative reading to traditional periodisations of Foucault’s work, suggesting engagements with ancient Greece, ‘repressive’ theories of power, and his public political work, can be rethought to add nuance and depth to current understandings of Foucault’s theories of the ‘productive’ nature of power and the practice of his scholarship. The book is part of Elden’s broader project on Foucault much of which is detailed on his Progressive Geographies blog. The rich and detailed text will be of interest to social theorists, Foucault scholars, and anyone interested in how best to understand the meaning of power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Bryan McCann, Associate Professor of Communication at Louisiana State University, discusses his book 'The Mark of Criminality' which explores the complex meanings of crime and criminality during the war-on-crime era. Topics include the connection between gangsta rap and African folklore, the portrayal of black men as threats, the political work of gangsta rap, the challenges of writing about rap as a white author, and the controversy surrounding Snoop Dogg and blackface.