University of Minnesota Press

The new book ‘Cacaphonies’ takes fecal matter and its place in literature seriously. In a stark challenge to the tendency to view 20th- and 21st-century French literature through sanitizing abstractions, Annabel L. Kim argues for feces as a figure of radical equality. ‘Cacaphonies’ reveals the aesthetic, political, and ethical potential of shit and its capacity to transform literature and life. Here, Kim is joined in conversation by Merve Emre, Rachele Dini, and Laure Murat.Annabel L. Kim is the Roy G. Clouse associate professor of Romance Literatures and Languages at Harvard University. A specialist in 20th- and 21st-century French literature, Kim is author of ‘Unbecoming Language: Anti-Identitarian French Feminist Fictions’ and ‘Cacaphonies: The Excremental Canon of French Literature.’Merve Emre is an associate professor of literature at the University of Oxford and a contributing writer at The New Yorker.Rachele Dini is senior lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Roehampton, London.Laure Murat is professor of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA’s Department of European Languages & Transcultural Studies and author of several books.Episode references:Louis-Ferdinand Céline; Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night)Caca communismJean GenetKristin Ross (Fast Cars, Clean Bodies)Susan Signe MorrisonPhilip Roth (Patrimony)Anne GarrétaSamuel Beckett (Molloy)Rey ChowJames Joyce (Ulysses/Leopold Bloom)Alain Resnais (Providence)

ON THE WANDERING PATHS is Sylvain Tesson’s literary adventure and philosophical reflection during a three-month journey of solitude and personal contemplation while walking along vast stretches of mountain ranges and rivers, ancient bridges and villages, of France’s countryside. This exquisite chronicle through landscapes that continue to resist urbanization and technology is a thoughtful and thought-provoking glimpse into a poet’s adventurous life. Author Daniel Hornsby, who writes the Foreword to the new English translation from University of Minnesota Press, joins the Press’s Eric Lundgren in conversation.Eric Lundgren is the Outreach and Development Manager at the University of Minnesota Press. His novel The Facades (Overlook Press) was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. His writing has appeared in Tin House, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Boulevard, and The Millions, and a new story, "Actaeon at the Movies", is out in Post Road 39. Daniel Hornsby is the author of Via Negativa (Knopf) and Sucker (Anchor, February 2023). His stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bookforum, The Missouri Review, and Joyland.This translation of On the Wandering Paths is published with the support of Villa Albertine, in partnership with the French Embassy.

Exploring new concepts of the relationship between form and function while thinking through object-oriented ontology (OOO), Graham Harman (ARCHITECTURE AND OBJECTS) deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO’s influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture.Art after Nature is a series from University of Minnesota Press that engages with the politics and contradictions of the Anthropocene. Each volume aims to provide the opportunity to creatively engage with new and alternative discourses at the intersection of art, science, and philosophy. More: z.umn.edu/artafternature.Graham Harman is distinguished professor of philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, and author of many books, including Architecture and Objects; Speculative Realism; and Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything.Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature and the environment in art. Aloi is editor-in-chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and executive director of Green Lantern Press.Episode references:Object-oriented ontology (OOO)Bruno LatourMartin HeideggerJacques DerridaGilles DeleuzeDavid RuyAristotleImmanuel KantClement GreenbergJoanna Malinowska (exhibit, Time of Guerrilla Metaphysics)Edmund HusserlMichael FriedAldo RossiJeffrey KipnisMichael Young (Young & Ayata)Mark Foster Gage Tom WiscombeMarcel Duchamp

How do educational policy studies need to shift to remain adequate to the emergence of powerful forms of technology? In ALGORITHMS OF EDUCATION, Kalervo N. Gulson, Sam Sellar, and P. Taylor Webb explore how, for policy makers, big data creates the illusion of greater control over educational futures. They propose that schools and governments are increasingly turning to “synthetic governance”—where what is human and what is machine becomes less clear—as a strategy for optimizing education. In this episode, Gulson and Sellar discuss new strategies for, and a new politics of, education.Kalervo N. Gulson is professor in education policy at the University of Sydney. He is author of Education Policy, Space, and the City: Markets and the (In)visibility of Race and coauthor of Education Policy and Racial Biopolitics in Multicultural Cities. Sam Sellar is professor in education policy at the University of South Australia. Most recently he coedited the World Yearbook of Education 2019: Comparative Methodology in the Era of Big Data and Global Networks.References:N. Katherine HaylesLuciana ParisiGilles DeleuzeFélix GuattariBernard StieglerPierre BourdieuMichel FoucaultIsabelle StengersKeller Easterling (Extrastatecraft)AlphaGo (and 2017 documentary of it)Shoshana Zuboff

“Capitalism defeated traditional societies because it was more exciting than they were. But now there is something more exciting than capitalism: its destruction.” In the face of things with true power (capitalism, the law, public opinion, etc.), philosophy is not provisioned to battle them head-on. But it can wage “a guerrilla campaign against them,” writes Andrew Culp (referencing Deleuze) in his new book A GUERRILLA GUIDE TO REFUSAL. Harnessing critical theory, this book takes us on a journey through a subterranean network of communiques, military documents, contemporary art, political slogans, adversarial blogs, and captive media. This conversation among scholars traces a nonfascist life at the end of the world as we know it.Andrew Culp is professor of media history and theory in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts. He is author of A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal (2022) and Dark Deleuze (2016).Will Conway is a PhD candidate whose research centers around disability, biopolitics, and theories of resistance.Jose Rosales is an independent researcher. With Claire Fontaine and Iman Ganji, they are co-author of Foreigners Everywhere and the author of 'Communism as the Riddle Posed to History' in The Double Binds of Neoliberalism (Rowan & Littlefield, 2022), as well as various other texts that can be found online. Currently, they are co-editor (alongside Andreas Petrossiants) of the multi-volume series, Diversity of Aesthetics. Violet is a queer independent researcher based in India working on theories of resistance, biopolitics, and destituent communism.References:Gilles DeleuzeMichel FoucaultArlette FargeMay 68Jean GenetGuy HocquenghemJohann MostLucy ParsonsFriedrich EngelsPaul B. Preciado (and “Marcos”)Christopher Chitty (Sexual Hegemony)Karl MarxJacques DerridaRoberto EspositoAntonio NegriFélix GuattariBernadette Corporation’s Get Rid of Yourself (film)Edward SaidEqbal Ahmad (Confronting Empire)Frantz FanonRobin D. G. Kelley (Race Rebels)Homi BhabhaFred MotenNahum Dimitri Chandler (paraontology)Claire FontaineTiqqunSaidiya HartmanKwame TureNanni Balestrini (The Unseen)     Keywords: archive, power, surveillance, cybernetics, refusal, political, political control, philosophy, anarchy, class, class war, transformationSeveral references are made to specific current events, and as such we want to mention the date of this recording: March 31, 2022.

In SIDE AFFECTS, Hil Malatino opens a conversation about trans experience that acknowledges the reality of feeling fatigue, envy, burnout, numbness, and rate amid the ongoing onslaught of casual and structural transphobia in order to map the intricate emotional terrain of trans survival. In May 2022, Malatino was joined in conversation by Zena Sharman, author of The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health. This conversation was hosted virtually by White Whale Bookstore of Pittsburgh, PA.Hil Malatino is assistant professor in the departments of women's, gender, and sexuality studies and philosophy at Penn State. Malatino is author of Side Affects; Trans Care; and Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience.Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist, and LGBTQ+ health advocate. Sharman is author of The Care We Dream Of, and editor of The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care. More info: ZenaSharman.com.Topics discussed: trans and queer community, affect, rage, trauma, liberatory health care, liberated futures, family, aging, burnout, carceral systems, collective care work.References in this conversation include:Susan StrykerMaría LugonesJames C. ScottLeah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaDean SpadeMyrl BeamT FleischmannSins Invalid disability justice primerAurora Levins MoralesEli ClareShayda KafaiAnn CvetkovichA transcript of this episode is available at: z.umn.edu/51222p

What are we leaving behind, forgetting, and obscuring as we remember AIDS activist pasts? VIRAL CULTURES is the first book to critically examine the archives that have helped preserve and create the legacy of AIDS activism of the 1980s and 1990s. Marika Cifor charts the efforts activists, artists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the US and the infrastructure developed to maintain it, with attention on large institutional archives such as the New York Public Library, and those developed by community-based organizations such as ACT UP and VISUAL AIDS. This book explores the act of saving this activist past and reanimating it in the digital age. Cifor is joined here in conversation by Cait McKinney, K.J. Rawson, and Theodore (Ted) Kerr.Participant bios:Marika Cifor is a feminist scholar of archival and digital studies. Cifor is assistant professor in the Information School and adjunct faculty member in gender, women, and sexuality studies at the University of Washington. She is author of Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS.Cait McKinney is assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. McKinney’s work includes media histories of LGBTQ+ activists and how they took up Internet technologies in the 1980s and 90s.K.J. Rawson is associate professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern University. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive and co-chair of the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.Ted Kerr is a writer and artist who teaches at The New School. Kerr is a founding member of the collective What Would an HIV Doula Do?, and is coauthor, with Alexandra Juhasz, of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production.Works and people referenced in this episode:-Vincent Chevalier and Ian Bradley-Perrin (Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me!)-Avram Finkelstein-Hil Malatino-Debra Levine-David Hirsh and Frank Moore, Visual AIDS Archive Project (visualaids.org)-Maxine Wolfe-Stephen Shapiro-Nelson Santos -Kia LaBeija (Goodnight, Kia)-Demian DinéYazhi ́ (NDN AIDS Flag)-AfterLab (University of Washington, Information School)-Anna Lauren Hoffmann-Megan Finn-Tonia Sutherland-Marika Cifor: "Presence, Absence, and Victoria's Hair: Examining Affect and Embodiment in -Trans Archives." Transgender Studies Quarterly 2, no. 4 (2015): 645-649.-Lesbian Herstory Archives-Jih-Fei Cheng, Alexandra Juhasz, and Nishant Shahani, eds. AIDS and the Distribution of Crises. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2020.-Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ Linked Data Vocabulary (homosaurus.org)-Digital Transgender Archive-What Would an HIV Doula Do? Collective-PosterVirus (AIDS ACTION NOW!)-Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore (Ted) Kerr, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2022-Cait McKinney, Information Activism: a queer history of lesbian media technologies. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2020-ACT UP-The Archive Project (Visual AIDS)-The Artist+ Registry (Visual AIDS)-New York University Fales Library and Special Collections-ACT UP/NY Records (New York Public Library)-New York Public Library-Alex Fialho (Visual AIDS)-Eric Rhein (Visual AIDS Archive Project)-Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor. "From human rights to feminist ethics: radical empathy in the archives." Archivaria 81, no. 1 (2016): 23-43.-Cait McKinney and Dylan Mulvin. "Bugs: rethinking the history of computing." Communication, Culture & Critique 12, no. 4 (2019): 476-498.-Marika Cifor and Cait McKinney. "Reclaiming HIV/AIDS in digital media studies." First Monday (2020).-What Does a COVID-19 Doula Do? Zine (ONE Archives at University of Southern California) https://www.onearchives.org/what-does-a-covid19-doula-do-zine/)-Latino/a Caucus (ACT UP/New York)-Julián de Mayo

Land privatization has been a longstanding and ongoing settler colonial process separating Indigenous peoples from their traditional homelands, with devastating consequences. ALLOTMENT STORIES is an edited collection that dives into this conflict, creating a complex conversation out of narratives of Indigenous communities resisting allotment and other dispossessive land schemes. The volume’s editors, Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien, are here to talk about the urgency of these conversations on dispossession and repossession, which are not always stories of easy heroes and easy villains; and also discuss considerations that go into publishing an edited collection.Raised in traditional Ute territory in Colorado and now living in shíshálh territory in British Columbia, Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation) is professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia, xwməθkwəy̓əm territory. He is author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter and Our Fire Survives the Storm (Minnesota, 2005).Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) is Distinguished McKnight and Northrop Professor in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota within Dakota homelands. Her books include Dispossession by Degrees and Firsting and Lasting (Minnesota, 2010).Episode note: Brief references are made to the book’s cover designer and acquisitions editor; they are, respectively, Catherine Casalino and Jason Weidemann.References:-General (Dawes) Allotment Act of 1887 in the United States, which allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands.-McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation boundaries in current-day Oklahoma had not been extinguished by nineteenth-century allotment legislation.-Cobell v. Salazar settlement’s Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.ALLOTMENT STORIES is a volume that features contributions from Jennifer Adese, Megan Baker, William Bauer Jr., Christine Taitano DeLisle, Vicente M. Diaz, Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Marilyn Dumont, Munir Fakher Eldin, Nick Estes, Pauliina Feodoroff, Susan E. Gray, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Rauna Kuokkanen, Sheryl R. Lightfoot, Kelly McDonough, Ruby Hansen Murray, Tero Mustonen, Darren O’Toole, Shiri Pasternak, Dione Payne, Joseph M. Pierce, Khal Schneider, Argelia Segovia Liga, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Jameson R. Sweet, Michael P. Taylor, Candessa Tehee, and Benjamin Hugh Velaise. 

Elan Abrell, a cultural anthropologist and author, joins Katie Gillespie, a geographer and expert on dairy cows, to discuss animal sanctuaries and the ethics of animal care. They explore the emotional bonds between humans and rescued animals, the systemic exploitation in agricultural settings, and the commodification of animals in auctions. The conversation dives into the ethical struggles faced in sanctuary work, including species management and the interplay of animal welfare with social justice issues, highlighting the importance of empathy in their practices.

Josef Nguyen’s THE DIGITAL IS KID STUFF questions constructions of creativity, childhood, entrepreneurialism, and technological savvy, toggling between techno-pessimism and techno-utopianism in the process. The book narrates the developmental arc of a future creative laborer: from playing Minecraft, to DIY innovation with Make magazine, to selfies on Instagram, to the Creative Science Foundation and imagining technological innovations using design fiction. Nguyen is joined here in conversation by Carly Kocurek and Patrick LeMieux.Josef Nguyen (he/him) is assistant professor of critical media studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.Carly Kocurek (she/her) is associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology.Patrick LeMieux (he/him) is a media artist, game designer, electronic musician, and associate professor of cinema and digital media at the University of California, Davis.