New Books in Critical Theory

The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Yale College. Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power (Duke University Press, 2016) charts a pivotal moment for the American Art Museum and reflects on the progress, or lack thereof, for African American Art’s place within the U...

How does one “rethink and revise the key concepts of Hannah Arendt’s political theory in light of the struggles of asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants” (207)? In her new book Rightlessness in An Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants (Oxford University Press, 2015), Ayten Gundogdu (Political Science, Barnard College) engages this question to explo...

Why does higher education still matter? In Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters, Les Back, a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, offers a series of reflections framed by the time of the academic year. The first book from Goldsmiths Press, Academic Diary consists of short entries that think through the problems of university management, defend the i...

Two Canadian political science professors contend that the grotesque inequities of the capitalist system feed hatred, nourish misogyny, promote chronic dispossession and wreak havoc on the environment. In their new book, The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada, (Fernwood, 2015), Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman, add that [o]nly when humanity moves beyond this system of soci...

How did two right wing presidents use culture to govern France? In Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Jeremy Ahearne, a Professor of French Studies and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, explores are range of examples to probe the decade of Right Wing government between 2002 and 2012. Drawing on the implicit/explicit distinct...

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexington Books, 2015), Alfred Frankowski, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern Illinois University, makes clear this central tension at the heart of contemporary American life. The re-election o...

In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (or ARTs) that animate the essays appearing in The Business of Being Made: The Temporalities of Reproductive Technologies in Psychoanalysis and Culture (Routledge, 2015). It is striking that while personhood amendments proliferate and soverei...

In his book The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), Nicholas Vrousalis (Leiden University) provides a thorough and complex reconstruction of G.A. Cohen’s political philosophical project. Understanding Cohen to be engaged in “secular egalitarian theodicy,” Vrousalis threads together the major dimensions of Cohen’s thought to find unity in Cohen’...

The landscape described in Bernard Harcourt‘s new book is a dystopia saturated by pleasure. We do not live in a drab Orwellian world, he writes. We live in a beautiful, colorful, stimulating, digital world a rich, bright world full of passion and jouissance–and by means of which we reveal ourselves and make ourselves virtually transparent to surveillance. Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Di...

How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the concept of Urban Multiculture as a framework for understanding his ethnographic research in East London. The book considers memory, territory and cultural practice, thinking through how the politics of...

Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified food, sugar consumption, fast food and the obesity crisis (to name a few) is pervasive. Most often, this focuses on individual consumer choice. Garrett M.Broad argues, however, for the importance of community level initiative. He maintains that the v...

What do jeans tell us about the contemporary world? They provide the starting point for Lynne Pettinger‘s Work, Consumption and Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Pettinger, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Warwick, examines the interrelationships between work and consumption, bringing a global perspective to these intertwined areas of social life. The book introduces c...

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (Verso Books, 2015), Linsey McGoey proposes a new way of discussing philanthropy and, in doing so, revives associated historical debates often overlooked at present: from the ethics of clinical trials to industrial labor organizing in the early 20th century to global financial regulation. Tracing theological and in...

The earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed and destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Mark Schuller‘s book Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti (Rutgers University Press, 2016) takes readers into the temporary camps in Port au Prince and offers a searing critique of the NGOs and aid organizations that organized relief efforts. Despite good intentions, the assumptions...

How can academics respond to the rise of social media? Or should they respond at all? In Social Media for Academics (Sage, 2016), Mark Carrigan, from the Centre for Social Ontology, offers an informed and reflective take on social media, with some practical guidelines for academics. The book introduces key concepts, such as digital scholarship, social media and ‘the public’, alongside discussions...

Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among worlds, navigate shifting circumstances, and find emergent opportunities? When do new species add value to ecological associations, and when do they become irredeemably destructive? When should we let unruly forms of life run wild, and when should w...

What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bown, a lecturer at Hang Seng Management College and co-editor of Everyday Analysis and the Hong Kong Review of Books, talks through the political potential of new forms of enjoyment. Using Candy Crush Saga, Football Manager, Gangnam Style, Game of Thro...

What is the experience of young homeless people? What does this experience tell us about space, place and society? In Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility (Routledge, 2015), Dr. Emma Jackson, a lecturer in the Sociology Department of Goldsmith’s College, University of London, employs an ethnographic approach to understand young people’s experience of homelessness in contemporar...

The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music (NYU Press, 2015), Roshanak Kheshti explores how these origins shape how listeners hear world music today. Kheshti did fieldwork at Kinship Records, a pseudonym of a w...

The competition seems to be a crucial part of the classical music world. In Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Lisa McCormick, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh, offers a unique insight into the history, function and meaning of the classical music competition. The book offers both a rich history of competi...

Affect is a weighty and consequential problem in psychoanalysis. People enter treatment hoping for relief from symptoms and their attendant unbearable affects. While various theorists and schools offer differing approaches to “feeling states,” emotions, and affects, Lacan, despite devoting an entire seminar to anxiety, often is charged with completely ignoring affect. This misperception stems in p...

How is the medical profession regulated in a ‘risk society’. This is the core question of John M. Chamberlain‘s Medical Regulation, Fitness to Practice and Revalidation: A Critical Introduction (Policy Press, 2015). Chamberlain, an associate professor of medical criminology at the University of Southampton, explores both the history of the medical profession as well as recent attempts to regulate...

How can we de-colonize critical theory from within, and reimagine the way it grounds its normative claims as well as the way it relates to post- and de-colonial theory? Amy Allen (Philosophy and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University) takes up this project in her book The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Columbia Univ. Press, 2016)....

Nadim Bakhshov joins the New Books in Network to discuss his book Against Capitalist Education: What is Education for? (Zero Books, 2015). The book posits new alternatives to educational thought and philosophy through an innovated, yet classic, style of dialogue between two characters, John and George, whom both channel philosophers, intellectuals, and great thinkers in history. You can connect to...

With the growth of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we are increasingly heading toward a radically open society. In Sharing our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), author David R. Brake explores some of the social and individual harms that can arise from unwary social media use. Brake draws upon in-depth interviews with bloggers...