New Books in Critical Theory

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in filthy and degrading conditions. In Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It (Duke UP, 2024), Lennard J. Davis labels this genre “poornography”: distorted narratives of poverty written by and for the middle and upper classes. Davis shows how poornography creates harmful and dangerous stereotypes that build barriers to social justice and change. To remedy this, Davis argues, poor people should write realistic depictions of themselves, but because of representational inequality they cannot. Given the obstacles to the poor accessing the means of publication, Davis suggests that the work should, at least for now, be done by “transclass” writers who were once poor and who can accurately represent poverty without relying on stereotypes and clichés. Only then can the lived experience of poverty be more fully realized. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

A thought-provoking reconsideration of how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s set the mold for today's activism. The 1970s was a decade of "subversives". Faced with various progressive and revolutionary social movements, the forces of order--politicians, law enforcement, journalists, and conservative intellectuals--saw subversives everywhere. From indigenous peasant armies and gay liberation organizations, to anti-nuclear activists and Black liberation militants, subversives challenged authority, laid siege to the established order, and undermined time-honored ways of life. Every corner of the left was fertile ground for subversive elements, which the forces of order had to root out and destroy--a project they pursued with zeal and brutality. In The Subversive Seventies (Oxford UP, 2023), Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies--often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful--are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today. While many accounts of the 1970s have been written about the regimes of domination that emerged throughout the decade, Hardt approaches the subversive from the perspectives of those who sought to undermine the base of established authority and transform the fundamental structures of society. In so doing, he provides a novel account of the theoretical and practical projects of liberation that still speak to us today, too many of which have been all but forgotten. Departing from popular and scholarly accounts that focus on the social movements of the 1960s, Hardt argues that the 1970s offers an inspiring and useful guide for contemporary radical political thought and action. Although we can still learn much from the movements of the sixties, that decade's struggles for peace, justice, and freedom fundamentally marked the end of an era. The movements of the seventies, in contrast, responded directly to emerging neoliberal frameworks and other structures of power that continue to rule over us today. They identified and confronted political problems that remain central for us. The 1970s, in this sense, marks the beginning of our time. Looking at a wide range of movements around the globe, from the United States, to Guinea Bissau, South Korea, Chile, Turkey, and Italy, The Subversive Seventies provides a reassessment of the political action of the 1970s that sheds new light not only on our revolutionary past but also on what liberation can be and do today. Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentialism among some groups, or the idea that our biology ties us to particular ethnic identities. This can boost a sense of cultural pride and prosocial behaviors among communities that are perceived to be similar. In the worst-case scenarios, however, this phenomenon can contribute to deeper social woes like misinformation, anti-science agendas, and even social hatred among those who believe in racial superiority. Using research from both the social sciences and the genetics literature as support, Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities (Oxford University Press, 2023) establishes realistic expectations about what we can learn from our DNA as a foundation for examining the psychological impact of ancestry testing, including the differences between how this information is perceived versus its reality. With this book, Dr. Kampourakis flexes his muscles as an esteemed interdisciplinary science educator and author to challenge these traditional social constructs, using the current genetic testing science as a myth busting tool. Kampourakis argues that DNA ancestry testing cannot reveal a person's true ethnic identity because ethnic groups are socially and culturally constructed. In 10 accessible chapters, he explains the assumptions underlying the scientific study of ancestry, and the resulting paradoxes that are often overlooked. What the study of human DNA mostly shows is that human DNA variation is continuous, and it is not possible to clearly delimit ethnic groups based on DNA data. As a result, we all are members of a huge, extended family, and not of genetically distinct ethnic groups. What ancestry tests can provide are probabilistic estimations of similarities between the test-takers and particular reference populations. This does not devalue the results of these tests, however, because they can indeed provide some valuable information to people who may not know much about their ancestors. In fact, what the tests are very good at doing is finding close relatives, and this is perhaps why the whole enterprise should be rebranded as family, not ancestry, testing. Ultimately, this book reveals that genetic essentialism, biological ethnic identities, racial superiority, and similar social constructs are scientifically unsupported Kostas Kampourakis is the author and editor of several books about evolution, genetics, philosophy and history of science, as well as the editor of the Cambridge University Press book series Understanding Life. He teaches biology and science education courses at the University of Geneva Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary to popular belief, the reason is not audiences or marketing, but Wall Street. In this book, Andrew deWaard shows how the financial sector is dismantling the creative capacity of cultural industries by upwardly redistributing wealth, consolidating corporate media, harming creative labor, and restricting our collective media culture. Moreover, financialization is transforming the very character of our mediascapes for branded transactions. Our media are increasingly shaped by the profit-extraction techniques of hedge funds, asset managers, venture capitalists, private equity firms, and derivatives traders. Illustrated with examples drawn from popular culture, Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture (University of California Press, 2024) offers readers the critical financial literacy necessary to understand the destructive financialization of film, television, and popular music—and provides a plan to reverse this dire threat to culture. A free digital version of this title is available here. Andrew deWaard is Assistant Professor of Media and Popular Culture at the University of California, San Diego, and coauthor of The Cinema of Steven Soderbergh: Indie Sex, Corporate Lies, and Digital Videotape. Peter C. Kunze is assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing from conventional approaches to the study of disaster and conflict that have dominated academic studies of Kashmir, Omer Aijazi’s ethnography of life in the borderlands instead explores possibilities for imagining life otherwise, in an environment where violence is everywhere, or atmospheric. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the portion of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control and its surrounding mountainscapes, the book takes us to two remote mountainous valleys that have been shaped by recurring environmental disasters, as well as by the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border. Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all of whom are precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoy the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the distinctions between story, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book’s protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world. Bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with a radical humanist anthropology and the capaciousness of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centering not on trauma and rupture but rather on repair—the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death imposed upon them and create viable lives for themselves, even amidst constant diminishment and world-annihilation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Discussing money is always accompanied by controversy as well as enchantment. Debating what money is and how it performs its main functions in the contemporary economy is fundamental to understanding the social consequences of money transformation associated with the digital revolution. This book explores the links between the current and prospective properties of money, its production, and its relationship to the concepts of value, the common good, and innovation. Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract (Routledge, 2023) opens a debate on the role that money could play in a different paradigm based on a renewed conception of monetary properties and functions that are capable of having a positive impact on social and individual welfare. Massó outlines the fundamentals of this monetary model, which would operate as a parallel currency, where the processes of monetary and value creation are connected in a new deal between the citizen and the state, grounded on an approach of reciprocal rights and responsibilities. This book will appeal to scholars, students, and, more broadly, readers interested in a contemporary understanding of what money is, how it is being transformed, and the role that it can play in redefining the twenty-first-century social contract. Matilde Massó is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña (UDC). Her main research interests focus on the transformations of money, the role of culture and emotions in economic processes, and how technological innovation is shaping a new conception of the economy concerning theories of justice. She has extensive experience leading research projects in economic sociology, particularly in financialization studies, the sociology of money, and financial innovation. Her recent publications include Contested Money (Routledge, 2024) and Why Money Matters? (Journal of Economic Issues, 2023). Additionally, she was awarded a Marie Curie IF Action in 2016. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and environments later eclipsed by classical economics With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production. Valenze returns to the eighteenth-century contexts that generated his arguments, showing how Malthus mobilized a redemptive narrative of British historical development and dismissed the varied ways that people adapted to the challenges of subsistence needs. She uses history, anthropology, food studies, and animal studies to redirect our attention to the margins of Malthus’s essay, where activities such as hunting, gathering, herding, and gardening were rendered extraneous. She demonstrates how Malthus’s omissions and his subsequent canonization provided a rationale for colonial imposition of British agricultural models, regardless of environmental diversity. By broadening our conception of human livelihoods, Valenze suggests pathways to resistance against the hegemony of Malthusian political economy. The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History (Yale UP, 2023) invites us to imagine a world where monoculture is in retreat and the margins are recentered as spaces of experimentation, nimbleness, and human flourishing. Deborah Valenze is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College. A recipient of numerous fellowships, she has written four previous books on British culture and economic life. She lives in Cambridge, MA, and New York City. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In early June 2020, Christina Gessler and Zerlina Maxwell met remotely to discuss Maxwell’s soon-to-be-released book. This episode is an encore presentation of that discussion. As we watch the race to the 2024 United States presidential election, we revisit this conversation from four years ago to reconsider lessons learned and those ignored in the race to the 2020 presidential election. Today’s book is: The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide (Legacy Lit, 2020), by Zerlina Maxwell, which examines the past and present problems of the Left. After working on presidential campaigns for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Maxwell gained first-hand knowledge of what liberals have and have not been doing right over the past few elections. Ultimately, these errors worked in President Donald Trump's favor in 2016; he ran a campaign on white identity politics, successfully tapping into white male angst and resistance. In 2020, after the Democratic Party's most historically diverse pool of presidential candidates dwindled down to Joe Biden, once again an older white man, Maxwell asked: what now, liberals? Fueled by Maxwell's trademark wit and candor, The End of White Politics dismantles the problems of the Left, challenging everyone from young "Bernie Bros" to power players in the "Billionaire Boys' Club." Whether tackling the white privilege that enabled Mayor Pete Buttigieg's presidential run, the controversial #HashtagActivism of the Millennial generation, the massive individual donations that sway politicians toward maintaining the status quo of income inequality, or the lingering racism that debilitated some Democratic presidential contenders and cut their promising campaigns short, Maxwell pulls no punches in her critique. Underlying all of these individual issues, Maxwell argues, is the "liberal-minded" party's struggle to engage women and communities of color, and its preoccupation with catering to the white, male working class that threatens to be its most lethal shortfall. Our guest is: Zerlina Maxwell, the host of Mornings with Zerlina on Sirius XM, and the Director of Progressive Programming for SiriusXM. She was the Director of Progressive Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, and acted as a campaign spokesperson for the Presidential Debates. She writes for a variety of national media outlets, is a frequent college campus speaker, and is the author of The End Of White Politics: How To Heal Our Liberal Divide. She has a law degree from Rutgers Law School Newark and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in an age of perpetual crisis. As we grapple with what Greenfield terms the "Long Emergency"—an era marked by cascading disasters from pandemics to climate-driven catastrophes—this timely book explores how we might reclaim agency and foster community in the face of overwhelming challenges. Greenfield's central argument is both radical and deeply pragmatic: by synthesizing diverse tactics of mutual aid and community organizing, we can construct a coherent way of life that not only helps us survive but potentially thrive amidst upheaval. Drawing inspiration from a rich tapestry of historical and contemporary examples, he illustrates how grassroots networks of care and solidarity can serve as powerful bulwarks against despair and disempowerment. The author takes readers on a journey through various models of collective action and self-organization. He examines the Black Panthers' survival programs and the remarkable effectiveness of Occupy Sandy's disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Greenfield also highlights the crucial role played by neighborhood-based mutual aid groups during the COVID-19 lockdowns, demonstrating how local initiatives can fill gaps left by institutional failures. However, Greenfield's vision extends beyond ad hoc responses to specific crises. He invites readers to consider larger-scale experiments in participatory democracy and communal living, such as the municipalist movements in Spain and the autonomous region of Rojava in Syria. These examples serve as proof of concept for alternative forms of social and political organization that prioritize collective well-being and ecological sustainability. Lifehouse is both a manifesto and a call to action. It is an invitation to rediscover and nurture our individual and collective capacities that have long been suppressed under late capitalism. Greenfield argues that by building robust networks of mutual support and reimagining local power structures, we can create resilient communities capable of weathering the storms ahead. This book arrives at a critical juncture as the effects of climate change become increasingly apparent and traditional institutions struggle to address mounting global challenges. Greenfield's work offers not just a critique of the current system but a roadmap for creating meaningful alternatives rooted in solidarity and shared purpose. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it? With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind. In Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Forge a Democracy for All (Crown, 2024), Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Does Marx have a coherent ethical vision? How does that square with his sometimes-scathing dismissal of morality? What does his critique of capital have to do with ethics? Why is the proletariat the revolutionary class? What is the normative importance of that claim? In Marx’s Ethical Vision (Oxford University Press, 2024), Vanessa Wills provides a careful reconstruction of Marx’s understanding of human nature and the possibility of creating a world best suited to our flourishing. Working from Marx’s earliest texts through his last, Wills shows not only how Marx builds his understanding from material conditions in their historical specificity, but also how doing so can help guide efforts to change the world in ways that support individual growth, self-expression, and development as a universally shared project. Wills consistently argues against philosophical projects that try to salvage Marx’s valuable insights stripped of his method. Wills shows that the method by which Marx sought to understand the world and human nature as a force within it is integral to understanding his vision for what ought to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Professor of Media Studies and Head of the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, examines the way Hollywood film production has become a global industry. The book theorises Hollywood as a distinct spatial assemblage, and examines the consequences of the rise of global, mobile film production for places and for workers. Offering a unique perspective on the challenges of this new mode of production, alongside insights on how ‘good work’ can be defended and preserved in media industries, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in media today. The book is also available open access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He confronted the harsh realities of racism, believing that exposing its ugliness was necessary for progress. He rejected simplistic solutions, arguing that racism was deeply rooted in American consciousness and imagination, beyond just political and economic inequalities. Instead, Baldwin called for a fundamental transformation of American society and identity. He critiqued white America, urging white Americans to confront their own behavior and complicity in racist systems. Controversially, Baldwin advocated for Black Americans to approach white countrymen with love, while still insisting on unconditional freedom, seeing this as necessary for true transformation. He ultimately wanted to build a nation that moved beyond racial categorization, focusing instead on individual humanity. Baldwin viewed racism as stemming from a deeper spiritual problem in America, where individuals and the nation lacked a true sense of identity. While he did not offer simple solutions to racism, Baldwin's penetrating analysis and powerful writing exposed the complexities of racism in our country, challenged both white and Black Americans to confront difficult truths, and provided a framework for understanding racism beyond just political reforms. His work continues to influence discussions on race in America today, aiming not to ameliorate racism in a superficial sense, but to push for a profound reckoning with and transformation of American society and identity in relation to race. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a powerful novel that explores the complexities of race, sexuality, and identity in America through the life of its protagonist, Leo Proud/hammer. As the story begins, Leo, a successful African-American actor, suffers from a heart attack. As he recovers he reflects on his life and relationships. It is also of interest to note how James Baldwin’s novel relates to Dr. Matin Luther King Jr.’s non-fiction book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Both books are discussed in terms of the major contributions they made to racism in America as well as how they illustrate psychoanalytic mechanism of defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

What is the connection between where people live and how they vote? In The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales (Oxford UP, 2024), Jamie Furlong a Research Fellow at the University of Westminster and Will Jennings Associate Dean Research & Enterprise and Professor at the University of Southampton, analyse the continuities and changes in history of party support at general elections. The book uses a variety of methods- and a huge range of data- to critically interrogate the idea of ‘left behind’ places, as well as interrogating the long term social, economic, and cultural changes associated with those places and that idea. Rich in detail, including case studies of places that stand out within the overall trends, and accessibly written, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Theo Williams’ Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation (Verso, 2022) shows how black radicals transformed socialist politics in Britain in the years before decolonisation. A history that runs from 1929 to the years after WWII here we see a number of significant activists and intellectuals such as George Padmore, C.L.R. James, Jomo Kenyatta and Amy Ashwood Garvey, establish significant groups on the British Left and how they related to the dominant groups in this field, most notably the Communist Party of Great Britian (CPGB) and the Independent Labour Party (ILP). As Williams shows, while these activists continually emphasised the need to combine international socialism with colonial liberation, these other groups were often resistant to this, with the CPGB responding to the shifting demands of international communism and the ILP facing internal splits on the role of colonialism. Despite these frustrations, these activists develop a significant radical tradition which doesn’t reject the British Left, but rather changes it, as the events during, and after WWII show. As our conversation discusses Williams is encouraging us to reconsider this history, not just in order to correct the historical record and more fully account for the place of this black radical tradition within the British left, but also to think about the continuing impacts of decolonisation and what this may mean for contemporary demands to ‘decolonise the university’. Your host Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow with research interests in social theory and the history of sociology. He is the author of a number of books, including G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Over the course of the 20th century, the South African state attempted to construct a “White Man’s Country” on the African continent using the biopolitical tools and spatial and economic planning strategies that characterized modern statecraft. My guest today, the geographer Sharad Chari, examines how racialized subaltern populations of Blacks, Indians, and coloureds resisted and circumvented these efforts to construct a racialized social order. At the same time, the book also examines how the legacies of Apartheid shape the experiences of denizens of South Africa’s cities today. Focusing on the Indian Ocean city of Durban from the turn of the 20th century, Apartheid Remains (Duke UP, 2024) is a rich historical and ethnographic account of racialized capitalist space-making and the resistance that it continues to provoke. Sharad Chari is Associate Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley. He is also the author of Fraternal Capital: Peasant-workers, self-made men and globalization in provincial India (Stanford, 2004) and Gramsci at Sea (Minnesota, 2023). You can download Apartheid Remains for free here: https://library.oapen.org/hand... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said history has always been: the slaughter-bench of everything good and virtuous humanity has ever achieved. Marxism defined itself as the critical self-consciousness of this task of socialism in capitalism, but this has been eclipsed by the mere moral condemnation of catastrophe. This happened as a result of Marxism's own failure, over a hundred years ago, to make good on the crisis. This pattern has repeated itself since then, in ever more obscure ways. Chris Cutrone's Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory 2006-2024 (Sublation Media, 2024) span the time of the Millennial Left's abortive search to rediscover a true politics for socialism in the history of Marxism: the attempted recovery of a lost revolutionary tradition. Cutrone's participation as a teacher alongside this journey into the heart of Marxism was guided by the Millennial investigation into controversial and divisive figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, Leon Trotsky, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School, and Marx himself. The question of a political party for socialism loomed large--but was abandoned. Readers of these essays will find no taboo unchallenged, as every aspect of Marxism's accumulated wreckage is underwritten by the red thread and haunting memory of what was once the world-historical character of socialist revolution. Can this Marxist "message in a bottle" cast adrift by hisotry yet be received? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press, 2024), Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Investigating historical legal and property claims, she argues that regimes of expropriation—rather than merit or good taste—are responsible for popular ideas of formal innovation and artistic genius. In doing so, she details how Marcel Duchamp’s canonization has more to do with his patron’s donations to museums than it does the quality of Duchamp’s work, and she uncovers the racialized and financialized logic behind the Archive of New Poetry’s collecting practices. Ranging from the conception of philanthropy devised by the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to ongoing digitization projects, Kim provides a new history of contemporary art that accounts for the complicated entanglement of race, capital, and labor behind storied art institutions and artists. Drawing on history, theory, and economics, Kim challenges received notions of artistic success and talent and calls for a new vision of art beyond the cultural institution. Eunsong Kim is Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the country. Recently, however, it has also become ground zero in the new “lithium gold rush”—the race to power the rapidly expanding electric vehicle and renewable energy storage market. The immense quantities of lithium lurking beneath the surface have led to predictions that the region could provide a third of global demand. But who will benefit from the development of this precious resource? A work of stunning analysis and reporting, Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future (The New Press, 2024) shows that the questions raised by Lithium Valley lie at the heart of the “green transition.” Weaving together movement politics, federal policy, and autoworker struggles, noted experts Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor stress that getting the lithium out from under the earth is just a first step: the real question is whether the region and the nation will get out from under the environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and racial injustice that have been as much a part of the landscape as the Salton Sea itself. What happens in Lithium Valley, the authors argue, will not stay there. This tiny patch of California is a microcosm of the broad climate challenges we face; understanding Lithium Valley today is the key to grasping the future of our economy and our planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and the Atlantic Ocean. In these backwaters, Lumbees and other American Indians have adapted to a radically transformed world while maintaining vibrant cultures and powerful connections to land and water. This reality is paralleled in Indigenous communities worldwide as Indigenous people continue to assert their rights to self-determination by resisting legacies of colonialism and the continued transformation of their homelands through pollution, unsustainable development, and climate change. In On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice (UNC Press, 2024), environmental scientist Ryan Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee tribe, shares stories from North Carolina about Indigenous survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental changes. Addressing issues from the loss of wetlands to the arrival of gas pipelines, these stories connect the dots between historic patterns of Indigenous oppression and present-day efforts to promote environmental justice and Indigenous rights on the swamp. Emanuel's scientific insight and deeply personal connections to his home blend together in a book that is both a heartfelt and an analytical call to acknowledge and protect sacred places. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could stop people and search them. Taking advantage of a North Carolina law that required the collection of demographic data on those detained by the police during routine traffic stops, Frank Baumgartner and his colleagues analyzed twenty million such stops from 2002-2016. They present the results of this research in Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Join us as we speak with Baumgartner about what they found—and what we can do to reduce the most discriminatory features of the practice. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics and Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A People’s History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford University Press, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Over 150 years ago, Marx published the first volume of Capital, a systematic and voluminous account of capitalism, from the economic bedrock all the way up to the social and political consequences. The book itself would stand as one of the most influential and decisive texts of all time, proving to be a wildly fruitful foundation for further research into everything it touched, and also becoming a cornerstone text for various political movements that would try and develop the critical analysis into a workable theory of action and social transformation. Even after its 1867 publication, the text remained a fluid, dynamic object, with a 2nd edition being put out in Marx’s own lifetime and a 3rd and 4th edition being published posthumously under the stewardship of Friedrich Engels. These later editions would be the foundations for the first two translations of the text into English, first by Edward Aveling and Sam Moore in 1887, and then by Ben Fowkes in 1976. Now in 2024, we can add a third version of the text in English. Translated by Paul Reitter and edited by both Paul Reitter and Paul North, Marx has been given a fresh voice with a new edition of the text that includes a foreword by Wendy Brown and an afterword by William Clare Roberts. The introduction by Paul North helps situate the text in Marx’s larger output, showing how it was the culmination of an early political radicalization that took time to develop into a more systematic critique. Paul Reitter’s preface explains some of the difficulties of translating such a large and complex text, and will help readers appreciate the care Marx chose his words with. Substantial editorial endnotes will help contextualize obscure phrases and terms, helping readers keep up with the massive scope of Marx’s vision as he pulls information, inspiration and ideas from economics, philosophy, literature and history into a cohesive yet dynamic vision of what the ceaseless pursuit of value was doing to our world, and what might be done about it. For this interview, there are two parts. For the first hour, Paul Reitter and Paul North sat together and discussed the main ideas of the text, the various ways it tries to develop its critical perspective and its continued importance. For the second hour, Paul Reitter stayed to discuss some passages in detail, explaining the various choices made and roads not traveled, and how he tried to bring various aspects of Marx’s voice into English. Translation is at least as much an art as a science, one that demands hermeneutic sensitivity as much as a knowledge of which words correspond to which. Reitter is a humble practitioner of what is often thankless work and makes no claim to being the final word on how best to translate Marx, but his contribution will absolutely raise the bar and give readers who’ve never read Marx an excellent place to start, and will give those familiar with the text a chance to see it in new light. To borrow a phrase from Marx himself, this new translation is as royal a road to science as we could ask for. Paul Reitter is a professor of Germanic languages at Ohio State University. Paul North is the Maurice Natanson professor of Germanic languages and literature at Yale University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey through the tropes and narratives of white generosity, from the onset of the African slave trade to contemporary efforts to ridicule and undermine the “woke agenda.” She offers a theoretical framework for use by antiracist scholars, students, and activists to name and interrogate this pervasive attitude and its role in the structures of white supremacy and in the continued marginalisation of non-white people. Providing an exploration of lived experience and of the theoretical underpinnings of that lived experience, Wall offers a new vocabulary with which to speak truth to power and decentre whiteness from the work of antiracism, by looking to moments of black expression and creativity in black arts production. Taking inspiration from the bold, powerful, and experimental work of black artists and activists, Black Expression and White Generosity forges an alternative narrative that strives for freedom and justice without relinquishing anything in return. It is your indispensable guide to remaining ungrateful. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs and drudgery, leaving humans to a life of leisure. This hasn’t happened. Instead, humans are still doing boring jobs, and even worse, AI researchers have built technology that is creative, self-aware, and emotional—doing the tasks humans were supposed to enjoy. How did we get here? In Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI (MIT Press, 2024), Alan Blackwell argues that there is a fundamental flaw in the research agenda of AI. What humanity needs, Blackwell argues, is better ways to tell computers what we want them to do, with new and better programming languages: More Open Representations, Access to Learning, and Control Over Digital Expression, in other words, MORAL CODE. Blackwell draws on his deep experiences as a programming language designer—which he has been doing since 1983—to unpack fundamental principles of interaction design and explain their technical relationship to ideas of creativity and fairness. Taking aim at software that constrains our conversations with strict word counts or infantilizes human interaction with likes and emojis, Blackwell shows how to design software that is better—not more efficient or more profitable, but better for society and better for all people. Covering recent research and the latest smart tools, Blackwell offers rich design principles for a better kind of software—and a better kind of world. Alan F. Blackwell is Professor of Interdisciplinary Design in the Cambridge University department of Computer Science and Technology. He is a Fellow of Darwin College Cambridge, cofounder with David Good of the Crucible Network for Research in Interdisciplinary Design, and with David and Lara Allen the Global Challenges strategic research initiative of the University of Cambridge. Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

What is the future of classical music? In The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024), Kristina Kolbe, an assistant professor of Sociology of Arts and Culture in the School of History, Culture and Communication at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, explores how the genre is seeking to become more diverse. In doing so, it reveals the challenges associated with changing audiences, performers and performances. Using a detailed case study, the book examines why classical music faces the need to change in the context of diversity discourses in both the music and the more general creative industries. Offering a nuanced but critical perspective, the analysis outlines how diversity has had a limited impact on both case study opera house and the industry more generally. The critical perspective sets out how diversity can be easily commodified, how it depends on precarious workers, and how the pandemic of 2020 demonstrated just how much more work needs to be done. Offering rich empirical data as well as theoretical depth, the book is essential reading across the humanities and the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic criticism or a form of reason that is able to synthesize human value with objective rationality. Thompson argues that defects in modern forms of social reason are the result of the powers of social structure and the norms and purposes they embody. Increasingly, modern societies are driven not by substantive values concerning human good but by the technical imperatives of economic management, leading to a cultural condition of nihilism that has eroded dialectical consciousness. In the first half of the book, Thompson demonstrates the various ways that social power erodes and undermines critical-rational forms of consciousness. In the second part of the book, he constructs an alternative basis for critical reason by showing how it requires seeing human value as essentially ontological: that is, constituted by objective forms of sociality that either promote human freedom or pervert our capacities and drive toward pathological forms of life. The philosophical claim is that a critical theory of ethics must be rooted in these concrete forms of life and that this will serve as a critical vantage point for critical political judgment and transformational praxis. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of built-environment, experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research on the negotiation of identity and place for residents at the neighborhood level. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republicans and Christian nationalists to roll back civil, political, and privacy rights and subvert American democracy. Beyond identifying the dangers of vigilantism, Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy (Atria/One Signal, 2024) functions as a call to arms with a playbook for a democratic response. Michaels and Noll look back in time to make sense of today's American politics. They demonstrate how Christian nationalists have previously used state-supported forms of vigilantism when their power and privilege have been challenged. The book examines the early republic, abolitionism, and Reconstruction. Since the failed coup by supporters of Former president Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, Michaels and Noll document how overlapping networks of right-wing lawyers, politicians, plutocrats, and preachers have resurrected state-supported vigilantism – using wide ranging methods including book bans, anti-abortion bounties, and attacks on government proceedings, especially elections. Michaels and Noll see the US at a critical inflection point in which state-sponsored vigilantism is openly supported by GOP candidates for president and vice-president, Project 2025, and wider networks, Michaels and Noll move beyond analysis to action: 19 model laws to pass. The supporters of democratic equality are numerous and dexterous enough to create a plan to fight radicalism and vigilantism and secure the broad promises of the civil rights revolution. Jon Michaels is a professor of law at UCLA Law, where he teaches and writes about constitutional law, public administration, and national security. He has written numerous articles in law reviews including Yale, University of Chicago, and Harvard and also public facing work in venues like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. David Noll is a law professor at Rutgers Law School. He teaches and writes on courts, administrative law, and legal movements. He publishes scholarly work in law reviews such as California, Cornell, Michigan and NYU and translates for wider audiences in places like the New York Times, Politico, and Slate. Mentioned in the podcast: By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (Norton) by Margaret A. Burnham Let them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality (Liveright) by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson Hannah Nathanson at the Washington Post who was part of a team of journalists awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Previous interviews with scholars addressing the breakdown of American democracy: Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy (Suzanne Mettler and Robert C. Lieberman) Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic (Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King); How Democracies Die (Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt); The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power (David M. Driesen and A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People (Kevin J. McMahon) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024) argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning to the human in thought and culture since the early American period. Camille Owens demonstrates that white men’s power at the top of humanism’s order has depended on those at the bottom. As Owens shows, it was childhood’s modern arc—from ignorance and dependence to reason and rights—that structured white men’s power in early America: by claiming that black adults were like children, whites naturalized black subjection within the American family order. Demonstrating how Americans sharpened the child into a powerful white supremacist weapon, Owens nevertheless troubles the notion that either the child or the human have been figures of unadulterated whiteness or possess stable boundaries. Like Children recenters the history of American childhood around black children and rewrites the story of the human through their acts. Through the stories of black and disabled children spectacularized as prodigies, Owens tracks enduring white investment in black children’s power and value, and a pattern of black children performing beyond white containment. She reconstructs the extraordinary interventions and inventions of figures such as the early American poet Phillis Wheatley, the nineteenth-century pianist Tom Wiggins (Blind Tom), a child known as “Bright” Oscar Moore, and the early-twentieth century “Harlem Prodigy,” Philippa Schuyler, situating each against the racial, gendered, and developmental rubrics by which they were designated prodigious exceptions. Ultimately, Like Children displaces frames of exclusion and dehumanization to explain black children’s historical and present predicament, revealing the immense cultural significance that black children have negotiated and what they have done to reshape the human in their own acts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds of local jails. But this is nothing new: the federal government has been detaining migrants in city and county jails for more than 100 years. In The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration (Princeton UP, 2024), Brianna Nofil examines how a century of political, ideological, and economic exchange between the U.S. immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to the world's largest system of migrant incarceration. Migrant detention is not simply an outgrowth of mass incarceration; rather, it has propelled carceral state-building and fostered intergovernmental policing efforts since the turn of the twentieth century. From the incarceration of Chinese migrants in New York in the 1900s and 1910s to the jailing of Caribbean refugees in Gulf South lockups of the 1980s and 1990s, federal immigration authorities provided communities with a cash windfall that they used to cut taxes, reward local officials, and build bigger jails--which they then had incentive to fill. Trapped in America's patchwork detention networks, migrants turned to courts, embassies, and the media to challenge the cruel paradox of "administrative imprisonment." Drawing on immigration records, affidavits, protest letters, and a variety of local sources, Nofil excavates the web of political negotiations, financial deals, and legal precedents that allows the United States to incarcerate migrants with little accountability and devastating consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Today I talked to Julia Caterina Hartley about Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomsbury. 2023). New translations of Persian literature into French, the invention of the Aryan myth, increased travel between France and Iran, and the unveiling of artefacts from ancient Susa at the Louvre Museum are among the factors that radically altered France's perception of Iran during the long nineteenth century. And this is reflected in the literary culture of the period. In an ambitious study spanning poetry, historiography, fiction, travel-writing, ballet, opera, and marionette theatre, Julia Hartley reveals the unique place that Iran held in the French literary imagination between 1829 and 1912. Iran's history and culture remained a constant source of inspiration across different generations and artistic movements, from the 'Oriental' poems of Victor Hugo to those of Anna de Noailles and Théophile Gautier's strategic citation of Persian poetry to his daughter Judith Gautier's full-blown rewriting of a Persian epic. Writing about Iran could also serve to articulate new visions of world history and religion, as was the case in the intellectual debates that took place between Michelet, Renan, and Al-Afghani. Alternatively joyous, as in Félicien David's opera Lalla Roukh, and ominous, as in Massenet's Le Mage, Iran elicited a multiplicity of treatments. This is most obvious in the travelogues of Flandin, Gobineau, Loti, Jane Dieulafoy, and Marthe Bibesco, which describe the same cities and cultural practices in altogether different ways. Under these writers' pens, Iran emerges as both an Oriental other and an alter ego, its culture elevated above that of all other Muslim nations. At times this led French writers to critique notions of European superiority. But at others, they appropriated Iran as proto-European through racialist narratives that reinforced Orientalist stereotypes. Drawing on theories of Orientalism and cultural difference, this book navigates both sides of this fascinating and complex literary history. It is the first major study on the subject. Julia Hartley is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow. She was previously Laming Fellow at the Queen’s College Oxford and Edward W. Said Visiting Fellow at Columbia University. She is the author of Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy (2019) and peer-reviewed articles in Iranian Studies and Nineteenth-Century French Studies. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century. In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower, Mary Bridges shows how US foreign banking began as a side hustle of Gilded Age tycoons and evolved into a more staid, bureaucratized network for bolstering US influence overseas. The early waves of US bankers built a network of international branch banks that relied on the power of the US government, copied the example of British foreign bankers, and built new alliances with local elites. Overseas bank branches provided sites for experimentation in how to fuse US political will with local innovations and on-the-ground improvisation. In the process, branch bankers constructed a flexible and durable new infrastructure that supported the growth of US power abroad. Using details from ledger entries and other sources, Bridges shows how these branch bankers divided their local communities into groups of “us” and "them," either as potential clients or local populations. In doing so, they constructed a new architecture of US trade finance that relied on long-standing inequalities and hierarchies of privilege. Thus, ideas developed by wealthy white men became part of the enduring fabric of financial infrastructure. She also shows how bank branches could accommodate these hierarchies to make room for new ideas about serving local markets, in response to financial pressures of the 1920s and after the Great Depression cut off other avenues of growth. Bridges also tells the story of how US bankers created a market based on a new financial asset enabled by the Federal Reserve System called bankers' acceptance and began to collect vast amounts of foreign credit information. Related resources: Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean by Peter James Hudson Infrastructure Is Remaking Geopolitics: How Power Flows from the Systems That Connect the World by Mary Bridges Author recommended reading: Plastic Capitalism: Banks, Credit Cards, and the End of Financial Control by Sean H. Vanatta The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder Hosted by Meghan Cochran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In scholarly and popular discourse, popular sovereignty and self-determination are typically conceived of as the antitheses of imperialism, while histories of the emergence of democracy in Western Europe and its settler offshoots ignore the imperial setting of struggles for suffrage expansion and institutional change altogether. Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism (Cambridge UP, 2023) casts doubt on both of these tendencies. My guest, Ines Valdez, argues that popular sovereignty in the global North contains an affective attachment to wealth that is secured through collective agreements to dominate others, a phenomenon she calls “self-and-other determination.” The book details how social reproduction in the US and Western Europe is enabled by the exploitation of racialized others who sacrifice their families and communities to perform arduous and poorly-paid menial jobs, only to be derided and oppressed by the populations who depend on their labor. It also shows how the political alienation from nature it wealthy countries is mediated by technology and enabled by a joint devaluation of nature and manual labor performed by racialized others. The book concludes with a theorization of anti-imperial popular sovereignty grounded in transnational movements and political relations that encompass nature. Ines Valdez is Associate Professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. She is also the author of Transnational Cosmopolitianism: Kant, Dubois, and Justice as a Political Craft (Cambridge, 2019). Democracy and Empire is available open access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In their pursuit of social justice, revolutionaries have taken on the assembled might of monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. They have often, though not always, sparked cataclysmic violence, and have at times won miraculous victories, though at other times suffered devastating defeat. Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2023) illuminates the revolutionaries, their strategies, their successes and failures, and the ways in which revolutions continue to dominate world events and the popular imagination. Starting with the city-states of ancient Greece and Rome, Jack Goldstone traces the development of revolutions through the Renaissance and Reformation, the Enlightenment and liberal constitutional revolutions such as in America, and their opposite--the communist revolutions of the 20th century. He shows how revolutions overturned dictators in Nicaragua and Iran and brought the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and examines the new wave of non-violent "color" revolutions--the Philippines' Yellow Revolution, Ukraine's Orange Revolution--and the Arab Uprisings of 2011-12 that rocked the Middle East. In this new edition, Goldstone also sheds light on the major theories of revolution, exploring the causes of revolutionary waves, the role of revolutionary leaders, the strategies and processes of revolutionary change, and the intersection between revolutions and shifting patterns of global power. Further, he explores the role social media and nonviolence play in modern revolutions. Finally, he examines the reasons for diverse revolutionary outcomes, from democracy to civil war and authoritarian rule, and the likely future of revolution in years to come. Jack A. Goldstone is the Hazel Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions and Policy at George Mason University. He has previously held positions at the University of California, Northwestern University, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad. Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade (Verso, 2024) tells the shocking story of the AFL-CIO's global anticommunist crusade--and its devastating consequences for workers around the world. Unions have the power not only to secure pay raises and employee benefits but to bring economies to a screeching halt and overthrow governments. Recognizing this, in the late twentieth century, the US government sought to control labor movements abroad as part of the Cold War contest for worldwide supremacy. In this work, Washington found an enthusiastic partner in the AFL-CIO's anticommunist officials, who, in a shocking betrayal, for decades expended their energies to block revolutionary ideologies and militant class consciousness from taking hold in the workers' movements of Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Jeff Schuhrke is a labor historian, journalist, union activist, and assistant professor at the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies, SUNY Empire State University in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to In These Times and Jacobin, and his scholarship has been published in Diplomatic History and Labor: Studies in Working-Class History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity term that refers to nonheterosexual and gender nonconforming identities in the People’s Republic of China, has improved. However, for all the positive change, there are few opportunities for political and civil rights advocacy under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China (Temple UP, 2023) explores the nonconfrontational strategies the tongzhi movement uses in contemporary China. Caterina Fugazzola analyzes tongzhi organizers’ conceptualizations of, and approaches to, social change, explaining how they avoid the backlash that meets Western tactics, such as protests, confrontation, and language about individual freedoms. In contrast, the groups’ intentional use of community and family-oriented narratives, discourses, and understandings of sexual identity are more effective, especially in situations where direct political engagement is not possible. Providing on-the-ground stories that examine the social, cultural, and political constraints and opportunities, Words like Water emphasizes the value of discursive flexibility that allows activists to adapt to changing social and political conditions. Caterina Fugazzola is Assistant Senior Instructional Professor of Global Studies at the University of Chicago. Qing Shen is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of inequitable and predatory tax laws in the United States. He examines the structural traps within America’s tax system that have forced Black Americans to pay more for less despite being taxpayers with fewer resources compared to white taxpayers. Kahrl exposes these practices, From Reconstruction up to the present, Kahrl exposes these practices to describe how discrimination continues to take new forms, even as people continue to fight for their rights, their assets, and their power. Dr. N’Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Find him on Twitter at DrNKosiOates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professors of Sociology at the London School of Economics, tell the story of the UK’s ruling class. The book blends a huge range of qualitative and quantitative data, and uses innovative sociological methods, to offer a historically informed understanding of how those at the top of society preserve their status and privileges. Examining inequalities of race and gender, as well as social class, alongside the enduring impact of Britain’s imperial past, Born to Rule is essential reading for anyone interested in Britain’s past, present and future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial crisis. China’s state-owned companies and international financial institutions have made headlines for their growing influence in the world economy. State-backed investment vehicles based in the Gulf states have made high-profile investments in global real estate markets and professional sports, while their state-owned firms have become world leaders in the logistics and natural resource sectors. Governments around the world – including in the heartlands of advanced capitalism – have promoted the interests of ‘national champion’ companies in strategic economic sectors, bailed out financial institutions by taking toxic assets off of their balance sheets, and implemented industrial policies with the aim of moving into the most profitable segments of global value chains. What accounts for this renewed prominence of states in global capitalism? Does the increased activism of states mark the end of neoliberal hegemony? And how do contemporary state-led economic initiatives compare to the heyday of Keynesian and developmentalist policy agendas in the decades immediately following World War II? The book that we are discussing today, The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford UP, 2024) by Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon, marks the culmination of a highly productive research project that the authors have led on the compulsions and constraints that shape the ‘new’ state capitalism. The book aims to challenge narratives that pathologize state capitalism as an authoritarian deviation from the ‘normal’ course of free market capitalism while also showing how new forms of state activism depart from earlier models of state-led development. Ilias Alami is a University assistant professor in the political economy of development at Cambrdige University. His previous book is Money Power and Financial Capital in Emerging Markets (2019). Adam Dixon holds the Adam Smith Chair in Sustainable Capitalism at Heriot Watt University’s Ediburgh Business School. He is the author of several books, most recently Sovereign Wealth Funds: Between States and Markets (2022). This book is available open access here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation’s racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of this hidden history has gone unseen—until now. The surprising catalyst occurred in the nineteenth century when the Caucasian War—the fight for independence in the Caucasus that coincided with the end of the US Civil War—revealed the instability of the entire regime of racial domination. Images of the Caucasus region and peoples captivated the American public but also showed that the place from which we derive “Caucasian” for whiteness was not white at all. Cultural and political figures ranging from P. T. Barnum to Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois to Woodrow Wilson recognized these fictions and more, exploiting, unmasking, critiquing, or burying them. To acknowledge the falsehood at the core of racial order proved unthinkable, especially as Jim Crow and segregation took hold. Sight became a form of racial sculpture, vision a knife excising what no longer served the stability of racial hierarchy. That stability was shaped, crucially, by what was left out, what we have been conditioned not to see. Groundbreaking and profoundly resonant, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press, 2024) shows how visual tactics have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in spite of its false foundations—and offers a way to begin to dismantle it. Sarah Lewis is the founder of Vision & Justice and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America (Harvard University Press), the bestseller, The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (Simon & Schuster), Lewis is the editor of the award-winning volumes, “Vision & Justice” by Aperture magazine and the anthology on the work of Carrie Mae Weems (MIT Press). She is the organizer of the landmark Vision & Justice Convening at Harvard University, and co-editor of the Vision & Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her awards include the Infinity Award, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Cullman Fellowship, the Freedom Scholar Award (ASALH), the Arthur Danto/ASA Prize from the American Philosophical Association, and the Photography Network Book Prize. Her writing has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Artforum, and the New York Review of Books, and her work has been the subject of profiles from The Boston Globe to the New York Times. Lewis is a sought-after public speaker, with a mainstage TED talk that received over three million views. She received her BA from Harvard University, an MPhil from Oxford University, an MA from Courtauld Institute of Art, and her PhD from Yale University. She lives in New York City and Cambridge, MA. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Antisemitism is on the rise today. From synagogue shootings by white nationalists, to right-wing politicians and media figures pushing George Soros conspiracy theories, it’s clear that exclusionary nationalist movements are growing. By spreading division and fear, they put Jews, along with other marginalized groups and multiracial democracy itself, at risk. And since the outbreak of war in Gaza, debates around antisemitism have become more polarized and high-stakes than ever. How can we stand in solidarity with Palestinians seeking justice, while also avoiding antisemitism — and resisting those who seek to conflate the two? How do we forge the coalitions across communities that we need, in order to overcome the politics of division and fear? In Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism (Melville House, 2024), Shane Burley and Ben Lorber help us break the current impasse to understand how antisemitism works, what’s missing in contemporary debates, and how to build true safety through solidarity, for Jews and all people. Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. Ben Lorber is a Senior Research Analyst at Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank that monitors far-right movements. He tweets at @BenLorber8. Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Can self-harm be art? In Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury (Routledge, 2024), Lucy Weir, a Reader in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh rethinks the recent history of performance to understand the ‘injurious turn’ in contemporary live art. The book challenges the usual associations between self-harm and gender by exploring the work of a diverse range of artists. Taking Viennese Actionism as its starting point, the book then offers detailed case studies of, amongst others, André Stitt, Ron Athey, Wafaa Bilal and Pyotr Pavlensky. Each artist is considered in relation to their context, as well as how their work relates to the more general question of how masculinity itself relates to extreme performance in challenging and censorious settings. As well as being theoretically and empirically rich, the book offers an engaging route into art theory and art history for non-specialists. It will be of interest widely in humanities, medicine and the social sciences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde's teachings on "the creative power of difference" may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. Lorde's understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde's quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive--to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands. In Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (FSG, 2024), Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde's manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common questions. Presenting the latest findings and decades of interdisciplinary research in an accessible way, Dr. Castañeda and Carina Cione emphasize the expert consensus that immigration is vital to the United States and many other countries around the world. Featuring original insights from research conducted in El Paso, Texas, Immigration Realities considers a wide range of places, ethnic groups, and historical eras. It provides the key data and context to understand how immigration affects economies, crime rates, and social welfare systems, and it sheds light on contentious issues such as the safety of the U.S.-Mexico border and the consequences of Brexit. This book is an indispensable guide for all readers who want to counter false claims about immigration and are interested in what the research shows. Our guest is: Dr. Ernesto Castañeda, who is the director of the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University. His books include A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (2018); Building Walls: Excluding Latin People in the United States (2019); and Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (2024). The Immigration Realities co-author is: Carina Cione, who is a sociologist and writer based out of Baltimore. Their work has been featured by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Trauma Care, El Paso News, and American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies Working Paper Series. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States We Take Our Cities With Us Secret Harvests The Ungrateful Refugee The Translator's Daughter Where Is Home? Who Gets Believed: When the Truth Isn't Enough Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World (Headline Press, 2024) is Danny Sriskandarajah‘s radical manifesto for change designed to inspire citizen action around the world. The book presents a blueprint for how we, as individuals, can make a difference through greater community engagement and how we can deliver a society that works for the many and not the few. He speaks to voter apathy and a growing sense that elections no longer matter, with politicians and institutions too focused on short-term issues to grapple with complex global problems such as climate change, rising inequality, and digital disruption. Yet the book is also filled with inspiring real-life examples of citizen power in action, ranging from a volunteer-run repair café in Danny's local suburb to Avaaz's successful campaigns to tackle endemic corruption in Brazil. From public ownership of social media spaces to democratizing share ownership and from re-energizing co-operatives to creating a people's chamber at the United Nations, this campaigning book has a mission to make us reclaim our power as citizens of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only the first volume saw publication in Marx's lifetime, it would become one of the most consequential books in history. This magnificent new edition of Capital (Princeton UP, 2024) is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century. It is the first translation into English to be based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself, the only version that can be called authoritative, and it features extensive commentary and annotations by Paul North and Paul Reitter that draw on the latest scholarship and provide invaluable perspective on the book and its complicated legacy. At once precise and boldly readable, this translation captures the momentous scale and sweep of Marx's thought while recovering the elegance and humor of the original source. For Marx, our global economic system is relentlessly driven by "value"--to produce it, capture it, trade it, and, most of all, to increase it. Lifespans are shortened under the demand for ever-greater value. Days are lengthened, work is intensified, and the division of labor deepens until it leaves two classes, owners and workers, in constant struggle for life and livelihood. In Capital, Marx reveals how value came to tyrannize our world, and how the history of capital is a chronicle of bloodshed, colonization, and enslavement. With a foreword by Wendy Brown and an afterword by William Clare Roberts, this is a critical edition of Capital for our time, one that faithfully preserves the vitality and directness of Marx's German prose and renders his ideas newly relevant to modern readers. An audiobook narrated by Simon Vance is available here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Hizer Mir in conversation with Yahya Birt who speaks on decolonial Muslim political activism and thought in Britain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Why do people go to college? In Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility (U Chicago Press, 2024), Melissa Osborne, an associate professor at Western Washington University, explores the experiences of students from low income and first-generation backgrounds who attend elite universities in the USA. The book offers a vital intervention for our understanding of the role of higher education and its connection to a range of social inequalities. It captures the sometimes difficult and ambivalent experiences of students from outside the traditional demographics for elite institutions. The analysis offers a nuanced understanding of the process of social mobility, showing the struggles of students and institutions, and the limits of individually-focused approaches to social change. Rich with ethnographic and qualitative data, as well as a powerful set of ideas for elite institutional change, the book is essential reading for educators everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

School vouchers are often framed as a way to help students and families by providing choice, but evidence shows that vouchers have a negative impact on educational outcomes. In The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers (Harvard Education Press, 2024), Josh Cowen describes voucher programs as the product of decades of work by influential conservatives and wealthy activists to support a vision of America where education is privatized and removed from the public sphere. Far from realizing the purported goal of educational equity, Cowen cites multiple research studies that conclude that voucher programs return poor academic outcomes, including lower test scores on state exams, especially among students who are at greater academic risk because of their race, their religion, their gender identity, or their family's income. The books traces the history of vouchers from it's initial proposal as part of conservative economic policy through its adoption as a method for families to resist school desegregation. Since then, the issue of education "freedom" has been a part of an ongoing culture war waged through policymaking, legislation, and litigation. Cowen describes the advocacy network that funds research and promotion of vouchers as a way to attain ideological goals related to conservative social policy, not educational outcomes. Recommended reading: East of Eden by John Steinbeck Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey spoke with Olivier Roy, professor of social and political sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and author of The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms (Oxford University Press, 2024). Roy argues that neoliberal globalization is dissolving not just subordinate cultures but also dominant ones by undermining the tacit understanding that undergird cultures and demanding that those norms be made explicit. Moreover, Roy discusses how identity politics has come to supplant the norms once implicit in a broader culture, undermining the possibility that people know how to live in society at all. These development reflect the decline of utopian dreams – for better or worse – and the difficulties involved in maintaining social bonds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Museums, Archives and Protest Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Red Chidgey and Joanne Garde-Hansen address the emergence of ‘protest memory’ as a powerful contemporary shaper of ideas and practices in culture, media and heritage domains. Directly focused on the role of museum and archive practitioners in protest memory curation, they make a compelling contribution to our understanding of how social movements and activist experiences are publicly remembered and activated for social and environmental justice. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory