PLAY PODCASTS
William M. Paris, "Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Episode 365

William M. Paris, "Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation" (Oxford UP, 2024)

An interview with William M. Paris

New Books in Critical Theory · Marshall Poe

February 20, 20251h 9m

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (pdst.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

How does time figure in racial domination? What is the relationship between the capitalist organization of time and racial domination? Could utopian thinking give us ways of understanding our own time and its dominations? In Race, Time, and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2025), William Paris uses the tools of critical theory to draw out the utopian interventions in the works of W.E.B Du Bois, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon, and James Boggs. Arguing that utopian thinking gives us normative purchase on the problems of our own time, Paris shows not that these historical figures can tell us how or to what end we navigate our current crises. Rather, their insights and failures help us denaturalize our mode of life and develop self-emancipatory practices to realize what is not yet possible under the current conditions of injustice in which we have come 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