New Books in Critical Theory11 Huhti 2015

Zoe Thompson, ‘Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industrial Britain’ Ashgate 2015

What is the fate of culture and urban regeneration in the era of austerity? In Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industrial Britain (Ashgate, 2015), Zoe Thompson applies critical cultural theory to help understand this question. The book is based on four case studies, of The Lowry in Salford, The Deep in Hull, The Sage Gateshead and The Public in West Bromwich. These four case studies are read through a variety of methods, including walking and visual methods, along with two key theorists, Jean Baudrillard and Walter Benjamin. Baudrillard and Benjamin are juxtaposed as important thinkers of culture, the symbolic and the urban, in an attempt to show the ambivalences of cultural buildings used for urban regeneration. The buildings are narrated as ‘dreamhouses’ within the symbolic, as well as the political, economy of post-industrial urban spaces. The book shows how all the case studies offer elements of hope and redemption for their locations, whether as sites for individual’s memory, in the case of The Sage, or as collective notions of art and culture, in the example of The Lowry. However the book also shows the risks associated with these spaces, as premature ruins, in the case of the now closed The Public, or sites reminding us of nature’s revenge in the form of climate change, as The Deep does. The book will be of interest to a large range of scholars across cultural and urban studies, through to architecture and critical theory, and it has important lessons for contemporary urban policy too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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Mapping Out Food and Philosophy

This episode introduces a special issue on food and philosophy. Robert T. Valgenti, of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective, talks with Andrea Borghini about the increasing attention to food within phi...

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Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

How can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research in northeastern Estonia, this book offers vivid ans...

28 Huhti 54min

Rugged Individualism

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27 Huhti 18min

Sarah Jaffe, "From the Ashes: Grief and Transformation in a World on Fire" (Bold Type Books, 2024)

From the author of Work Won't Love You Back, a stirring examination of how collective grief can ignite powerful change. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to a...

22 Huhti 1h 7min

169* Hannah Arendt on Oases (JP)

Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas—and the actual currency, physical coins and bills— underlying the modern monetary system ge...

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Manuel Barcia, "Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870" (Yale UP, 2026)

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the w...

18 Huhti 38min

Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached fro...

17 Huhti 1h 1min

Amanda Anderson and Simon During, "Humanities Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Humanities Theory (Oxford UP, 2026) pioneers a new topic: the theory of the humanities. It is an urgent topic right now because the humanities face a suite of forceful new challenges and are in a peri...

17 Huhti 1h 8min