Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015)

Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015)

What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bown, a lecturer at Hang Seng Management College and co-editor of Everyday Analysis and the Hong Kong Review of Books, talks through the political potential of new forms of enjoyment. Using Candy Crush Saga, Football Manager, Gangnam Style, Game of Thrones, and the act of reading critical theory itself, the book argues we need to take enjoyment seriously. Enjoyment is understood in relation to work and capitalism, unpacking ideas of productive and unproductive enjoyment and how they might serve or subvert power and control in modern life. The book will be of interest to scholars across philosophy, literary studies, and the social sciences, alongside anyone with a smart phone, tablet or love of the television box set! Dave OBrien is the host of New Books In Critical Theory and is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the Institute for Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths College, University of London. His research covers a range of areas between sociology and political science, including work on the British Civil Service, British Cultural Policy, cultural labour, and urban regeneration. His most recent books are Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries and After Urban Regeneration (edited with Dr Peter Matthews). He tweets@Drdaveobrien Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2228)

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative per...

11 Mar 50min

Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

In Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2026), philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant epistemologies of science to argue that in judging...

10 Mar 48min

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us through recent cinematic phenomena that reflect/refract...

10 Mar 1h 9min

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationi...

7 Mar 42min

The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and the MAGA New Right

The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and the MAGA New Right

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny sits down with political theorist Laura Field to trace the intellectual currents shaping today’s right — from Straussian thou...

7 Mar 56min

Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan eds., "Autotheories" (MIT Press, 2025)

Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan eds., "Autotheories" (MIT Press, 2025)

A transdisciplinary array of authors offering a new frame of reference for autotheory and its genre-bending synthesis of autobiography and critical theory. Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025) tells the s...

6 Mar 1h 9min

Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

The Philosophy of Translation (Yale UP, 2024) is a fresh, approachable, and convincing account of what translation really is and what translators actually do. As the translator of sixty books from mul...

5 Mar 57min

David L. Eng, "Reparations and the Human" (Duke UP, 2025)

David L. Eng, "Reparations and the Human" (Duke UP, 2025)

The Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki invoked in graphic terms the specter of total human destruction. In response, a new international order of reparations and human rights ...

4 Mar 54min

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