Decolonizing the Novum
In this episode of High Theory, Zac Zimmer talks to Kim about Decolonizing the Novum. The novum is a concept developed by Darko Suvin that names the new element of a science fiction or speculative fic...
13 Apr 22min
Jasper Bernes, "The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising" (Verso Books, 2025)
How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed? Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the G...
12 Apr 1h 19min
Rishi Rajpopat, "Panini's Perfect Rule: A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem in Sanskrit Grammar" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Panini’s Ashtadyayi is one of the most famous works in Sanskrit, a so-called “linguistic machine” that, through its 4,000 words, allows someone to generate words and grammar. Generations of commentato...
9 Apr 41min
Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperial...
7 Apr 1h 22min
Michaela Hulstyn, "Unselfing: Global French Literature at the Limits of Consciousness" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
Altered states of consciousness – including experiences of deprivation, pain, hallucination, fear, desire, alienation, and spiritual transcendence – can transform the ordinary experience of selfhood. ...
7 Apr 37min
Andrew Lister, "Justice and Reciprocity" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Andrew Lister's Justice and Reciprocity (Oxford University Press, 2024) examines the place of reciprocity in egalitarianism, focusing on John Rawls's conception of "justice as fairness." Reciprocity w...
5 Apr 1h 11min
Eivind Røssaak, "The Cory Arcangel Hack: Digital Culture and Aesthetic Practice" (MIT Press, 2025)
The first in-depth exploration of the work of artist Cory Arcangel, a pioneer of DIY-new media art whose influential “hacks” subvert the confines of Big Tech. Cory Arcangel (b. 1978)—perhaps best kno...
4 Apr 43min
Amir Saemi, "Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Amir Saemi’s exciting book Morality and Revelation in Islamic Thought and Beyond: A New Problem of Evil (Oxford UP, 2024) is a fascinating and deeply thought-provoking study that challenges how we thi...
4 Apr 1h 29min
