Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)

In a world where heritage, culture, creativity, and the capacity to imagine are themselves commodified and sold under the banner of neoliberal freedom, (how) can art be harnessed for anti-capitalist agendas? At a time when scholars along all points of the political spectrum seem to agree that expressing their creativity is good for oppressed groups, whether because creativity makes them entrepreneurial or because creativity is an inherent challenge to capitalism, Dia Da Costa offers a refreshingly nuanced perspective on the dangers that creative economy discourses pose for radical activism. In Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theater (U Illinois Press, 2016)--her multisited ethnography focusing on two activist theater troupes in the Indian cities of Delhi and Ahmedabad--Da Costa shows how these ‘theaters of the oppressed’ exist alongside, fall prey to, re-appropriate, and jostle with capitalist discourses and definitions of ‘creative economy’ which seek to contain and tame the cultural production of oppressed groups. The first troupe Da Costa discusses is the Jan Natya Manch, a Communist-affiliated theater group consisting mainly of middle-class activists who valorize Delhi’s (factory) working-class albeit in a rapidly deindustrializing city, and offer a disenchanted, secular critique of Hindu nationalism albeit in a deeply religious milieu. The second troupe featured is Ahmedabad’s Budhan Theater, run by the lowly and criminalized Chhara caste who hope that through theater they can craft respectable livelihoods and achieve inclusion as citizens while at the same time critiquing the violences of the Indian capitalist state. By analyzing the possibilities and shortcomings inherent in both troupes’ practices and political approaches, Da Costa shows how carefully and critically studying the diversity of left politics is an important part of building solidarities which can ultimately resist fascist neoliberalism. Da Costa also shows how attending to the politics of affect and emotion can help create successful social mobilization; rather than simply lamenting how oppressed people don’t rise up, attention to affective politics helps us shape forms of activism which actually speak to people’s lives, hopes, and hungers. This book will be of interest to activists, radical educators, and scholars in fields ranging from feminist affect theory to development studies. Aparna Gopalan is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how managing surplus populations and tapping into fortunes at the “bottom-of-the-pyramid” are twin-logics that undergird poverty alleviation projects in rural Rajasthan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

24 Mai 20191h

Although not all that well known to English-speaking audiences, cultural critic and Peking University professor Jinhua Dai’s incisive commentaries and critiques of contemporary Chinese life have elevated her to something akin to ‘rock star’ status in China itself. As Lisa Rofel discusses in this podcast, and in her introduction to After the Post-Cold War: The Future of Chinese History (Duke University Press, 2018), Dai interrogates the truly historic events unfolding in today’s China to ask what these mean for history itself. Vital analyses of the politics of memory and gender also pervade this collection of expertly translated essays. In particular Dai is interested in the post-Cold War entry of China into a Euro-American neoliberal world order and what this means for how the country sees its historical course. How are recent and more distant pasts invoked or ignored in conversations about this? What do erasures of past experience mean for the possibility of imagining alternative futures, as seemed possible in the twentieth century? In a searing analysis of recent Chinese films in their wider socio-political context, Dai critiques present-day historical myopias and the consequent marginalisation of those most buffeted by the storms of neoliberal capital: active female protagonists and the erstwhile socialist ‘masses’. Especially urgent in this year of key anniversaries for China, this work has much wider implications for understanding our entire global present, and for perceiving the ominous reality that “China must be a China of the future, or there will be no future” (p. 22). Ed Pulford is a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center, Hokkaido University. His research focuses on friendships and histories between the Chinese, Korean and Russian worlds, and northeast Asian indigenous groups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

23 Mai 20191h

In her original and thought-provoking book Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anne A. Cheng illustrates the longstanding relationship between the ‘oriental’ and the ‘ornamental’. So doing, she moves beyond a simple analysis of objectification to reveal the powerful role Ornamentalism plays in constituting modern ideas of personhood, racialized femininity and the figure of the Asian woman. Drawing on examples from the realms of law, popular culture and art from the 19th and 20th centuries, Cheng deepens our understanding of racial formation by demonstrating how race and gender are conceived not only in relation to the body, but inorganic ornamentation as well. Anne A. Cheng is Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Princeton University. Sitara Thobani is Assistant Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, Michigan State University. Her research focuses on the performance arts in colonial and postcolonial South Asia and its diasporas, especially as these relate to formations of nation, gender, sexuality and religion. She received her DPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University, and is the author of Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities: Dancing on Empire’s Stage (Routledge 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

22 Mai 201936min

What do management consultants do, and how do they do it? These two deceptively simple questions are at the centre of Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China (Duke University Press, 2018), the new book by Kimberly Chong, a lecturer in anthropology at University College London. The book uses an in depth and immersive ethnography of a global management consulting firm to explore the rise of management consultancy in China, engaging with key issues- financialization and commensuration- that are at the heart of understanding contemporary global capitalism. The book is rich with fascinating, and at times hilarious, examples of the contradictions and ambivalences, along with successes, of management consulting systems adapted to and applied in China. It will be essential reading across the social sciences and area studies, as well as for anyone interested in our globalised economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

20 Mai 201946min

Does publishing have a diversity problem? In Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, an associate professor at UCL’s Centre for Publishing lays bare the crisis of underrepresentation for British authors of colour. Focusing on the high profile, but also marginalised, Young Adult Fiction genre, Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2019) explores the experiences of authors navigating the ‘diversity status quo’ of the publishing industry marked by significant inequalities. These inequalities, in turn, shape what is published and what is represented, to the exclusion of a wide range of individuals and communities. Along with companion work on children’s books, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary culture. Dave O’Brien is Chancellor’s Fellow in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Edinburgh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

14 Mai 201939min

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, vice, and capitalism. His new book is called The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business (Harvard University Press, 2019). During our discussion, Courtwright walks us through the emergence of the worldwide commodification of vice and shares his views on "limbic capitalism," the network of competitive businesses targeting the brain pathways responsible for feeling, motivation, and long-term memory. The book is equally interesting and disturbing. And Courtwright offers timely recommendations about how we can understand and address the Age of Addiction. Coming from one of the world's leading experts on the history of drugs and addiction, this important work raises stimulating and sobering questions about consumption and free will. Courtwright is the author of Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 2001) as well as Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America (Harvard University Press, 1982). Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

10 Mai 201944min

The book I’m bringing you today, The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory (Bloomsbury, 2019) is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of the art of contemporary feminist thought. This is a collection of thirty-four chapters written by world-leading scholars representing a diverse range of voices from academia, exploring the latest thinking on key topics in current feminist discourse. Rather than talking about feminism in terms of its “waves,” it traces feminist history’s time through its constitutive vocabulary and, in looking toward the future, considers feminism as a theory that is vital and living. The first part explores the notion of feminist subjectivity, inquiring into identity, difference, and intersectionality, as well as topics like birth, body, and affect. The second examines feminist texts, covering writing, reading, genre, and critique. The third section looks at feminism and the world: from power, trauma, and value to technology, migration, and community. Including insights from literary and cultural studies, philosophy, political science and sociology, The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory has been called an essential overview of current feminist thinking and future directions for scholarship, debate and activism. The book is edited by Robin Truth Goodman. She is a professor of English at Florida State University, with an MA and Phd in Comparative Literature from New York University and currently examines feminist theory as a critique of neoliberal ideologies, looking at how literature and critical theory help us understand and oppose the power of institutions and the social oppressions of the new economy. Besides her many authored and edited books, articles, and book chapters, Dr. Goodman received FSU’s Developing Scholar award in 2009 and was a Global Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles in 2003-2004. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

10 Mai 201958min

In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-based convert Buddhist lineages in North America, and in particular she is interested in the generational changes underway in these groups. The first generations of convert Buddhist teachers often modernized the tradition in distinctly American ways, and now Gen X and millennial Buddhists are re-engaging with the tradition but bringing to their Buddhist practice and teaching new questions. The issues that they—and Gleig, in her study—tackle include mindfulness as a secular and commercialized practice, sex scandals, and new technologies. These Buddhists ask how their communities should address racism and social injustice, and what the goal of practice should be. Gleig sets her fine-grained ethnographic research within a larger discussion of Buddhist modernism, arguing that the convert Buddhism is better understood through the lens of post-modernity. Natasha Heller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. You can find her on Twitter @nheller or email her at nheller@virginia.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

26 Apr 20191h 29min