brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is profoundly influenced by social interactions even when artists work alone. Hannah Wohl speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged (U Chicago Press, 2021), her ethnographic study of the New York contemporary art scene that reveals how artists develop conceptions of their distinctive creative visions through experimentation and social interactions and how aesthetic judgment evolves between artist studios, galleries, art fairs, and collectors’ houses. We mention Paula Cooper Gallery and the work of artists Lucky DeBellevue and Gina Beavers. The Armory Show takes place in NY in early September 2021. Hannah Wohl is an assistant professor in sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

13 Aug 20211h 20min

Crisis? What Crisis? At a time where there are repeated claims of the impending demise of art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2021) dispel these myths by arguing that the lack of a single dominant voice in criticism is not, as some believe, a weakness, but a strength, allowing previously marginalised voices and new global and political perspectives to come to the fore. Patricia Bickers speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about her time as the editor of Art Monthly, the changing role of art criticism, the politics of speaking and writing about art, the art school, the relationship between artists and critics, the academicisation of critical discourse, the relationship between art history and criticism, and.. the art of the interview. Some of the works mentioned in the conversation: The Freeze exhibitions That Jerry Saltz tweet Richard Serra, Weight and Measure Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Black Trans Archive Pilvi Takala, The Trainee Cameron Rowland, 3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73 The Art Monthly Talking Art anthology of artist interviews: Volume 1, Volume 2 A bonus episode with an extra 20 minutes from the conversation is available on Pierre’s website. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

6 Aug 20211h 4min

Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights (Routledge, 2021) demonstrates how late twentieth century postcolonial print cultures initiated a public discourse on sexual activism and contends that postcolonial feminist and queer archives offer alternative histories of sexual precarity, vulnerability, and resistance. The book's comparative focus on India, Jamaica, and South Africa extends the valences of postcolonial feminist and queer studies towards a historical examination of South-South interactions in the theory and praxis of sexual rights. Analyzing the circumstances of production and the contents of English-language and intermittently bilingual magazines and newsletters published between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, these sources offer a way to examine the convergences and divergences between postcolonial feminist, gay, and lesbian activism. It charts a set of concerns common to feminist, gay, and lesbian activist literature: retrogressive colonial-era legislation impacting the status of women and sexual minorities; a marked increase in sexual violence; piecemeal reproductive freedoms and sexual choice under neoliberalism; the emergence and management of the HIV/AIDS crisis; precariousness of lesbian and transgender concerns within feminist and LGBTQ+ movements; and Non-Governmental Organizations as major actors articulating sexual rights as human rights. This methodologically innovative work is based on archival historical research, analyses of national and international policy documents, close readings of activist publications, and conversations with activists and founding editors. This is an important intervention in the field of gender and sexuality studies and is the winner of the 2020 Feminist Futures, Subversive Histories prize in partnership with the NWSA. The book is key reading for scholars and students in gender, sexuality, comparative literature, and postcolonial studies. Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

5 Aug 20211h 7min

How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, introduces the concept of sonic intimacy to think through the social, cultural, and political importance of three key moments in the history of British music. The book blends the history of music, society, and technology to show the moments of community and resistance fostered by the vibe of sound systems and the hype of Jungle Pirate Radio, along with the advent of new modes of engagement fostered by Grime on YouTube. With important implications for the future of critical scholarship, as well as our current cultural context, the book is essential reading for cultural studies and social science scholars, as well as for anyone interested in music and culture. Dave O'Brien is Chancellor's Fellow, Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Edinburgh's College of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

4 Aug 202136min

Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption (Hart Publishing, 2021) looks at the way in which the 'call for justice' is portrayed through art and presents a wide range of texts from film to theatre to essays and novels to interrogate the law. Such calls may have their positive connotations, but throughout history most have caused annoyance. Art is very well suited to deal with such annoyance, or to provoke it. Frans-Willem Korsten speaks with Pierre d'Alancaisez about art that attempts to support - or disturb - law in pursuit of justice. He discusses Milo Rau's The Congo Tribunal, Valeria Luiselli's novel Lost Children Archive, the practice of Forensic Architecture, and Nicolas Winding Refn's film Only God Forgives. Through art's interface, impasses are addressed, new laws are made imaginable, the span of systems of laws is explored, and the differences in what people consider to be just are brought to light. Frans-Willem Korsten holds the chair in “Literature and Society” at the Erasmus School of Philosophy and works at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society in the Netherlands. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

4 Aug 20211h 11min

As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eating in Theory (Duke UP, 2021), Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. They celebrated the allegedly unique capability of humans to rise above their immediate bodily needs. Mol, by contrast, appreciates that as humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cultivate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate--and to whom we leave our excesses. This has far-reaching philosophical consequences. Taking human eating seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transformative, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and relating as a matter of inescapable dependence. Kai Wortman is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Education, University of Tübingen, interested in philosophy of education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

29 Jul 202153min

The Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno once quipped that much of his work was written without practical applications in mind, and that the constant demand for immediate practical relevance felt like being asked by occupied forces to present one’s papers. While hyperbolic, the frustration is real among many progressive activists and intellectuals, and also points to a real problem within political engagement, with how the need to act right now sometimes can cloud judgment. Against this grain, some occasionally step up in encouraging us to step back and collect ourselves and our thoughts. One such writer is the topic of this episode, Marcello Tari, whose recent book There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution (Common Notions, 2021) recently became the first of his translated into English. Written from and for a scattered and confused left, the book has a style resembling the more esoteric and messianic figures in the lefts history, most notably Walter Benjamin, who appears throughout the books footnotes. In a series of chapters that wander through a number of disparate topics, it slowly develops a few key themes around late capitalism, violence, oppression, revolution and temporality, although a simple definition or analysis of any one of these elements in isolation never comes; instead they are developed and intertwined in various ways as a way of understanding the social and psychological knots we’re caught in. Easy fixes don’t come easy here either; instead Tari’s goal is in many ways to cultivate our sensitivity to our current political predicament, to speak to comrades in a way that generates a productive confusion that might help us think more critically about what’s needed. In the discussion that follows, Tari was unable to join us, but I was instead joined by two artists, Ayreen and Rene, who have known Tari for some time and proved careful and patient guides through the text. My typical formula for working through texts with guests broke down here; with every question I asked if they could define a term, or explain a passage, and every time they would take various detours through topics and themes I hadn’t expected, only to eventually come back to my initial question, but with a newfound angle into it I hadn’t picked up on during my own reading of the book. As a result, I left the conversation feeling like I was finally able to read the book, and I appreciate their willingness to sit with me on it. This book was challenging to read, and is even more challenging to describe, but it should be of interest to anyone engaged in contemporary political struggle. Tari is a self-described ‘barefoot’ researcher of contemporary political movements and struggles, and has published works in both French and Italian. He is also the translator of The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

28 Jul 20211h 13min

Elite white women have branded feminism, promising an apolitical individual empowerment along with sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity. As Rafia Zakaria expertly argues in Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption (W. W. Norton, 2021), those promises have been proven empty and white feminists have leant on their racial privilege and sense of cultural superiority. Drawing on her own experiences as an American Muslim woman, as well as an attorney working on behalf of immigrant women, Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism that forges true solidarity by bringing Black and brown voices and goals to the fore. Ranging from the savior complex of British feminist imperialists to the condescension of the white feminist-led "development industrial complex" and the conflation of sexual liberation as the "sum total of empowerment," Zakaria presents an eye-opening indictment of how whiteness has contributed to a feminist movement that solely serves the interests of upper middle-class white women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

27 Jul 202148min