Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. The Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek’s prolific quips on various cultural and political issues around race and related issues, found either in short YouTube clips or lengthy books have gained a lot of attention, much of it admittedly confused and occasionally offended and frustrated. Part of this is likely due to Žižek’s style, which tends to jump around in a blur of philosophical and cultural references, sometimes obscuring what his actual point is. However, his eclectic style shouldn’t deter us from trying to use Žižek’s theories of fantasy and ideology to understand the racial dimensions of our current political situation. This is the project set out by Zahi Zalloua, with his new book ​Žižek on Race: Towards an Anti-Racist Future​ (Bloomsbury, 2020), which seeks to use Žižekian philosophy to arrive at more complicated, but also more productive and emancipatory visions of racial oppression and emancipation might look like. Zahi Zalloua is the Cushing Eells professor of Philosophy and Literature, and Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies at Whitman College. He is also the author of ​Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek​, as well as ​Theory’s Autoimmunity: Skepticism, Literature and Philosophy​. Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

25 Sep 202239min

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. In 2012, the world-renowned philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek released his 1000-page tome ​Less Than Nothing​, following it up afterwards with its shorter reformulation ​Absolute Recoil​ in 2014. The works contained his usual use of movie-references, historical and political events and jokes to engage in some substantial philosophical formulations, particularly in dialogue with Hegel and Lacan. In these books, Žižek forged a new developed a number of innovative approaches to various philosophical questions, from quantum mechanics to contemporary political movements. Adrian Johnston’s most recent book on Žižek, A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek and Dialectical Materialism​ (Columbia University Press, 2018) traces a number of these various developments in detail, salvaging the key philosophical themes while also offering several criticisms and developments of his own. Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor in and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and is a faculty member at the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute in Atlanta. His many books include ​Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity​ (2008) and ​Badiou, ​Žižek and Political Transformations: The Cadence of Change (2009)​. With Slavoj ​Žižek and Todd McGowan, he is a co-editor of the book series ​Diaeresis​, all from Northwestern University Press. Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer. 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 Sep 20221h 58min

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike. 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 Sep 202242min

1848 was the Year of Revolutions in Europe. It was also the year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, proposing a new, classless society. As revolutions erupted across the globe, many turned to the ideals of Communism to replace old and fast-crumbling feudal systems. But Communism didn’t take off everywhere. Harvard professor Louis Menand explains the successes and failures of Marx & Engels’ vision since the publication of the manifesto. Louis Menand is the Lee Simpkins Family Professor or Arts and Sciences and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard, where he also holds the title Harvard College Professor, in recognition of his teaching. He is the author of books such as The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University and The Metaphysical Club, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Join the conversation on the Lyceum app. 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 Sep 202230min

The Democratic Socialists of America have exploded in the last few years, going from just a couple thousand members to close to a hundred thousand. This was from a combination of factors; two insurgent presidential campaigns by Bernie Sanders, a proto-fascistic movement coalescing around Donald Trump, the specter of climate change, a worldwide pandemic, general increasing economic inequality and a general sense that this world is bad but a better one might be possible. But what exactly is the underlying political philosophy of this organization? Is it actually for socialism, or capitalism with a stronger safety net? Is it a subsection of the Democratic party, or an independent movement? And how does it see political and historical change actually happening? In order to answer these questions, my guest Doug Greene has written a biography of the organizations founder, Michael Harrington. Starting with his early life in Jesuit education, Greene tracks Harrington’s political development through the 1950’s all the way up to 1982 when he founded DSA. Along the way, Harrington developed a conception of political change that would happen within the Democratic party, a conception that still clearly animates the approach of many on the left today. Written as a comradely critique, Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism (Zero Books, 2022) manages to give a genealogy of many of the tensions that still run through the contemporary left, and offers a sobering assessment of what can actually be accomplished when playing by realism’s rules. Doug Greene is a freelance writer and historian in Boston. He is also the author of Communist Insurgent: Blanqui’s Politics of Revolution. His writing has also appeared in a number of outlets, including Left Voice. 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 Sep 20221h 12min

Throughout his career, the internationally renowned Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot unsettled key concepts in anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, Black studies, Caribbean studies, and beyond. From his early critique of the West to the ongoing challenges he leveled at disciplinary and intellectual boundaries and formations, Trouillot centered the Caribbean as a site both foundational to the development of Western thought and critical to its undoing.  Trouillot Remixed: The Michel-Rolph Trouillot Reader (Duke UP, 2021) offers a representative cross section of his work that includes his most famous writings and lesser-known and harder-to-find texts essential to his oeuvre. Encouraging readers to engage with Trouillot's scholarship in new ways, this collection demonstrates the breadth of his writing, his enduring influence on Caribbean studies, and his relevance to politically engaged scholarship more broadly. Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. 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 Sep 20221h 4min

How are art and social justice intertwined? In Creating Worlds Otherwise: Art, Collective Action, and (Post)Extractivism Paula Serafini, a Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries at Queen Mary University of London, explores the importance of art, artistic practice, and artistic movements to the struggle for social, environmental, and cultural justice in Latin America. Primarily focused on case studies from Argentina, although reflecting the cross-national nature of art and justice struggles, the book introduces the idea of extractivism, and demonstrates how art can be used to critique, challenge, and offer alternatives. Theoretically rich, with a huge range of examples, the book is essential reading across the arts, cultural studies, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in how art can change, and perhaps even save, the world. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. 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 Sep 202242min

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’. In Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously (Hurst, 2022), Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the project of ‘decolonisation’ as intellectually unsound and unrealistic. Táíwò rejects decolonisation’s conflation of modernity with coloniality and takes to task the decolonisers’ confused attempts at undoing of global society’s foundations. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò is Professor of African Political Thought and Chair at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University. His writings have been translated into French, Italian, German and Portuguese. His book How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa won the Frantz Fanon Award in 2015. NBN interview with Olúfẹ́mi on Africa Must Be Modern 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

22 Sep 20221h 4min