On Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto"
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
Doug Greene, "Failure of Vision: Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism" (Zero Books, 2022)
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
Yarimar Bonilla ed. et al., "Trouillot Remixed: The Michel-Rolph Trouillot Reader" (Duke UP, 2021)
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
Paula Serafini, "Creating Worlds Otherwise: Art, Collective Action, And (Post)Extractivism" (Vanderbilt UP, 2022)
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
Olúfemi Táíwò, "Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously" (Hurst, 2022)
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
Kim Q. Hall, "Queering Philosophy" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)
Why isn’t there a queer subfield in philosophy? How has institutionalized philosophy continued to develop without a recognized specialization in queer philosophy? What would it mean to care queerly for philosophy? And how might that change not only the field, but the possibilities for living? These are just some of the questions raised by Kim Q. Hall in Queering Philosophy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). Hall diagnoses philosophy’s straight habits and shows how an intersectional approach to queering philosophy can allow us to practice philosophy otherwise. By building a promiscuous archive to think along with many questioners of dominate norms, Hall argues for a pursuit of wisdom that is relational, experimental, and attuned to other ways of life. Sarah Tyson is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver. 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 Sep 202259min
Nancy Fraser, "Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It" (Verso, 2022)
Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It (Verso, 2022), leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy. What we need, she argues, is a wide-ranging socialist movement that can recognize the rapaciousness of capital - and starve it to death. Nancy Fraser is Henry and Louise A. Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Fortunes of Feminism and The Old is Dying and the New Cannot be Born, and co-author of Capitalism: A Conversation and Feminism for the 99%. Brian Hamilton is Chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website. 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 Sep 202255min
Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi, "Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine" (Routledge, 2021)
On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews co-authors Lara and Stephen Sheehi about their book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2021). As they discuss in the interview, the book represents years of research, engagement, and relationship-building with and alongside psychoanalytically oriented Palestinian clinicians working throughout historic Palestine. These relationships and solidarities form the base from which the authors start to think about the intersection of psychoanalysis, decoloniality, and liberatory practice. J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and fellow in the Program for Psychotherapy at Cambridge Health Alliance. Originally from the west coast, he currently lives and bikes in Somerville, MA. He can be reached at: jay.c.mull@gmail.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
19 Sep 20221h 16min
