Marcello Tarì, "There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution" (Common Notions, 2021)
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 b...
28 Juli 20211h 13min
Rafia Zakaria, "Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption" (W. W. Norton, 2021)
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...
27 Juli 202148min
Lorenzo Fusaro, "Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: From Gramsci's Quaderni to the Contemporary World Economy" (Haymarket Books, 2020)
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is often invoked, but usually as a means of cultural critique and analysis. However, my guest Lorenzo Fusaro argues in his recent book Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: F...
26 Juli 20211h 1min
Gayle Rogers, "Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI" (Columbia UP, 2021)
In a world that purports to know more about the future than any before it, why do we still need speculation? Insubstantial speculations – from utopian thinking to high-risk stock gambles – often provo...
26 Juli 20211h 2min
Meryl Altman, "Beauvoir in Time" (Brill, 2020)
Meryl Altman's new book Beauvoir in Time, published by Brill Rodopi Press (2020), situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) in its historical context and responds to criticism that muddles w...
23 Juli 20211h 7min
Scott Krzych, "Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Scott Krzych's book Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria (Oxford University Press, 2021) offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing document...
23 Juli 20211h 14min
Eugene T. Richardson, "Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health" (MIT Press, 2020)
In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how public health practices—from epidemiological modeling to...
22 Juli 202144min
Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian, "Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious" (Routledge, 2018)
Psychoanalysis began as a politicized form of treatment for people from all walks of life. Yet in the United States, it has become divorced from these roots and transformed into a depoliticized treatm...
21 Juli 202148min
