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600 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)
26 augustus 2026 · 52 min
There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that
progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including
the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by
declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond
not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges
posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton
University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing
on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these
conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of
health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a
detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an
in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed
and what can, or should, be done about them. Lees meerThe book explains
the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and
examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It
argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009
has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes
stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and
dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and
educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic
stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing
concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in
social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in
dangerous differences between regions and in political power across
groups.The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers
a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we
can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.Paul Johnson
is provost o… -
Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir" (Oxford UP, 2026)
25 augustus 2026 · 56 min
Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government’s August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize Jammu and Kashmir’s nominal autonomy. The core of our reflection centered on how one theorizes through such an intense archive. The book avoids abstract distance, relying instead on a rigorous post-2019 archive built from ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in interdisciplinary feminist studies. It demonstrates that theorizing is not a passive intellectual exercise, instead, it is an active, grounded practice of mapping power where it is felt most directly. Through intersectional analyses of space, home, time, and storytelling, the text reveals how militarized control operates via spatial, embodied, affective, temporal, and discursive capture. Reflecting on this book serves as a vital reminder that critical theorizing must remain tethered to the grounded realities of resistance. Lees meer
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A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026)
24 augustus 2026 · 54 min
The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory. Lees meer
“Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But
despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely
investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders,
right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a
coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine
Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using
the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German
thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister
orchestrators of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this
conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the
political movements that have declared war on all that passes for
Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil.Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those
reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict
causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an
essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents
shaping politics in the twenty-first century.A.J.A. Woods is an intellectual historian who lives in Brighton,
England. In 2022, Woods received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of
Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. Their writings on
conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into
four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice,
and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.Morteza Hajizadeh
is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
18th
and 19th Century British Literature.Support our show …
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Ryan Engley, "Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
23 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 19 min
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the
dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print
culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one. Lees meerThe serial
is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of
an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV
episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based
storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that
seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic
structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and
constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there
exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is
often difficult to see and difficult to bear.Through formal
readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis,
the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's
existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts
the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal
to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have
become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become
radically—serially—connected.Ryan Engley
is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where
he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and
media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena.Helena Vissing,
PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California
and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She
can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).Support our show by becoming a…
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Joseph Acquisto, "Baudelaire's Objects" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
22 augustus 2026 · 46 min
Baudelaire's Objects (Bloomsbury,
2026) examines Baudelaire's multifaceted use of natural, domestic,
urban, and esthetic objects in his verse and prose poetry, as well as
the ways his poems reshape our understanding of objects and how those
objects destabilize, yet preserve, the subject-object relation. Charles
Baudelaire's representation of objects in the natural world establishes a
relation that is neither one of identity between human subject and
nature nor a relation of domination; he reveals both the natural world
and the human subject to be characterized by an irreducible doubleness
and nonidentity to itself. Likewise, everyday domestic objects in his
poems overflow their boundaries as simple metaphors; their often uncanny
aspect highlights their quasi-agency as they define and shape the
subject who interacts with them. Lees meerBaudelaire's poems-as-objects
also take on this kind of agency, acting upon readers in ways that both
require and surpass attempts to grasp the poems conceptually as art
objects for analysis. This reshaping of subjectivity and objectivity
acquires increased intensity in his urban poetry, where city objects are
at the intersection of the mythic, the historical, the esthetic, and
the commercial.Baudelaire's Objects shows
how paying attention to objects differently, as Baudelaire's poems impel
readers to do, is to reorient ourselves in the world by giving objects
their due, recognizing the mediating qualities both of objects and of
the language with which we represent or create them. We can thus
reinvent our understanding of the limits and potential of human
subjectivity as it is inextricably intertwined with the world around us.Guest
Joseph Acquisto is Professor of French and Director of the School of
World Languages and Cultures at the University of Vermont. He writes on
nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature with a particular focus on
the intersections of literature with philosophy and music. In addition
to Baudelaire's Objects, D… -
Beth Weinstein, "Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time" (Routledge, 2024)
22 augustus 2026 · 52 min
Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge, 2024) examines the field of archi-choreographic experiments: unique interdisciplinary encounters and performed events generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. Forty case studies spanning four decades give evidence of the range of motivations for embarking on these creative endeavors and diverse conceptual underpinnings, generative methods, objects of inquiry, and outcomes. Architecture and Choreography builds histories and theories through which to examine these works, the contexts within, and processes through which the works emerged, and the critical questions they raise about ways to work together, sites and citations, ethics and equity, control and agency. Lees meer
Three themes frame pairs of chapters. The first addresses disciplinarity through works that critically reflect upon their discipline’s tools, techniques, and conventions juxtaposed against projects that cite or use other art forms and cultural phenomena as source material. The second interrogates space and the role of spatial dispositifs, institutions, and sites, and their hidden and not-so-hidden conditions, as conceptual drivers and structures to subvert, trouble, unsettle, remember. The third asks who and what dances, finding a spectrum from mobilized architectural bodies to more than human cybarcorps. Modes of collaboration and the temporalities and life cycles of projects inform bookending chapters.
Architecture and Choreography offers vital lessons not only for architects and choreographers but also for students and practitioners across design and performance fields.
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Emile Chabal, "The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian" (Harvard UP, 2026)
21 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 38 min
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) was one of the foremost European
intellectuals of the twentieth century. He published hundreds of
articles on modern history and culture, and his books became canonical
works and bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. His crystal-clear
writing, vast erudition, and ability to make his Marxist analysis
digestible to a wide audience brought him worldwide renown. Yet Hobsbawm
was no academic hermit. Through his globetrotting journalism, he was
embedded in an extraordinary web of politicians, activists, and fellow
intellectuals across Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including
Manmohan Singh, Che Guevara, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Fernand Braudel,
E. P. Thompson, Arno Mayer, and Salvador Allende. Lees meerIn The Age of Hobsbawm: The Life of a Revolutionary Historian (Harvard University Press, 2026), Emile Chabal
traces the origins of Hobsbawm’s ideas and most famous writings by
exploring his scholarly foundations, delving deep into the archives to
uncover hidden links and unexpected conversations that shaped his
pathbreaking work. Going well beyond the Ages series of modern
history books for which Hobsbawm is best known, Chabal offers the first
substantial interpretation of Hobsbawm’s entire body of writing. Indeed,
The Age of Hobsbawm is also a trove of unique insights into
the generations of Marxist writers with whom Hobsbawm was in
conversation—authors whose work continues to shape political debates
globally.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Utathya Chattopadhyaya, "Ganja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India" (U California Press, 2026)
19 augustus 2026 · 55 min
Ganja
is the popular name in Hindustani, Bengali, and other South Asian
languages for intoxicating substances produced from the plant species
Cannabis sativa L. Starting in the eighteenth century, British India's
colonial administrators sought ways to systematically tax and govern how
ganja circulated from the farms of peasant families in rural Bengal to pipes, plates, and cups elsewhere in the subcontinent. Lees meerGanja Matters: Empire and the Pursuits of Cannabis in British India
(University of California Press, 2026) is an open-access book that
follows the perpetual incongruity between regulatory efforts to pursue
the plant through botanical observation, colonial reportage, and excise
statistics and the leisurely, devotional, and creative ganja pursuits
among people. Dr. Utathya Chattopadhyaya offers a social history of
ganja in a multispecies framework that reveals how the cannabis plant
co-constituted histories of empire, gender, subalternity, and labor
under British rule. Against the weight of the criminalization and
"drug-ness" of cannabis, Dr. Chattopadhyaya puts the multidirectional
and polysemic history of ganja as plant matter at the center of
analysis.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Roderick Beaton, "Europe: A New History" (Allen Lane, 2026)
19 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 8 min
What do we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? In Europe: A New History (Allen Lane, 2026),
award-winning historian Roderick Beaton tells the story of Europe as
never before—as the history of an idea, and a collective identity. Lees meerSince
its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, 'Europe' has been defined, and
redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the
narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s
major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion
of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the
Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent
upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the
uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the
voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.
Roderick Beaton
is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History,
Language and Literature at King's College London and Chair of Trustees
of the British School at Athens, an institute of advanced research. He
is a four-time winner of the Runciman Award, for his books An Introduction to Modern Greek Literature, George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel: A Biography, Byron's War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution, and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, published by Penguin in 2019. He is also the author of The Greeks: A Global History.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy, Commander of the Order of Honour
of the Hellenic Republic, and an honorary citizen of Greece. He was
knighted in 2025.Morteza Hajizadeh
is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
Environm… -
A Cure for Loneliness: On Homecoming with Ian Marcus Corbin
19 augustus 2026 · 57 min
Americans are more isolated, polarized, and depressed than ever in recent memory, and yet many citizens share a deep desire for community and friendship across political lines and in new creative ways. How may we bridge that gap? To help answer that most pressing question, in Episode 2 of Season 6, I have as our guest the philosopher, essayist, and author, Ian Marcus Corbin. Lees meer
A graduate of Yale Divinity School and Boston College, Mr. Corbin is a senior fellow at Capita, the program director of Harvard University’s Public Culture Project, and the author of To Arrive Where We Started (2026). Drawing on his book, we discuss the human longing for belonging as the way to deal with our modern crisis of loneliness.
We begin with Corbin’s journey from a teenage Christian punk rocker raised by hippies-turned-Pentecostals into an Ivy League philosopher working at the intersection of neurobiology and culture, and along the way, we also discuss texts from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets to Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, Plato’s Symposium, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Karp Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, not to mention figures like Black Elk and Roger Scruton, as well as Corbin’s personal friendship with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.
Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.”
Chapter Headings:
1 | 00:00 Introduction and Meet Ian Marcus Corbin
2 | 10:48 Loneliness and the Limits of Liberalism
3 | 19:48 Soul and the Science of Belonging
4 | 29:00 Cognitive Metabolism and World Decay
5 | 42:30 Diotima and Zosima
6 | 48:32 Corbin's friendship with Sen. Chris MurphySupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Ting Hui Lau, "Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism" (Stanford UP, 2026)
17 augustus 2026 · 59 min
A series of questions have been sparked by the indigenous urgency of
the moment: What does it mean to live through a world coming undone? How
do people carry on amid rupture, loss, and grief? Decolonial Endurance: Lisu Worldmaking Against Chinese Settler Colonialism (Stanford University Press, 2026) explores
these questions through the turbulent lives of Indigenous Lisu
subsistence farmers in China’s Eastern Himalayas, bordering Myanmar and
Tibet. Lees meerLike many of China’s Indigenous borderlands, this
mountainous region has long borne the force of encroaching Chinese state
power. Since the 1980s, the Chinese state has been compelling the Lisu
to give up their subsistence lifeways, move into urban settlements, and
send their children to government boarding schools. In exchange for the
so-called gifts of development—healthcare, income, and education—they
suffer environmental and social catastrophes such as mass landslides,
strange new illnesses, and toxic food.Drawing on over a decade
of engagement with the Lisu, Ting Hui Lau takes readers into the world
of ex-shamans, heart-pained mothers, restless spirits, and demon-mad
migrants as they grapple with the fallout from state development, which
Lau argues is the latest phase in a centuries-long project of settler
colonialism along China's Southwest frontier. At once a portrayal of
loss and an ethnography of hope, Lau chronicles Lisu worldmaking amid
this destruction, centering their quiet resistance through everyday acts
of communal caretaking. In a time of escalating geopolitical and
ecological crisis, this book calls for a new decolonial politics rooted
in the transformative power of endurance.Ting Hui Lau (email
address: lau.th@nus.edu.sg) is Assistant Professor of Sociology and
Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. She studies
sociocultural, psychological, and medical anthropology, development and
environmental change, Indigeneity and colonialism, and the borderland
areas of East and Southeast As… -
Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina eds.,"Real Estate: Histories of Architecture and Capital" (gta Verlag, 2026)
16 augustus 2026 · 43 min
Real Estate: Histories of Architecture and Capital (gta Verlag, 2026)challenges
the conventional assumption that architects and planners are the
principal authors of urban form. It instead foregrounds the developers,
builders, financiers, and media strategists whose pursuit of profit has
shaped cities, particularly under global capitalism. Bringing together
studies spanning the eighteenth century to the present, the
editors, Gregorio Astengo and Davide Spina, and
the contributors establish real estate development as a significant
field of inquiry within architectural history. It also proposes new
methods and sources for understanding how speculation and market
mechanisms have produced the built environment. Lees meerThis interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in
Architectural History at the University of Manchester. He researches
nineteenth-century European architecture, focusing on artistic
techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (gta Verlag, 2023).Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, "God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology" (T&T Clark, 2021)
15 augustus 2026 · 37 min
N. Gray Sutanto offers a fresh reading of Herman Bavinck's
theological epistemology and argues that his Trinitarian and organic
worldview utilizes an extensive range of sources. Sutanto unfolds
Bavinck's understanding of what he considered to be the two most
important aspects of epistemology: the character of the sciences and the
correspondence between subjects and objects. Writing at the heels of
the European debates in the 19th and 20th centuries concerning
theology's place in the academy, and rooted in historic Christian
teachings, Sutanto demonstrates how Bavinck's argument remains fresh and
provocative. God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck's Theological Epistemology (T&T Clark, 2021) explores
archival material and peripheral works translated for the first time in
English. The author re-reads several key concepts, ranging from
Organicism to the Absolute, and relates Bavinck's work to Thomas
Aquinas, Eduard von Hartmann, and other thinkers. Sutanto applies this
reading to current debates on the relationship between theology and
philosophy, nature and grace, and the nature of knowing; and in doing so
provides students and scholars with fresh methods of considering
Orthodox and modern forms of thought, and their connection with each
other. Lees meerDr. Sutanto serves as the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. and an associate
editor of the Journal of Reformed Theology. He has received
visiting fellowships at the Theological University of Kampen-Utrecht and
Princeton Theological Seminary. He is a member of the Evangelical
Theological Society and is on the steering committee for the Reformed
Theology and History Unit of the American Academy of Religion. Along
with the theologian Herman Bavinck, Dr. Sutanto’s research interests are
broad, ranging from modern Protestant theology, prolegomena, humanity
and sin, the relationship between philosophy and theology, analytic
theology, and Christianity and culture.For previous N…
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Sophie Chao, "Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger" (Duke UP, 2025)
15 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
In Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke UP, 2025), Sophie Chao examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in lowland West Papua, a place where industrial plantation expansion and settler-colonial violence are radically reconfiguring ecologies, socialities, and identities. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably situated humans, animals, plants, institutions, infrastructures, spirits, and sorcerers. When approached through the lens of Indigenous Marind philosophies, practices, and protocols, hunger reveals itself to be a multiple, more-than-human, and morally imbued modality of being—one whose effects are no less culturally crafted or contested than food and eating. Lees meer
In centering Indigenous feminist theories of hunger, Chao offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between the environment, food, and nourishment in an age of self-consuming capitalist growth. She also considers how Indigenous theories invite anthropologists to reimagine the ethics and politics of ethnographic writing and the responsibilities, hesitations, and compromises that shape anthropological commitments in and beyond the field.
Dr Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua, and coeditor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice, both also published by Duke University Press. Land of Famished Beings won the 2026 ASAA Mid-Career Book Prize. Her latest book Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge UP, 2026), came out in June.
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The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine with Jonathan Fuller
13 augustus 2026 · 45 min
Jonathan Fuller’s The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine (Oxford UP, 2025) takes the reader on a philosophical tour through scientific medicine, visiting its distinctive problems, particularly problems brought about by the twentieth century fusion of medicine with epidemiology. Drawing on the author’s training in philosophy of medicine, history and philosophy of science, and clinical medicine, the book examines the contours of the ‘epidemiological medicine’ that resulted from this fusion. It dissects several philosophical problems of the new modern medicine while exploring topics such as theories of contagion and cancer, concepts and theories of disease etiology, the nature of chronic diseases and mental disorders, concepts of medical risk, models of medical evidence and medical prediction, the problems of extrapolating from clinical research, therapeutic skepticism, and the future of modern medicine. Expansive, detailed, rigorous, insightful, and refreshingly penetrable, The New Modern Medicine is an ambitious contribution to the philosophy of medicine and to our understanding of scientific medicine. It is available online open access. Lees meer
This episode is hosted by Alex Broadbent, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Durham University and Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg. He is Director of the Durham-Johannesburg Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, and co-leads the Measurement Lab in the Institute for Medical Humanities.
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Michael R. Griffiths, "The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
12 augustus 2026 · 48 min
The Death of the Author and Anticolonial Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) promises
to transform a decades old debate in literary studies about the
relation between structure and agency, form and intention by giving a
detailed account—previously unstudied—of the way colonized writers have
responded to, learned from, and critiqued the death of the author
postulate declared by Roland Barthes in 1967. The book is a cultural
history of these debates—with a particular focus on two crucial two key
case studies, Martinican poet and thinker Édouard Glissant and
Palestinian literary and cultural critic Edward Said, this book, then,
examines the immediate emergence and intensification of such responses
to the postulate of the author’s deathly absence from the text, in order
to suggest that metropolitan literary theory drew both critique and
engagement from scholars of black, decolonial and Global South
background from both before 1967 and Barthes’s declaration and in its
wake. This book provides a focused account of the early history of the
way global literatures have engaged with, critiqued, and occasionally
adopted the lessons and limitations of the poststructuralist critique of
that most fetishized and also reviled of figures: the author. Lees meerMatthis
Frickhoeffer is a scholar of critical theory and French thought with a
background in literature studies, linguistics and art theory. His work
focuses on questions of form, semiotics, and intertextuality. He teaches
at the University of Texas at Dallas.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Oli Mould, "Postcapitalist cities: Towards a common urban future" (Manchester UP, 2026)
9 augustus 2026 · 36 min
What is the future for cities? In Postcapitalist Cities: Towards a common urban future (Manchester University Press, 2026) Oli Mould, a Professor of Cultural and Historical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London,
looks at the past, present and future of the city to consider
alternatives to the current capitalist urban model that dominates the
world. Re-examining key concepts such as gentrification and care,
introducing new ideas like solarpunk, and packed with a huge range of
global case studies, the book offers approaches to resist, reject and
reimagine the city. A significant intervention for geographers and
social scientists, the book will also be essential reading for anyone
living in a city today. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Deborah Barer, "Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud" (Oxford UP, 2026)
8 augustus 2026 · 48 min
What does it really mean to go "beyond the letter of the law"? In
this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with scholar Deborah Barer to
discuss her book Going Off Script: Improvisational Judgment in the Talmud, which offers a surprising new interpretation of one of the Talmud's most enduring ethical concepts: lifnim mi-shurat ha-din. Lees meerFor generations, lifnim mi-shurat ha-din has been understood
to mean acting "beyond the letter of the law"—choosing generosity or
compassion over strict legal obligation. Barer challenges that
assumption. Through a close reading of classical rabbinic texts, she
argues that the Talmud originally used the phrase not to describe a
particular kind of moral act, but a particular way of making decisions.
Rather than rigidly following established rules, rabbis sometimes
improvised, departing from expected patterns in pursuit of the right
outcome for a unique case.By tracing how this idea developed from in the Talmud, Barer uncovers
how one phrase evolved into a cornerstone of Jewish ethical thought.
Her work invites readers to rethink the relationship between law and
morality, showing that creativity and flexibility have always been part
of the rabbinic legal tradition.Together, Barer and Katz explore why improvisation matters in Jewish
law, how the Talmud balances consistency with compassion, and what this
ancient model of decision-making can teach us about navigating difficult
moral questions today.Deborah Barer is Senior Faculty with the Shalom Hartman Institute of
North America. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University
of Virginia, with an emphasis on rabbinic literature and Jewish ethics.
Previously, she was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Towson
University, and she has also taught at Oberlin College and for the
Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies (North America). She served as the
editor of the Journal of Textual Reasoning.Rabbi Marc Katz is the senior Rabbi at Temple Ner
Tamid in Bloomfield, NJ. He i… -
Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital" (Verso, 2025)
8 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 16 min
The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s. Lees meer
Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home.
Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital (Verso, 2025) is a foundational text and essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati’s work provides some of the earliest theorizations of ‘immaterial,’ ‘affective,’ and ‘caring’ labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature. Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.
Leopoldina Fortunati was a core member of Lotta Femminsta and the Wages for Housework Movement internationally. Along with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and Silvia Federici, she composed many of the group’s core theoretical and political texts. Her early work continues to inform movements concerned with struggles over reproduction globally and in subsequent work as a theorist of media and technology, Fortunati has been at the vanguard of contemporary theory addressing the relation between gendered labor and technology.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies…
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Giulio Boccaletti, "The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World" (Princeton UP, 2026)
7 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 28 min
Republicanism is arguably the most powerful political idea in
history, an extraordinary feat of human imagination that balances
individual liberty with collective responsibility. The Environmental Republic: Why Citizens Will Save the World (Princeton
University Press, 2026) reclaims this idea as the path to sustaining
our life together on a changing planet, reframing our relationship to
the environment not as a constraint on liberty but as its republican
foundation. Lees meerGiulio Boccaletti argues that we must renew our commitment to freedom
and civic responsibility through popular sovereignty. He presents the
environmental republic as a necessary alternative to blind faith in
technocratic management, the shallow moralizing and apocalyptic rhetoric
of some activists, and the disingenuous skepticism of vested interests.
Our environmental challenges are not simply about “agreeing on the
facts” or living within technical limitations—they reflect a deeper
failure of political institutions. Drawing on the history of ideas and
real-world examples, Boccaletti presents a political framework that
places our relationship to our surroundings at the heart of how we
exercise our voice, coordinate collective action, and define development
itself.Offering hope in an anxious age of rising authoritarianism and widespread pessimism, The Environmental Republic
challenges the false choice between environmental protection and human
freedom, showing how place-based institutions can deliver both
sustainability and human development through true self-governance.Giulio Boccaletti
is an author whose writings on natural resources security have been
translated into several languages. He has held international leadership
positions in the private and not-for-profit sectors. He is the
scientific director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change,
one of Europe’s largest research institutions focused on Earth science
and transition economics, and cofounder of Chloris Geospatial, a
spa… -
Andres Saenz de Sicilia, "Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society" (Brill, 2024)
7 augustus 2026 · 46 min
Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx: From the Critique of Reason to the Critique of Society is the latest book from Dr Andres Saenz De Sicilia, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London. Andres’ excellent title, published with Brill and released in soft cover with Haymarket Books late last year, is an in-depth exploration of the concept of subsumption as it appears in the works of three great thinkers, and the relevance of the paradigm for modern critical theory. Lees meer
In this book, Andres traces the concept of subsumption through Kant, Hegel, and Marx, in both its philosophical dimensions and its relevance to critical social theory. Andres examines the utilisation of subsumption as a conceptual framework whereby a particular is brought under a universal, up to the complex and dynamic operations of subsumption in modern-day capitalism, as a system that subsumes human life under the logic of value. As Andres illustrates through the intricate and careful argument in the book, following the use of subsumption in the work of these key theorists not only offers a new perspective to understand these thinkers, but helps articulate a historically-focused and robust framework to investigate the mechanisms of capitalist power. Of particular interest perhaps from a political economy perspective is Andres’ investigation of Marx’s journey through subsumption within the pages of Subsumption in Kant, Hegel and Marx, and also how the theoretical framework of subsumption helps us understand production and social reproduction under capitalism.
Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.
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Katharina Stevens, "The Ethics of Argumentation" (Routledge, 2025)
5 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
The Ethics of Argumentation (Routledge, 2025) offers a new approach to the theory of argumentation that conceptualizes argumentation as a fundamentally ethical activity whose norms are grounded in, and must be selected according to, moral reasons. Current normative approaches to argumentation do not treat ethics as an integral part of argumentation theory. This is at least in part due to a methodological commitment not to address internal states of the arguers, such as intentions and beliefs, which makes moral theorizing about argumentation difficult. This book presents three arguments for why ethics ought to be a central element in normative theorizing about argumentation. First, it shows that ethics is needed for providing normative argumentation theory with its foundation and for offering arguers reliable guidance for decision-making both about which norms ought to govern their arguing and how they should shape each argument they make. Second, it addresses some of the most persistent problems faced by currently dominant normative approaches to argumentation, most notably that they are only reliable under the assumption that unrealistic background conditions are fulfilled. Finally, it provides the groundwork for a systematic ethics of argumentation. It does so by showing how a function of argumentation can be justified via moral reasons and by providing the outlines for both an applied ethics of (meta-level) normative argument design and an applied role-ethics of object-level arguing. The Ethics of Argumentation (Routledge, 2025) is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines-including philosophy, communication studies, linguistics, and rhetoric-who are interested in argumentation, critical thinking and social epistemology" Lees meer
Katharina Stevens is a philosopher and argumentation theorist working at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. She is one of the editors of the journal Informal Logic and one of the direct…
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Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)
4 augustus 2026 · 26 min
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests
positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her
newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children
they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend
nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager
takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126
years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system
that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but
for who they are. Lees meerIn the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted
women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. In Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
(New Press, 2026), Dr. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence
Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia
Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a
husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into
murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions
disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are
recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched
stereotypes.Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Dr. Beety
exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and
cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe
v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the
reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal
system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood,
and queer identity itself.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on … -
Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont eds., "Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities" (Stanford UP, 2026)
29 juli 2026 · 38 min
The opening of Iraq's Ba'th
Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history,
offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of
the world's most impenetrable autocracies. Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities (Stanford University Press, 2026) edited by Dr. Lisa Blaydes
and Dr. Samuel Helfont brings together leading scholars to take stock
of what we have learned from over a decade of research using the Ba'thist
archives, contributing to a new understanding of Iraq's history, with
wider implications for understanding authoritarianism in general. Lees meerThe
contributors show how research in these unique archives challenges
previous assumptions about Ba'thist Iraq and the workings of
authoritarian regimes. Their chapters provide
fresh insights into how Saddam Hussein's regime functioned both at the
elite level and through everyday bureaucratic practices, shedding light
on state power, social relations, and international politics of the
Middle East. The volume also critically reflects on the ethical
questions posed by the archives, including their origins, the impact of
their removal from Iraq, and access barriers for local scholars. Rich in
empirical detail yet framed by cutting-edge theoretical questions, this
book demonstrates
how the Iraqi archives have reshaped debates about authoritarianism,
governance, repression, and state-society relations well beyond the
Iraqi case.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, "Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance" (Princeton UP, 2026)
28 juli 2026 · 51 min
How is finance changing in the contemporary world? In FinTech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance (Princeton University Press, 2026), Paul Langley, a Professor of Economic Geography at Durham Universityand Andrew Leyshon, a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economy, Policy and Place, Nottingham Trent University and Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham,
chart the rise of a new form of capitalism in the digital age. Drawing
on detailed case studies from across the world, from familiar everyday
examples such as Klarna to continent-spanning institutions such as Standard Bank,
the book theorises the dynamics of this new moment in global
capitalism. Of interest across the social sciences, the book will be
essential reading for anyone seeking to understand money today. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Toby Miller and Joan Pedro Carañana, "Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They?" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
26 juli 2026 · 45 min
Just how much damage is sport doing to the planet? In Global Sports Go Green—Or Do They? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) Toby Miller, Profesor Distinguido at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico and Joan Pedro Carañana, Associate Professor of Journalism at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
examine the ecological impact of major sporting events. Using case
studies of The World Cup, The Olympics, The America’s Cup and Formula
One, the book demonstrates the vast range of economic, social, cultural
and climate impacts of these mega-events. Offering a wide ranging and
compelling critique, along with consideration of resistance to carbon
sports, the book is essential reading for everyone with interested in
whether global sporting spectacles can really be sustainable. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Todd McGowan, "Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish" (Polity Press, 2026)
25 juli 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish (Polity Press, 2026) contends
that an unconscious impulse to undermine our own interests plays a
dominant role in our lives. The idea of a primary drive to
self-destruction is at odds with the prevailing common sense in a world
where almost everyone believes that we strive to flourish. Yet often we
fail to flourish not because some people are wicked but because the
drive to sabotage ourselves outweighs the pleasures of flourishing. Our
tendency to self-sabotage distorts our politics, throws off our romantic
relationships, and generally makes human existence difficult. It is why
we become involved with partners who continually create unhappiness for
us, and also why we elect leaders who derail the nation. Although the
act of self-sabotage is clearly self-destructive, it appeals to us
because it has a creative power. Through sacrificing ourselves, we
create sublime value in the world. Our willingness to sacrifice our own
interest elevates the value of the object we pursue and lifts it out of
the realm of the ordinary. Self-sabotage leads to immense amounts of
social harm. But at the same time, the tendency to self-destruction
provides the basis for our ability to act ethically and surmount social
pressure in the name of some higher value. Lees meerTodd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Embracing Alienation, The Racist Fantasy, Emancipation After Hegel, Capitalism and Desire, and Only a Joke Can Save Us, among other books. He is also the co-host of the Why Theory podcast with Ryan Engley.
Helena Vissing,
PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California
and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She
can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooks…
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Lily Kelting, "Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods" (UNC Press, 2026)
24 juli 2026 · 1 uur 5 min
The rise of “heritage” foods—that is, the reinvention of traditional
foods—has enjoyed a high profile thanks to the oft-praised efforts of
chefs such as Sean Brock and René Redzepi. But Lily Kelting observes the
popularity of heritage foods as something more: a global movement in
response to climate catastrophe and the rise of right-wing, populist
movements that center a return to the past as part of their ideology.
Weaving ethnography, discourse analysis, critical theory, and sensory,
embodied critique, Kelting tracks and critiques the boom of traditional
food revival movements in the American South, Denmark, and India.
Ultimately, Kelting argues that the heritage culinary professionals wish
to revive is equal parts nostalgia and invention: They engage, subvert,
and ignore food histories in their creation of new food movements. As
Kelting documents our contemporary moment, she shows how the
conversations surrounding these new food movements leave out people
already keeping their traditions alive. Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional Foods (University of North Carolina Press, 2026),
then, serves as a reparative revaluation of the work of the cooks
largely excluded from the contemporary media conversation about heritage
revival. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Elad Lapidot, "State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel" (Indiana UP, 2025)
22 juli 2026 · 1 uur 8 min
Elad Lapidot is Professor of Jewish Thought at the University of Lille, France. His work is guided by questions concerning the relation between knowledge and politics. Among his publications: State of Others: Levinas and Decolonial Israel (Indiana UP, forthcoming), Politics of Not Speaking (Albany: SUNY Press, 2025), Jews Out of the Question: A Critique of Anti-Anti-Semitism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2020), Hebrew translation of Hegel’sPhänomenologie des Geistes (Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing, 2020), Heidegger and Jewish Thought: Difficult Others, edited with M. Brumlik (London/New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Etre sans mot dire : La logique de ‘Sein und Zeit’ (Bucarest: Zeta Books, 2010). Lees meer
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Timothy Mitchell, "The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow" (Verso, 2026)
21 juli 2026 · 58 min
Stealing the future and concealing the theft—capitalism’s method, as examined by the author of the acclaimed Carbon Democracy Today,
extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from nowhere. The trick of
conjuring this unearned wealth is, in fact, the key to understanding
capitalism’s origins and a clue to why the catastrophe of climate
collapse is upon us: value is created by consuming the future. In The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow
(Verso, 2026), Professor Timothy Michell explains how this came about
through the imperial expansion of the West, encumbering today’s
generations with repayments on earlier extractions. Timothy Mitchell
identifies the forms of capitalisation, credit, and coercion that turn
prospective assets into present income. Rejecting the common idea that
claims on the future create only financial or fictitious capital, he
traces the terraforming projects – the destruction of rivers, the
colonising of territory, the expansion of infrastructure, and the
burning of carbon—through which the future has been squandered. Terms
such as finance, technology, the economy, and growth function as alibis
that conceal this devastating form of extraction. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Kurt Warner, "False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy" (Vernon Press, 2024)
21 juli 2026 · 39 min
False Idols: How Diversion is Destroying Democracy (Vernon Press, 2024) examines how modern forms of diversion shape civic life and weaken democratic responsibility. Drawing on the ancient Roman idea of “bread and circuses,” Kurt Warner explores how contemporary society is saturated with distractions that keep citizens focused on what is immediate, pleasurable, profitable, or spectacular, rather than on what is politically and socially meaningful. Lees meer
The conversation introduces listeners to the book’s central concern: how celebrity culture, consumerism, economic pressures, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games can become “false idols.” These forces do not merely entertain us; they influence how we think, what we value, and how we understand our responsibilities to one another.
A key point of discussion is the book’s comparison between ancient Rome and the contemporary United States. Warner uses “bread and circuses” to consider how societies become complacent when citizens are absorbed by basic needs and entertainment while civic duty fades into the background.
The episode also explores the book’s opening narrative, which follows an ordinary man, Chris, through a day filled with advertising, media, branding, and social pressure. This scene illustrates one of the book’s central arguments: distraction is often woven into everyday life before people have noticed its influence.
Warner’s background in psychotherapy adds an important dimension to the discussion. 'False Idols' connects personal awareness with civic awareness, asking how people can recognize the forces directing their attention and reclaim the ability to think critically.
Ultimately, this episode invites listeners to reflect on the relationship between attention and democracy. 'False Idols' asks what it would mean to wake up from the collective daze of distraction and choose more meaningful forms of civic, ethical, and social engagement.
Key Themes and Cont…
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Caste as a Material Question with Rahul Sonpimple
20 juli 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
This episode featured a conversation with Rahul Sonpimple, founder of the All-India Independent Scheduled Castes Association. Our conversation began with Rahul’s conception of Indian history and the place of anti-caste struggle within it. We delved further into Rahul’s own understanding of “anti-caste” as deeply rooted in Ambedkar’s own argument about the necessity of force in emancipatory social transformation. Rahul was especially forthright about the political cost of elevating meekness as a moral condition, a choice that he associates with the rise of a Dalit middle class focused primarily on securing its own representational authority. This took us to a discussion of the need for an independent and consolidated Dalit politics rooted in the lives of the Dalit poor with sufficient leverage to negotiate terms with the state. The last part of the episode focused on Rahul’s critique of both Ambedkarites and Indian Marxists for their disregard of caste as a material question. He spoke at particular length about the failure of Indian Marxists to advance a materalist critique of caste and how their analytical separation of caste and class has played into the hands of the Hindu Right. We ended the episode with Rahul laying out his own definition of Ambedkarism as a material and spiritual politics that recognizes the Dalit poor as a revolutionary class with the potential to rebuild society. Lees meer
Read the transcript here
Guest
Rahul Sonpimple is author and founder of the All-India Independent Scheduled Castes Association.
References
B.R. Ambedkar, The Buddha and his Dhamma, 1957.
B.R. Ambedkar, Small Holdings in India and their Remedies, 1918.
B.R. Ambedkar, Buddha or Karl Marx, 1956.
B.R. Ambedkar, “Mr. Russell and the Reconstruction of Society,” 1916.
Rahul Sonpimple, “Against Hindu Rashtra: Ambedkar’s Buddhist Rashtra as Nation,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, May 4, 2026.
Rahul Sonpimple, “Remembering Babasaheb Ambedkar: The Unfinished Task of Burying Manu,” The Amb…
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Martin Fitzgerald, "The Umbrella Man and Other Stories: What We Talk about When We Talk about the JFK Assassination" (Biteback Publishing, 2026)
19 juli 2026 · 38 min
What does the JKF assassination mean to us now? In The Umbrella Man and Other Stories: What We Talk About When We Talk About the JFK Assassination, (Biteback Publishing, 2026) Martin Fitzgerald
explores the lives and stories of the people present on that day in
Dallas at Dealey Plaza. In doing so, the book examines cultural memory,
artistic representations, history, conspiracy theory and the global
impact of the event. Drawing on personal reflections, rich archival
sources, and contemporary interviews, the book offers a brilliant and
compelling narrative that goes beyond the circumstances of 1963 to the
present day. The book will be of significant interest to a range of
humanities scholars as well as to anyone interested in the ongoing
legacy of one of the twentieth century’s defining events. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Recall This Book x The Caste Pod: a Crossover episode with Ajantha Subramanian
16 juli 2026 · 58 min
In the spirit of Hannah Arendt's natality principle (that new things are always and should always be being born, each one unique and endowed with limitless potential) we at RTB love it when a new podcast appears. Especially one as thoughtful and original as The Caste Pod, which assembles scholars and activists to make sense of what caste is, how it's experienced and how it has travelled globally. Lees meer
Join us to discuss and share an extended excerpt is its widely published (check out her earlier books!) founder Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center, and producer (with Lori Allen) of the “Violent Majorities” series here at RTB.
John and Ajantha delve into the founding of the podcast, and then enter into the business end of the series, which is to explore the complex interplay between caste, race and class as organizing features of economic inequality and its corresponding features of cultural discrimination and oppression.
Ajantha's extended conversation with Prachi and Ram of Savera, a multiracial, interfaith, anti-caste coalition of Indian Americans from The Caste Pod episode 10 lays bare its premise: to put scholars and activists into conversation and opens a space engineered for each to learn form the other.
Before introducing the Savera excerpt, Ajantha frames the topic by way of Isabel Wilkerson's influential (if problematic) book Caste and its neglect of class and economic issues, and also the case against Cisco for caste discrimination in California that in significant ways internationalized the fight around caste's role in perpetuating economic and political inequity.
Listen and Read Here.
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Luna Sabastian, "Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva" (Harvard UP, 2025)
16 juli 2026 · 34 min
Fascism swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, but not only because of the seductive rhetoric of Mussolini, Hitler, and their collaborators. In India as well, a distinctive brand of fascist thought emerged—influenced by Euro-American ideologies but also departing from them in critical ways. The first systematic examination of this political philosophy, Fascism in India: Race, Caste, and Hindutva (Harvard UP, 2025) revises our sense of what fascism can be, while demonstrating that it is very much with us in the form of Hindutva, the ethnic-nationalist movement at the center of Indian politics today.
Luna Sabastian offers a novel interpretation of Hindutva, both its canonical formulation by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and its reinvention by Deendayal Upadhyaya after Indian independence. Sabastian shows how Hindutva generated ideas of Hindu race and religion that had the potential to erase Muslims not through genocide or ethnic cleansing but by means of violent absorption. Focusing on aggressive miscegenation, Indian fascists proposed a singular kind of racial project, eschewing notions of purity even while maintaining a starkly eliminationist objective. Fascism in India also grapples with Hindutva ideas of caste and its relation to race—particularly in comparison with Nazi uses of these concepts—and of sovereignty, which Indian fascists envisioned beyond the “blood and soil” narrative of the nation-state. Finally, Sabastian reflects on Hindutva’s reorientation toward Hindu piety after the creation of Pakistan effectively resolved India’s “Muslim problem.”
Bringing clarity to an ideology little understood in the West, Fascism in India is an eye-opening perspective on Hindutva and a profound meditation on the proliferation and evolution of right-wing thought. Lees meerSachin Nikarge has extensively worked in consultative capacity with prominent foreign/diplomatic missions across both ‘hard’ as well as ‘soft’ power domains.
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Heidegger in Ruins
13 juli 2026 · 1 uur 4 min
Martin Heidegger’s sympathies for the conservative revolution and National Socialism have long been well known. As the rector of the University of Freiburg in the early 1930s, he worked hard to reshape the university in accordance with National Socialist policies. He also engaged in an all-out struggle to become the movement’s philosophical preceptor, “to lead the leader.” Yet for years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines. They argued, in effect, that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. But with the 2014 publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it has become clear that he embraced a far more radical vision of the conservative revolution than previously suspected. His dissatisfaction with National Socialism, it turns out, was mainly that it did not go far enough. The notebooks show that far from being separated from Nazism, Heidegger’s philosophy was suffused with it. Lees meer
In Heidegger in Ruins: Between Philosophy and Ideology, Richard Wolin explores what the notebooks mean for our understanding of arguably the most important philosopher of the twentieth century, and of his ideas—and why his legacy remains radically compromised. Join YIVO for a discussion with Wolin about this book led by YIVO's Executive Director Jonathan Brent.
This book talk originally took place on September 20, 2023.
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Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, "Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
9 juli 2026 · 56 min
Freedom to Know: Creating Community with Ambedkar, Du Bois, Iqbal, Ramabai and Tagore (Edinburgh University Press, 2025) asks
how a (world) community can be created to allow structural minorities
equitable access to intellectual and material resources Lees meerDraws on a range of primary sources
Brings the work of W.E.B. Du Bois into conversation with his Indian contemporaries
Adds a novel historical perspective to recent scholarship on critical social epistemology
Diversifies current ways of doing Indian philosophy
Abstract: In this book, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach studies how
Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891-1956), W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Mohammed Iqbal
(1877-1938), Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922) and Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941) diagnose the epistemic oppression they perceive and
experience, their analysis of the coloniality of being as its cause, and
their proposals to counter it. Kirloskar-Steinbach explores how these
voices seek to co-create a space in which they can experience what it
means to be free from the conceptual domination of academic frameworks,
relish that freedom with their collaborators and, in the equal
participation that that space affords, develop open-ended concepts that
help them to resist the coloniality of being.Jessica Zu's
personal reflection: This book models for readers and scholars alike on
how to practice "hermeneutical democracy." The notion of hermeneutical
philosophy resonates strongly with Artruso Escobar's philosophy of
"pluri-verse" instead of Eurocentric metaphysics of "uni-verse", Roger
Ames's "zeotology" or philosophy of the living in Chinese traditions,
and Brook Ziporyn's mystical atheism against the dominant paradigm of "nous as arché".Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Alexandre Frenette, "Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy" (Princeton UP, 2026)
6 juli 2026 · 40 min
Who gets to be a creative worker? In Blame the Intern: On (Not) Breaking Into the Creative Economy, (Princeton University Press, 2026) Alexandre Frenette, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University,
examines the relationship between work and education in the difficult
moment of the early career transition from university to industry.
Drawing on a detailed case study of the music industry, the book
explains and critiques the way internships have come to dominate routes
into many careers in contemporary society. An accessible yet
theoretically rich read, the book will be of interest to creative
workers at any point in their career, as well as sociologists and
humanities scholars, along with any reader interested in how and why our
workplaces are so unequal. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Gajendran Ayyathurai, "Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste" (Oxford UP, 2026)
4 juli 2026 · 1 uur 31 min
Tamil Buddhism and Brahminism in Modern India: Deep Resistance Against Caste (Oxford University Press, 2026) explores
Tamil Buddhism in modern India, focusing on its emergence
as a response to caste-based oppression during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Central to this movement was Pandit Iyothee
Thass (1845–1914), a pioneering intellectual who reinterpreted India’s
Buddhist past to challenge brahminical dominance. Thass reasoned that it
was because many Indians followed Buddhist cultural and material
traditions in ancient times, that they were oppressed as untouchables
and lower castes by self-privileging-caste groups, such as brahmins.
Thus, Thass challenged brahminism/casteism
in India by reconstructing and mobilizing a reading public about the
casteless Buddhist history of Indians who were prone to caste
oppression. His writings, petitions, and archives reveal the
castelessness of Tamil Buddhists and their commitment to
a radical political transformation in modern India. Key aspects of the
Tamil Buddhist movement include public mobilization for caste-free
societies, self-representation of oppressed communities, economic
redistribution through affirmative action, and a feminist critique of
caste and patriarchy. Through interdisciplinary methods drawn
from Critical Caste Studies, this monograph uncovers the intellectual
history of Tamil Buddhism and its radical call for vernacular
emancipation. It highlights how Indigenous, Tamil/Indian communities
used Buddhist foundations to resist caste and envision a modern,
casteless future. Lees meerSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Joseph Turow, "The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
3 juli 2026 · 1 uur 11 min
A respected voice on technology shows how seemingly simple ads help dismantle democracy and public discourse. Lees meer
Whether
you’re intentionally shopping or casually browsing social media,
something is following you: ads. Their creators seem to know your income
bracket, politics, age, location, medical conditions, and tastes in
clothing, food, and romantic partners. As advertising firms use
predictive AI to discover your hot buttons and generative AI to push
them, your online world becomes an increasingly bespoke—and
isolated—place. The fervid competition around personalization in digital
marketing has given rise to an ecosystem of advertisers, media outlets,
tech companies, and retailers who monetize your data while threatening
the health of our media, discourse, and sense of community. In this
urgent book, award-winning author Joseph Turow shows how we got here,
and how to change direction.The Problem with Personalization: How Advertisers Learned to Make and Break Us from Ancient Times to the AI Age (University
of Chicago Press, 2026) shatters common beliefs about advertising
history by showing that individualized ads are not new. Today’s
AI-enabled advertisers draw on past aspirations and assumptions about
personalization while weaponizing data in unprecedented ways that drive
social fragmentation and the disappearance of shared social reality.
Informed by interviews with marketing insiders and covering the latest
technology advances, Turow accessibly explains how artificial
intelligence sifts through our data to tag and target us wherever we go
with personalized videos, pictorial billboards, audio messages, and
more. A logical next step for advertiser support is tailored
entertainment and news, a shift that further destroys the common ground
necessary for a functioning democracy.A must-read for all who care about the future of public discourse, The Problem with Personalization reveals how targeted advertising has altered how we’re seen and what we see in return.
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The Once and Future Republic: On Cicero, Locke, and the Making of America with Michael C. Hawley
1 juli 2026 · 1 uur 19 min
In preparation for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, it would be wise to look back at the ancient thinkers and writers who helped inspire its early leaders. Perhaps the preeminent role model was the Roman statesman and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero. So here in Episode 11 of Season 5, I interview Michael C. Hawley to talk about the political philosophy of Cicero and his influence on the American Republic. Lees meer
Michael Hawley is an assistant professor in the School of Civic Life and Leadership at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow with the James Madison Program, he wrote the book, Natural Law Republicanism: Cicero's Liberal Legacy (2022). Now, he's working on a new one, Preaching to the Choir: The Rhetoric of Prophets, Reformers, and Demagogues.
Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.”
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Kate Bayliss, "Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets" (Manchester UP, 2026)
1 juli 2026 · 46 min
Privatising Humanity: How Our Essential Human Needs Became Financial Assets (Manchester UP, 2026) is the latest book from Dr Kate Bayliss, a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. Dr Bayliss’ excellent title, published with Manchester University Press, is a critical examination of the privatisation paradigm. Lees meer
In the book, Dr Bayliss specifically analyses the history, processes, political economy and outcomes of privatisation policies in Britain across three major economic sectors – that of water, energy, and housing. Infamously, Britain was arguably in the vanguard of a proliferation of privatisation policies in the 1980s, courtesy of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a key proponent of the neoliberal revolution at this time. Privatisation was touted as a solution for increased efficiency, the creation of a shareholder society, and relieving taxpayer burdens. Dr Bayliss’ book, Privatising Humanity, is a crucial tool to understand how privatisation policies were applied, who benefited, and whether the outcomes lives up to these expectations. It is both an exceptionally detailed account of the web of interests that have profited from privatisation, on the one hand, and on the other, a highly accessible volume that is critical reading in this current moment.
Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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The Honesty Crisis: Preserving Our Most Treasured Virtue in an Increasingly Dishonest
25 juni 2026 · 48 min
Research shows that honesty is the single most important characteristic a person can possess when it comes to liking them, respecting them, and understanding them. But honesty is eroding in many areas of society today, as we are confronted with honesty crises in politics, education, relationships, religion, celebrity culture, and technology. Lees meer
Over the past 50 years, no single philosopher has offered a comprehensive exploration of honesty—how we define it, how it diverges in private and public spaces, and how it depends on shared perceptions of reality. Dr. Christian Miller addresses this gap, while showing how modern life increasingly rewards dishonesty, with profound consequences for our relationships, institutions and culture—a phenomenon he names The Honesty Crisis (Oxford UP, 2026).
From cases such as sermon plagiarism to AI-assisted cheating to the rise of fake news, Dr. Miller explores how dishonesty has become easier, more pervasive and even normalized in our society. Yet The Honesty Crisis does more than diagnose the problem: it proposes concrete, practical steps to preserve honesty where it matters most.
Guest: Dr. Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. The author of numerous articles and books, he also directed The Honesty Project, one of the largest research initiatives ever undertaken on honesty.
Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She holds a Ph.D. in history which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.
Playlist for listeners:
Understanding Disinformation
When Your Professor Asks You To Cheat
The Last Human Job
Who Gets Believed
The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking
What Do You Want Out of Life
The Museum of Failure
The Well-Gardened Mind
A Meaningful Life
The Good- Enough Life
Tell Me What You Want
Welco…
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Charles J. Stivale, "Unfolding the Deleuze Seminars, 1970–1987: Summaries and Commentary" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
25 juni 2026 · 1 uur 43 min
From the inside flap: Lees meer
“A rich resource of Deleuze’s research that is unavailable in his published writing
Includes summaries of 216 seminar sessions available in transcripts and recordings
Summaries are based on research for the Deleuze Seminars project (co-directed by Charles J. Stivale and Daniel W. Smith), where full transcripts and translations, to which readers will have access for simultaneous or subsequent consultation, have been developed by an international team of scholar-translators
Alongside summaries, an attached critical apparatus provides references to corresponding links within Deleuze’s writings, seminars, and other sources to facilitate additional research
The texts in this volume - summaries of the 216 seminars taught by Gilles Deleuze - provide unique insight into the latter half of Deleuze’s teaching career. Deleuze understood his seminars as a laboratory for developing his ongoing research, and this volume is a guide to the creative becomings in the development of his philosophical works through teaching.
From Anti-Oedipus (1972) to The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1987), Deleuze examined a wide range of philosophical perspectives in pursuit of successive thematic topics. These summaries and commentaries serve as incitement for further research, allowing readers familiar with Deleuze’s work to find new angles of approach and providing greater access to readers coming to his work for the first time."New Books Network:
Stivale, Charles J., and Daniel W. Smith. (2025-10-21). "Gilles Deleuze, On Painting"
Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour:
Stivale, Charles J., Taylor Adkins, and Cooper Cherry. (2025-08-12). "Deleuze and Guattari – How Do You Make Yourself A Body Without Organs"
Stivale, Charles J., Daniel W. Smith. (2023-06-29). "Deleuze on Painting and Cinema".
The Deleuze Seminars: here
Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University
nathan.smith@yale.edu
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://n…
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Hilary R. Buxton, "Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
24 juni 2026 · 1 uur 19 min
Disabled Empire: The Colonial Body in First World War Britain (U Chicago Press, 2026) examines how imperial precedents and racial ideologies shaped the medical treatments that the British state offered to several million Black and brown servicemen during World War I. In recovering the voices and experiences of these soldiers, Hilary R. Buxton illustrates how they navigated the institutional culture of the imperial military and how they helped to shape health and welfare systems well beyond the interwar period. Lees meer
The Great War was the first time that troops and volunteers from nearly all reaches of the Empire participated in the war effort side-by-side. Despite official attempts at segregation, colonial troops met in trenches, mobile camps, casualty clearing stations, hospital ships, and convalescent homes. Just as importantly, those organizing treatment encountered men of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures from across and beyond the British Empire. For British officials, this moment offered an opportunity to remake colonial efficiency and medical knowledge. Yet, as Buxton shows, colonial servicemen were not passive subjects in a wartime laboratory: they were vocal participants who demanded a say in the therapies prescribed to them, the rations they required, the psychiatric care they received, and the prosthetics with which they were fitted. Together, these encounters profoundly remade colonial relations, reshaping imperial science, administration, and colonial understandings of subjecthood.
Disabled Empire pushes literature on the war and medicine outside its national, Eurocentric focus to confront the colonial logic of global health inequity.Hilary R. Buxton is assistant professor of history at Kenyon College.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19…
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Valerie Tiberius, "What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters" (Princeton UP, 2024)
24 juni 2026 · 1 uur 5 min
What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money―or work for justice? To have children―or travel the world? The things we care about in life―family, friendship, leisure activities, work, our moral ideals―often conflict, preventing us from doing what matters most to us. Even worse, we don’t always know what we really want, or how to define success. This insightful book offers invaluable advice about living well by understanding your values and resolving the conflicts that frustrate their fulfillment. Lees meer
What Do You Want Out of Life?: A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters (Princeton University Press, 2024) is an essential guide to helping you understand what really matters to you and how you can thoughtfully pursue it.
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
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Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality" (Oxford UP, 2026)
22 juni 2026 · 51 min
In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality (Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child. Lees meer
These categories are presented as natural truths, but Dembroff reveals them as man-made myths--ones that construct a reality in which being characterized as Woman, Animal, or Child marks moral degradation. By no coincidence, feminization, dehumanization, and infantilization are the very degradations used to make a man 'less of a man'.
But this book is more than critique; it's also a guide to transformation especially for those grappling with what it means to be a man under patriarchy. Patriarchy's myths celebrate the identity Man, but these myths are no friend to most men. Promising strength and superiority, they instead fuel isolation, emotional repression, and relentless pressure to prove oneself while propping up systems that enrich the powerful few. Rather than deliver freedom and prosperity, these myths entrap and impoverish. Real Men on Top invites readers to see through them and, in so doing, to find new possibilities for living, relating, and becoming human.
Sharp, daring, and deeply felt, Real Men on Top is a book for anyone who senses that something is deeply wrong with the way we live and wants to understand how we got here, and where we might begin the work of remaking reality.
Robin Dembroff is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Yale University
Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.
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Jean-Philippe Deranty, "The Case for Work" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 juni 2026 · 33 min
A post-work movement is gaining popularity among academics, artists, and activists, in reaction to the many harms and injustices plaguing current labour markets and work organizations, and the loomingdisruptions that automation is likely to cause. This movement anticipates and welcomes the demise of work as a central value of modern society. Against this rejection of work’s significance, The Case for Work argues that our situation is critical precisely because work matters, that it is a mistake to advocate a society beyond work on the basis of the current state of work. Rather, because work matters, we should try to organize it differently. The first part of the book locates the arguments feeding into the ‘case against work’ in the long history of social and political thought. This genealogical enquiry highlights many conceptual and methodological issues in classical and contemporary accounts. The second part of the book makes the ‘case for work’ in a positive way, through a dialectical argument. It shows that the very features of work that its critics emphasize, which make it akin to a ‘realm of necessity’, can in fact become the conduit for individual self-development and social solidarity, provided work is organized in conditions that are fair and equal. Lees meer
Interview hosted by Dr. Eve Vincent, on behalf of the Journal of Industrial Relations, prepared by Social Media and Outreach Editor Dr. Paula de la Cruz-Fernández.
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Steven Segal, "Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom" (Routledge, 2026)
19 juni 2026 · 54 min
In Mandela’s Leadership Legacy: Emotional and Existential Wisdom (Routledge, 2026) Steven Segal explores Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary ability to lead through moments of existential crisis and uncertainty. Central to Mandela's leadership was his attunement to mood—the emotional and existential atmosphere through which people experience disruption. Long overlooked in leadership studies, mood shaped the way Mandela created trust, defused fear, and opened possibilities when conventional strategies failed. Mandela’s wisdom was forged not only in prison but in the existential challenges he faced upon leaving the familiarity of his ancestral homeland and confronting the disorientation of city life. From this early rupture through to his imprisonment, the collapse of apartheid, and the assassination of Chris Hani, he demonstrated a rare capacity to transform existential threats into opportunities for renewal and unity. This book examines how Mandela combined strategic foresight with therapeutic sensitivity, allowing him to guide individuals and nations through disruption with ethical resolve and visionary clarity. Drawing on frameworks from Heidegger and Ubuntu it highlights Mandela’s "existential practical wisdom"—the ability to embrace uncertainty, work with paradox, and foster collective transformation through attuned presence. By investigating Mandela’s profound relational sensitivity, including his ability to turn estrangement and enmity into trust and collaboration, the book offers timeless lessons for navigating today’s global crises. It is ideal for professionals seeking inspiration for leading in turbulent times and for students interested in leadership, philosophy, or history. Lees meer
Steven Segal was formerly an Associate Professor of Management at Macquarie University, Australia and is currently in private practice as a psychologist and leadership coach. He also runs professional development workshops for coaches and psychotherapists.
Elena Sobrino is an anthropolo…
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Michael D. Nichols, "Batman and the Classics: Echoes of Mythology, Literature and Philosophy in the Comics and Films" (McFarland, 2026)
18 juni 2026 · 41 min
Fans of Batman are used to seeing the Caped Crusader associate with the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman, but what if one were to put the Dark Knight into the company of figures such as Beowulf, Robin Hood, Oedipus, and Sun Tzu, among others? Batman and the Classics: Echoes of Mythology, Literature and Philosophy in the Comics and Films (McFarland, 2026) is the first book to compare famous Batman graphic novels, story arcs, and films to classic texts of literature and philosophy from around the world. Through this comparison we can see, for instance, how the epic warrior archetype of Beowulf or Roland persists in The Dark Knight Returns, or how the metaphor of the journey, found in such works as The Odyssey, occurs in the story arc Knightfall. By placing Batman stories into conversation with such classic texts, this book sheds light on the deeper meanings of key stories of the Dark Knight, as well as how long-lasting themes of literature and philosophy have persisted in the fiction of this popular character. Lees meer
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