New Books in Critical Theory

Marshall Poe
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New Books in Critical Theory

Interviews with Scholars of Critical Theory about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

  1. -9 H

    Jennifer Denbow, "Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype" (Duke UP, 2024)

    In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific innovation in contemporary American life often comes at the expense of the care work and reproductive labor that is necessary for society to function. Noting that the gutting of social welfare programs has shifted the burden of solving problems to individuals, Denbow argues that the aggrandizement of innovation and the degradation of reproductive labor are intertwined facets of neoliberalism. She shows that the construction of innovation as a panacea to social ills justifies the accumulation of wealth for corporate innovators and the impoverishment of those feminized and racialized people who do the bulk of reproductive labor. Moreover, even innovative technology aimed at reproduction—such as digital care work platforms and noninvasive prenatal testing—obscure structural injustices and further devalue reproductive labor.  By drawing connections between innovation discourse, the rise of neoliberalism, financialized capitalism, and the social and political degradation of reproductive labor, Denbow illustrates what needs to be done to destabilize the overvaluation of innovation and to offer collective support for reproduction.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    59 min

  2. -9 H

    Infrastructure, Development, and Racialization

    International development projects supported by governments of wealthy countries, international financial institutions, and influential NGOs like the Gates Foundation purport to uplift poor or disadvantaged populations through political, economic, and social interventions in these communities. However, practices, policies, and discourses of development also have a darker side: they are both premised on and perpetuate the translation of social difference into deficit, ranking groups according to their perceived ‘stage’ of historical development. My guest today, the political theorist Begüm Adalet, has explored how discourses and practices of development have interacted with political processes of racialization. She also examines how anti-colonial movements can resist racialized development practices by envisioning alternative means of recrafting built environments and the creation of selves. Our interview today focuses on three recent articles that she has published in academic journals: “Agricultural infrastructures: Land, race, and statecraft in Turkey,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space vol. 40, no. 6 (2022): 975-993 “Infrastructures of Decolonization: Scales of Worldmaking in the Writings of Frantz Fanon,” Political Theory vol. 50, no. 1 (2022): 5-31 “An Empire of Development: American Political Thought in Transnational Perspective,” American Political Science Review (2024) Begüm Adalet is assistant professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She is the author of Hotels and Highways: The construction of modernization theory in Cold War Turkey (Stanford, 2018), which I interviewed her about for the New Books Network in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    1 h 20 min

  3. -9 H

    Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

    How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million dollars? In America, your liberty--or even your life--may be forfeit not simply because of what you do, but where you do it. If the same man had run off with a lobster roll from a lunch counter in Maine it's unlikely that he'd be spending the rest of his life behind bars. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other industrial democracy in the world. We have more ex-prisoners than the entire population of Ireland, and more people with a felony record than the populations of Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and Liberia combined. Why did the United States become the world's biggest jailer? And, just as importantly, what has it done to us? What are the costs--socially, economically, and politically--of having the world's largest population of ex-prisoners? And what can we do about it? In The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), Kevin B. Smith explains that the United States became the world's biggest jailer because politicians wanted to do something about a very real problem with violent crime. That effort was accelerated by a variety of partisan and socio-demographic trends that started to significantly reshape the political environment in the 1980s and 1990s. The force of those trends varied from state to state, but ultimately led to not just historically unprecedented levels of incarceration, but equally unprecedented numbers of ex-prisoners. Serving time behind bars is now a normalized social experience--it affects a majority of Americans directly or indirectly. There is a clear price, the jailer's reckoning, to be paid for this. As Smith shows, it is a society with declining levels of civic cohesion, reduced economic prospects, and less political engagement. Mass incarceration turns out to be something of a hidden bomb, a social explosion that inflicts enormous civic collateral damage on the entire country, and we must all do something about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    52 min

  4. -1 J

    Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)

    Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Humanities and social sciences education has often not only failed to deliver on its promise but even entrenched the inequalities that the medical profession set out to address.  In Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities (Columbia UP, 2024), Lauren D. Olsen examines how U.S. medical school faculty conceived, designed, and implemented their vision of education, tracing the failures of curricular reform. She argues that the way medical students encounter humanities and social sciences material in practice has served to reinforce the status quo by teaching them to individualize systemic problems. Students learn to avoid advocacy, critique, and attention to structural inequalities—while also gathering that it will be up to them to find coping strategies for problems from burnout to systemic racism. Olsen pinpoints the limitations of how clinical faculty understand the humanities and social sciences, arguing that in structuring and teaching courses, they assumed, reinforced, and glorified a white, elite model of the medical profession. Showing how deeply intertwined professional and social identities are in medical education, Curricular Injustice has significant implications for how occupations, organizations, and institutions shape understandings of inequality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    53 min

  5. -1 J

    Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

    In Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern UP, 2024), Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay enact a dialogue between cinema, philosophy, and ecocriticism to tarry with the question of ecological catastrophe. Taking as one of their conceptual points of departure Freud’s writing on negation, the authors elaborate a concept of ‘negative life’ to contest current approaches to ecocriticism predicated upon ideas of entanglement, presence, and connection. In their book, Swarbrick and Tremblay engage critically with a broad body of films—including Kelly Reichardt, Julian Pölsler, Mahesh Mathai, and Paul Schrader—and a range of conceptual paradigms (from antisocial queer theory and psychoanalytic thought to object-oriented ontology and theories of melodrama) to unsettle many of ecocriticism’s foundational assumptions. In this interview, we unpack some of the core themes and organising principles of the book and discuss the nature of collaborative writing. Jules O’Dwyer is Teaching Associate in Film Studies and French at the University of Cambridge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    59 min

  6. -2 J

    Jordan S. Carroll, "Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

    Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a high-tech future. Other white nationalists envision racist utopias filled with Aryan supermen and all-white space colonies. Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) traces these ideas through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Although fascists insist that tomorrow belongs to them, they have always been and will continue to be contested by antifascist fans willing to fight for the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    47 min

  7. -3 J

    Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)

    After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop (Beacon Press, 2024), political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the reader to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future. A feminist myth buster, Khader begins by deconstructing “faux feminisms.” Thought to be the pillars of good feminism, they may appeal to many but, in truth, leave most women behind. Khader identifies these traps that white feminism lays for us all, asking readers to think critically about: –The Freedom Myth: The overarching misconception that feminism is about personal freedom rather than collective equality. –The Individualism Myth: The pervasive idea that feminism aims to free individual women from social expectations. –The Culture Myth: The harmful misconception that “other” cultures restrict women’s liberation. –The Restriction Myth: The flawed belief that feminism is a fight against social restrictions. –The Judgment Myth: The fallacy of celebrating women’s choices without first interrogating the privileges afforded or denied to the women. In later chapters, Khader draws on global and intersectional feminist lessons of the past and present to imagine feminism’s future. She pays particular attention to women of color, especially those in the Global South. Khader recounts their cultural and political stories of building a more inclusive framework in their societies. These are the women, she argues, from whom today’s feminists can learn. Khader’s critical inquiry begets a new vision of feminism: one that tackles inequality at the societal, not individual, level and is ultimately rooted in community. Serene Khader is Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College and Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Emily K. Crandall is a Doctoral Lecturer in Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College. She holds a PhD in Political Theory from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    1 h 5 min

  8. -5 J

    Carrie J. Preston, "Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

    In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complicit participation and that of other audience members and theater professionals, deftly examining the prevailing framework through which white liberals participate in antiracist theater and institutional “diversity, equity, and inclusion” initiatives.  Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice (Oxford UP, 2024) addresses immersive, documentary, site-specific, experimental, street, and popular theatre in chapters on Jean Genet’s The Blacks, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s An Octoroon, George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field, and Claudia Rankine’s The White Card. Far from abandoning the work to dismantle institutionalized racism, Preston seeks to reveal the contradictions and complicities at the heart of allyship as a crucial step toward full and radical participation in antiracist efforts. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy interviews Carrie J. Preston about the intersections of theater, racial justice, and social activism, the concept of “complicit participation,” and allyship. Ibrahim Fawzy is a literary translator and writer based in Boston. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

    53 min
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À propos

Interviews with Scholars of Critical Theory about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Informations

  • Création
    Marshall Poe
  • Années d’activité
    2013 - 2024
  • Épisodes
    1,8 k
  • Classification
    Tous publics
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Site web de l’émission
    New Books in Critical Theory

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