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New Books in Critical Theory

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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00:29:28

The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/10/03

The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice(Cambridge UP, 2026)highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an unprecedented lens for critically interrogating the legitimacy of incarceration across penal theory, sentencing practice, and human rights frameworks. The chapters chart pathways for bridging the gap between the normative idea of punishment and the stark realities of prison life. The final chapter, written with scholars currently and formerly

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01:07:39

Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/10/02

Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric on the international stage, from Global South to Global North and from the Left to the Right. Why do states deploy these forms of rhetoric in global politics? How do practitioners from the so-called non-Western world differ in their use and performance of rhetoric, and in what ways do they shape international order?In Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order(Columbia UP, 2026)Sasikumar

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00:50:06

Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism with...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/10/01

Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism(U Toronto Press, 2025)examines the deep historical roots of fundamentalism in Protestantism and the imaginative traditions of Romantic literature. It explores how the resurgence of fundamentalist thought within “born again” Christianity seeks to repress the trauma of modernity through the belief that the world must be radically transformed to align with a divine standard.By analysing the logic of this repression, the book reveals an alternative vision: a

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01:04:43

How to Stay Human Forever: On America's Digital...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/30

Many Americans have a constant dread of impending doom. Glued to the screens of our computers and smartphones, we sense that some total catastrophe is just around the corner. But what if our anxiety stems from an event that’s already completely destroyed an old world? What if the real cataclysm was the introduction of those computers and smartphones, and our current political, cultural, and social crisis is just our way of merely dealing with the fallout?So argues the political theorist James

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00:34:57

Do We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/29

Host Licia Cianetti talks to Lorenzo Feltrin about his recent book Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within (Verso, 2016). They discuss how the climate and ecological crisis often confronts workers with the impossible choice between the end of the month and the end of the world, but how this choice between jobs and environment is not as zero-sum as it is usually represented. Lorenzo explains how people living near toxic industries often lose both jobs and the environment, how

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00:48:13

Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/28

Offers a transformative reading of the Marxist tradition by uncovering its connections to the institutions and practices of worker education.For the past hundred years, “vulgar Marxism” has been the go-to insult among socialist and communist intellectuals, a shorthand for the ways Marxist theory could go wrong. But why would thinkers advocating for working-class emancipation use “vulgarity” as an epithet?In Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891–1931(U

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00:58:42

The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/28

A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Game and much of reality TV are cultural reflections of a society of relentless, lonely competition, where each of us must become a player: a savvy risk-taker, a miniature corporation of one. But in a

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01:35:56

How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/28

Tune in to this discussion aboutHow Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and CulturebyCarol C. Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses(Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race. Yet this seems to contradict the experiences of people in the United States and other countries where racial classification is used daily, by individuals and institutions. Race still matters, whether in wealth accumulation, educational achievement, health, the

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00:50:33

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/27

Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt(SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia.The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of

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01:22:29

Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/26

This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will take readers through a number of disparate topics, from the recent Disney remake of The Little Mermaid to experiments with psychedelics to the bizarre meanings one might find at its end. Uniting it all though is an unapologetically anticapitalist and utopian feminism, one that sees in various examples and experiences of femme glimpses both of

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00:46:47

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/26

Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical

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00:56:32

Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/25

Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it. Euben

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01:28:31

Assemblage Theory and Affect with Ian Buchanan...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/25

From the inside flap:“In this lucid and inventive work, Ian Buchanan argues that the pivotal concepts ‘assemblage’ and ‘affect,’ which were separated at birth, need to be reunited. Indeed, it is only by bringing them back together that we can fully understand their meaning. of Assemblage Theory and Affect (Bloomsbury, 2026) proposes three agenda-setting arguments:1. Affect is a function of desire—its powers are the powers we attribute to desire. As such, like desire it should be considered a

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00:57:36

The Nature of Freedom: On the Republican Tradition...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/23

What is freedom? Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin divided the answers to that question into two categories: the positive conception of the ancients (freedom to participate in political life) and the negative conception of the moderns (freedom from external constraints). But what if this dichotomy is a false one?My guest on Madison’s Notes thinks so. So in Episode 6 of Season 6, I interview the political philosopher, Philip Pettit. The L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at

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00:34:12

Angela Last, "Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/22

In Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project (Manchester University Press, 2026), Angela Last offers a provocative intervention into the tense relationship between new materialist and decolonial thought. Although both seek to challenge dominant European categories and hierarchies, they are often treated as incompatible. New materialisms, in particular, have been criticised for sustaining a white, universalised vision of the human and overlooking the racialised histories embedded in the

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01:11:38

Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/20

Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music – challenges the Eurocentric biases underpinning Western media. At the same time, his works generate

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00:42:26

Abi Bae and Hamza Hamouchene eds., "Towards...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/19

The book Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance & Solidarity(Daraja Press, 2026), published by Daraja Press, portrays a collection of solidarity movements around the world, highlighting the interconnectedness of global struggles with Palestine. It situates Palestine in a wider, historical decolonial liberation movement. By examining the role of economic and political interests, it critically assesses the opportunities and challenges that these movements

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42:04

Catherine A John, "Afroindigenization: A Theory of...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/15

In Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice (Duke University Press, 2026), Catherine A. John addresses the underbelly of spiritual resilience shaping a range of African diasporic institutions, traditions, and practices. John argues that repressed forms of indigenous African knowledge systems manifest in a myriad of culturally embodied ways in African diaspora spaces and places. From mermaid lore in rural Jamaica to hip-hop trance-induced dance in Los Angeles to the stories of two

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67:50

John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian,...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/12

In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. Applying an evolutionary and biological lens to these complex and universal human behaviours, the book distinguishes itself from classical and contemporary theories by focusing not simply on laughter’s causes and effects,

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70:47

Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/09/10

What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. InKin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences(Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that are universally known, such as the fact that human females are pregnant before they give birth. On the

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