New Books in Critical Theory

Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice (Princeton UP, 2026), Jonathan Quong considers central issues in political philosophy through the lens of this single question. He explores and evaluates recent influential work on this topic and then proposes a novel approach of his own. The puzzle at the heart of his account is the phenomenon of legitimate injustice—laws and policies that are substantively unjust yet may be legitimately imposed by government officials. How can such laws be legitimate if, as some have argued, justice is the first virtue of social institutions? Quong analyzes the work of those who deny that injustice committed by states can be legitimate simply by virtue of its democratic or procedural pedigree; the Kantian account of legitimate institutions and justice; instrumental approaches to political legitimacy; and the recent wave of work in democratic theory focused on its egalitarian character. Arguing that these analyses do not offer an adequate solution to the puzzle and that there are compelling reasons to revise or reject them, Quong lays out his view and explains the implications for more general theories of political morality. He argues that we can explain legitimate injustice by appeal to distributive justice. If political disagreement is inevitable, then unjust legislation is largely unavoidable; it constitutes a burden that must be distributed according to just principles. Quong's novel and illuminating framework offers a unique introduction to crucial questions in political philosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

The idea of civility goes back to classical Rome and the ways in which citizens engaged one another within the republic. The term itself is often used in a number of different ways, reflecting expected behavior, particularly in public spaces, and as a mechanism to manage human interaction. But civility and the use of this idea often shape hierarchical relationships within society and within politics and may define who is to be included within the polis and who may be excluded. Thus, the conversations that led to the new book, Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value, interrogated the idea of civility in many of its facets and did not necessarily settle on a simple definition or means of implementing civility within contemporary society. Michael DiNiscia, Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives at New York University's Brademas Center, and Ellyn Toscano, Director of the Hawthorndon Foundation, edited this valuable exploration of the idea of civility within democracy. In so doing, they brought together academics, politicians and former politicians, activists, artists, and individuals from the foundation world to discuss this controversial idea of civility, unpacking the term, the way it is used, and how society may consider civility within the realm of politics and public life. I had the pleasure of discussing Civility Unbound with Michael DiNiscia and Hussein Rashid, one of the contributing authors. Our conversation covered the content of the book, tracing the sections that include philosophy and political theory, democratic institutions and politics, social justice and protest, media engagement, and lessons from arts and culture. The chapters are fascinating and accessible. As a reader, you feel as though you are part of the ongoing conversation with the various authors, since the chapters are in dialogue with each other and with the reader, without coming to a consensus on the role and capacity of civility within democratic society but with many paths to consider. The impetus for this book, and for focusing on the idea of civility, grew out of the events of January 6, 2021, and an overarching question about whether the United States could return to a state of civility in our politics, after we had witnessed the violent insurrection that attempted to stymie the constitutional process of tallying Electoral College votes. Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value brings many voices together to, in a way, respond to this violence, this incivility that had been demonstrated by a group of American citizens. The various contributing authors to Civility Unbound take up the theory and practice of civility, trying to determine what it actually means and the rules around civility and political engagement. Across the chapters we find that there is a paradox around civility, around who is asked to “remain civil” and who gets to define what civility means. Civility may well reside within power relationships and dynamics, with rules applied to some groups or individuals and not to others. Invoking civility may well surface inequalities and the unequal places and footing of those engaging in politics and society. This is particularly important to consider in context of American democracy, and the unequal distribution of power and state violence inherent in the American state. Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value prompts the reader to consider how democratic engagement works and how we are to participate in attempts at self-rule. We discussed the First America podcast during the conversation. Here is a link to the podcast website: First America Podcast Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Alex Cain. Dr Alex Cain researches in the fields of political theory and ethical theory, with a particular focus on the work of Hannah Arendt, among other figures in the history of philosophy. Her work in this field has so far mostly focussed on the topics of friendship, political action, judgement and the role of experience in philosophical inquiry. They discuss Sidney Nolan's duty to paint the concentration camps, the hopefulness of Hannah Arendt, and the importance of the banality of evil. A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website here. Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

One year after the publication of Gastronomica's special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question of what a philosophical perspective could bring to addressing food-related issues. In this episode, he talks with Gastronomica author and philosopher Sascha Benjamin Fink about human perception and how people experience the world, taking up questions at the cutting edge of science, art, and gastronomy. Sascha discusses the role of the senses and sensory manipulation in gastronomy and explains how common experiences of eating can lend real-world insights into sensory engineering. Over the course of their conversation Bob and Sascha consider different examples – such as the setting of the table, spatial design, experimental cuisine, and the use of AI in recipe development – and weigh in on what sensory engineering can also reveal about gastronomy. The article Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering, co-authored by Sascha Benjamin Fink and Brandon Ashby, appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of Gastronomica. “Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering” was one of fifteen short papers in a special section dedicated to philosophical perspectives on food issues. Access the articles in volume 25.3 of the journal here and learn more about the special section in Episode 53: Mapping Food and Philosophy of the Gastronomica podcast. Sascha Benjamin Fink works on the philosophy of mind with research interests in consciousness, sensory engineering, and new technologies, and most recently has been Director of Research at the Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR) at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. As of August 2026, he works at the University of Cologne on sensory engineering in the DFG-AHRC Project SENSOR (DFG 527947799). Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica. Gastronomica: The Journal for Food Studies is published by the University of California Press. Quarterly issues are available in print and online. Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica's podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the latest in a long line of forces affecting human-animal relations. Grey parrots travelled the world as pets; rats used global shipping infrastructure to spread to far-off islands and became the object of cross-border extermination campaigns; and California sea otters were relocated to accommodate global oil transportation needs. The language of globalization, however, is rarely used to understand the history of these creatures. Globalizing Wildlife (UNC Press, 2026) shows how wild animals were not simply affected by globalization but shaped its concrete trajectories at local, national, and international scales. The editors and contributors of this collection bring the more-than-human turn to globalization studies, foregrounding not only how globalization matters for wildlife but also how wildlife matters for and constitutes globalization. The volume presents a range of geographically- and species-diverse case studies spanning from the 1870s to the present day to show that globalizing wildlife is far from a homogenous process. Ultimately, contributors reconceptualize globalization and wildlife in relation to one another and foster new connections between the longstanding study of globalization and the dynamic, rapidly consolidating field of historical animal studies. Contributors are Vincent Bijman, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Regina Horta Duarte, George Iordachescu, Nancy J. Jacobs, Ajit Menon, Gregg Mitman, Nitin D. Rai, Simone Schleper, Jules Skotnes-Brown, Monica Vasile, and James L. A. Webb Jr. Jacob Ward is an historian at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. He has written on the history of science and technology, environmental history, business and financial history, and political history. He recently published Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024) and he's currently working on a history of futurology in the United Kingdom and Europe from 1945 to the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action (Bloomsbury, 2024) helps us reimagine our approach to environmental stewardship critically interrogating the problems associated with existing legacies of environmentalism and how we imagine other ways to addressing the multiple planetary crises. The authors cast a critical eye on wealthy and influential environmental groups that committed to anti-racist strategies in the wake of the racial awakening of 2020. Yet, they continue to embrace false solutions like carbon markets and biodiversity offsets, which carry deeply racialized consequences. By tracing the roots of these misplaced priorities to detrimental modernity steeped in colonialism and capitalism, the authors call for transformational changes in human-nature relationships. They distill lessons from the divestment movement, which has questioned the fossil fuel industry's moral standing, and food sovereignty activists, who have mobilized global civil society to hold agribusiness corporations accountable. In these extraordinary times, Decolonizing Environmentalism invites readers to embark on a transformative journey to embrace anti-racist, emancipatory, and regenerative approaches to environmentalism. Prakash Kashwan is an educator, author, and scholar, whose work cuts across the fields of climate governance, environmental and climate justice, and international affairs. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He also holds faculty affiliations with the Heller School of Social Policy & Management, and Politics Department at Brandeis. Before moving to Brandeis, he was a tenured Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut and Co-directed the Economic and Social Rights Research Program at UConn's Human Rights Institute. Pauline Heinrichs is a Lecturer in War Studies (Climate and Energy) at King's College London. Her research focuses on global environmental politics with a particular focus on climate and energy security, climate justice grievances, international orders and questions concerning security and existential risks in a warming world. She co-directs the Centre for Integrated Research in Risk and Resilience (CIRRR) and the Environmental Security Research Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Why do people read? In The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object (Manchester University Press, 2026)  María Angélica Thumala Olave, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh's School of Social and Political Science, explores people's relationship to books and to reading, demonstrating the pleasure and importance books provide in contemporary life. Moving beyond a narrow focus on the social status offered by books and reading, the analysis shows the role of material objects, along with the emotional engagements and social bonds forged by the practices associated with books and reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini The study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its history it struggled to gain academic legitimacy and was frequently derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth century. Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings, he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records, the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English teaching in schools. Drawing on extensive use of institutional archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary, cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance today. Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge. Stefan Collini was educated at Cambridge and Yale. Following a Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, he was Lecturer, then Reader, in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex 1974-86; Lecturer, then Reader, then Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at the University of Cambridge 1986-2014. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and Guardian. 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. The 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 of the Queen's College, University of Oxford, and former director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. “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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. The 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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Baudelaire'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, Dr. Acquisto's books include French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music, The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy, Poetry's Knowing Ignorance, Living Well with Pessimism in Nineteenth-Century France, and Reading Baudelaire with Adorno: Dissonance, Subjectivity, Transcendence.  Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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.  In 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Ganja 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Since 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; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British 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

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. 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 Corbin2 | 10:48 Loneliness and the Limits of Liberalism3 | 19:48 Soul and the Science of Belonging4 | 29:00 Cognitive Metabolism and World Decay5 | 42:30 Diotima and Zosima6 | 48:32 Corbin's friendship with Sen. Chris Murphy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Like 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 Asia. Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. This 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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Dr. 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 NBN conversations on similar topics, see these interviews on Herman Bavinck's Christology and academic addresses or an introduction on Neo-Calvinism or the T&T Clark handbook on the global movement. For the NBN conversation on a Bavinck biography. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Matthis 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. For 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 is the author of Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life (JPS) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring' labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s. 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; 18th and 19th Century British 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

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. Giulio 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 space-tech company specializing in Earth observations. His books include Water: A Biography, and his work has been featured in acclaimed PBS series such as H2O: The Molecule That Made Us, Human Footprint, and The Future of Nature. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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" 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 directors of the Critical Thinking and Citizen Engagement Lab at the University of Lethbridge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. In 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 New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. The 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Todd 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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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 Context: “Bread and circuses” in the modern world - One of the book's central ideas is that Juvenal's famous phrase “bread and circuses” remains relevant today. Warner uses it to examine how entertainment, consumption, and everyday distraction can draw citizens away from civic responsibility. The many forms of diversion- The book considers a wide range of modern distractions, including celebrity worship, money, sports, politics, art, music, literature, the internet, social media, and video games. Together, these examples show how distraction can operate across culture, politics, economics, and everyday life. Democracy and civic duty - At the heart of the book is a concern with democracy. Warner argues that distraction becomes dangerous when it weakens civic engagement and allows people to avoid the difficult work of political and ethical responsibility. Critical thinking as resistance - The later chapters of 'False Idols' focus on critical thinking as a way of resisting manipulation and recovering agency. The book invites readers to examine not only what they consume, but also how their attention, values, and judgments are shaped. The psychological dimension of distraction - Warner's background in psychotherapy informs the book's attention to emotion, avoidance, and self-awareness. Distraction is presented not only as a social or political problem, but also as something that affects how individuals relate to themselves and others. Vernon Press – Bridging Scholarly Ideas and Global Readership Vernon Press stands out as a bilingual independent publisher of scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. Their mission is crucial — to provide a home for ideas of international importance and to embrace scholarship from underrepresented voices and perspectives. Through its diverse catalog, Vernon Press engages with global readers, contributing to academic and public discourse. Dessy Vassileva, the Marketing & Design expert at Vernon Press, brings a 360º multidisciplinary approach to her work at Vernon Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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 Ambedkarian Chronicle, April 14, 2026. Rahul Sonpimple, “Kanshi Ram Sahab: Beyond Bureaucratic Dalit Passivity,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, March 15, 2026. Rahul Sonpimple, “Spontaneity in Ambedkar: Beyond the Passivity of Popular Dalit Discourse,” The Ambedkarian Chronicle, April 16, 2025. Rahul Sonpimple, “The End of Independent Ambedkarite Dalit Politics?” Round Table India, July 12, 2024. Rahul Sonpimple, “Dalit conversions: An act of rebellion against caste supremacy,” Al Jazeera, 14 June 2018. Himsa and ahimsa are foundational ethical concepts in Buddhism. Himsa refers to injury, harm, or violence and ahimsa to non-harming, non-violence, or compassion. Ambedkar critiqued extreme, blanket doctrines of ahimsa as unworkable and often hypocritical. Chokhamela was a saint-poet from Maharashtra, India who belonged to the Mahar caste and was a devotee of Vitthala. Bhakt: devotee Vitthala: Hindu deity worshipped mainly in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka as an avatar of Vishnu. Kabir and Ravidas: medieval poet-saints who were part of the Bhakti movement (7th-17th century), which emphasized devotion to a personal god, rather than rituals and scriptural knowledge, as the path to spiritual liberation. Samata Sainik Dal: a social organization founded by B. R. Ambedkar in 1927 with the objective of safeguarding the rights of all oppressed sections of Indian society. Bhima Koregaon: a village in Maharashtra that was the site of an 1818 battle between the army of Peshwa Baji Rao II and an East India Company force comprised mainly of Mahars, a Dalit caste. This battle has attained legendary status for Dalits who view it as a victory of Mahars over the Brahminical Peshwas. Baniya: refers to mercantile castes primarily from the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat. Kanshi Ram: Indian social reformer and politician who founded the All India Backwards and Minorities Communities Employees' Federation (BAMCEF) in 1971 and the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984. Jogendra Nath Mandal: Bengali politician and Dalit leader who held the law portfolio in the 1946-47 Interim Government of India and served as the Minister of Law and Labor in Pakistan from 1947-50. Rajah: M.C. Rajah was a Tamil politician and Dalit leader who served on the Madras Legislative Council in the 1920s and founded the All India Depressed Classes Association in 1925. Kamble: B.C. Kamble was a Marathi politician and Dalit leader who led the Republican Party of India for decades. BAMCEF: All India Backwards and Minorities Communities Employees' Federation UGC Bill: officially the University Grants Commission (Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions) Regulations, 2026, is a set of regulations aimed at ending discrimination against marginalized communities in higher education. Following widespread protests and a public interest litigation (PIL), the Supreme Court of India stayed the regulations in January 2026. Bhagwa kapda: saffron clothing Scheduled Caste Federation: a political organization founded in 1942 by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar dedicated to advocating for the rights and political self-representation of the Dalit community. Republican Party of India: a political party established by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in 1956. PESA: Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996 is a landmark legislation enacted by the Government of India to ensure self-governance for tribal communities living in Fifth Schedule Areas. Manusmriti: a text that served as a foundational legal and societal framework in ancient India. EWS: refers to the Economically Weaker Section, a government classification referring to those within the unreserved (general) category eligible for a 10% quota in government jobs and educational admissions. Karan Johar: an Indian filmmaker, producer and television personality. Dharavi: a residential area in Mumbai (Bombay) considered one of the world's largest slums. Adani: Gautam Adani is an Indian billionaire and chairperson of the multinational conglomerate, the Adani Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory