Marx and the Politics of Need with George Boss (Routledge, 2026)
When one hears about needs in the context of politics, one might imagine that they are dealing with facts that simply cannot be circumvented...
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New Books in Critical Theory
Interviews with Scholars of Critical Theory about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member!
Episodes
20 of 2,385 episodesDisability, Revolution with Robert McRuer (U California Press, 2026)
In Disability, Revolution (U California Press, 2026), Robert McRuer introduces alternatives to "one-dimensional disability," providing an ac...
Meta-Theory, with Brendan Graham Dempsey
Today I sit down with Brendan Graham Dempsey, Director of Research at the Institute of Applied Metatheory, where he thinks about human meani...
Orson Welles: Revised and Expanded 3rd Edition with Joseph McBride (Sticking Place Books, 2026)
Orson Welles is a foundational work of Welles criticism. First published by Joseph McBride in the British Film Institute's Cinema One series...
The Invisibility Of Religion In Contemporary Art with Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkins
In this episode of the Books for Better Understanding series from Notre Dame Press, David Carlson hosts Jonathan A. Anderson and James Elkin...
Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe with John Callanan (Princeton UP, 2025)
In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full...
Subalterns and the State with Lisa Mitchell and Hari Ramesh
This episode features a conversation with historical anthropologist Lisa Mitchell and political theorist Hari Ramesh whose recent books make...
An Injury to All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class with Ewan Gibbs (Verso, 2026)
Whatever happened to the working class? A compelling new social history of Britain since 1945 From the picket lines of the Miners' Strike to...
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism with Peter G. Jones (Essentia Books, 2025)
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundame...
Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs with Michael Doan (AK Press, 2026)
In Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs (AK Press, 2026), Michael Doan explores the work and legacy...
Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public with Keegan Cook Finberg (Columbia UP, 2025)
What is the place of poetry in the modern world? In Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public (Columbia UP, 2025), Keegan Cook Fi...
Once Upon a Time in South Central LA: John Singleton's Hood Trilogy with Mark D. Cunningham (UP of Mississippi, 2026)
After the groundbreaking success of his debut film, Boyz N the Hood in 1991, filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) gained worldwide acclaim,...
Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan with Maxime Polleri (NYU Press, 2026)
The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the h...
In Praise of Agnes Heller (1919-2019)
Agnes Heller loved being part of the Budapest School--and she hated being part of any school. In his 2019 In Memoriam piece, John explored h...
No! The Art and Activism of Complaining
To be heard as complaining is not to be heard, writes Sara Ahmed. In No! The Art and Activism of Complaining, her sweeping exploration of co...
Rooted Movements: The Radical Poetics of Palestinian Space with Amanda Batarseh (Syracuse UP, 2026)
A Conversation with the author Amanda Batarseh about Rooted Movements: The Radical Poetics of Palestinian Space (Syracuse UP, 2026). Present...
Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block with Talitha LeFlouria (Beacon Press, 2022)
In Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (Beacon Press, 2022), his...
First Among Equals: Visions of Equality Before Egalitarianism with Teresa M. Bejan (Harvard UP, 2026)
Today, political theorists and philosophers treat as axiomatic the claim that all persons are equal. Dig deeper, however, and what we mean b...
In Defence of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology with Thomas Fuchs (Oxford UP, 2021)
At a time when artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and digital technologies increasingly shape our understanding of what it means to be h...
Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology As First Philosophy with Roger T. Ames (SUNY Press, 2025)
Contrasts classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with Confucian "zoetology" ("the art of living"). In Living Chinese Ph...