mstyslavity/zer0-books huggingface dataset:
Levinas Unhinged
by Tom Sparrow

Levinas Unhinged presents philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as a metaphysician racked by the sensuous, and often terrifying, materiality of existence.

Through six heterodox essays this book extracts a materialist account of subjectivity and aesthetics from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. More than a work of academic commentary that would leave many of Levinas’s pious commentators aghast, Sparrow exhibits an aspect of Levinas which is darker, yet no less fundamental, than his ethical and theological guises. This darkened Levinas provides answers to problems in aesthetics, speculative philosophy, ecology, ethics, and philosophy of race, problems which not only trouble scholars, but which haunt anyone who insists that the material of existence is the beginning and end of existence itself.

Reviews:
Admitting from the off that his aim is not to ‘get Levinas right’, [Sparrow] seeks to defamiliarize Levinas through a series of powerful readings, each foregrounding the strange, unsettling and liminal aspects of his philosophy: the centrality of the body, materiality, the night. The result is impressive. Sparrow presents a Levinas who is both haunted and haunting — and, a Levinas primed for an engagement with the turn towards the weird and visceral that we see in recent speculative philosophy. ~ Will Rees, 3:AM Magazine

Most 'defenders' of Levinas have undercut his genius by presenting him either as a pious old finger-wagging grandpa or as Jacques Derrida's halfhearted apprentice. In this book Tom Sparrow gives us the true Levinas: a formidable metaphysician who did more than anyone else to sensualize and concretize the work of Heidegger. Levinas is not in our rearview mirror, but remains in our motorcade today. He will still have much to teach us. Sparrow lucidly reminds us why. ~ Graham Harman, Associate Provost for Research Administration and Professor of Philosophy, American University in Cairo

Levinas Unhinged shows us another side of Levinas that is often ignored or overlooked. Sparrow's Levinas is foremost a philosopher of the night, attuned to the shadowy underbelly of appearances. Removed from his role as the high priest of ethics, Levinas appears in a new way. Now, the terms horror, indifference, and facelessness all come to the foreground as central to an understanding of Levinasian philosophy. This provocative reading is thus not only a challenge to Levinas scholarship, it is also a challenge to materialist ontology more broadly. The result is a worthy contribution to current debates in speculative realism and phenomenology. ~ Dylan Trigg, Research Fellow at École Normale Supérieure and University College Dublin
Levitate the Primate
by Michael Thomsen

A lovestory in fragments, told in the margins of a new philosophy of 21st Century sexuality.

A collection of essays and confessions about sex, taken, in large part, from a period of time, when author, Michael Thomsen was writing a sex and dating blog for Nerve.com

Reviews:
Michael Thomsen writes about sex like someone who's actually had it. That is, the sex in this book isn't like the sex in movies, or porno movies, or 99% of books about sex--it's real: funny, confusing, gross, thrilling, and occasionally beautiful. You could say the same about the book. Thomsen writes with wit, intelligence, and impressive candor about things most people are too embarrassed to discuss. The end product is a book that everyone--virgins and experts alike--will find engrossing, illuminating, and absolutely hilarious. ~ Adam Wilson, Author, Flatscreen

A crushingly honest collection of confessions about love in the shape of sex, from which any American man could learn a thing or ten. ~ Malcolm Harris, The New Inquiry
Long Struggle, The
by Amil Khan

The best thing America can do for the Middle East is lose

In The Long Struggle, Amil Khan explains how a shell shocked Muslim world struggled for over a century between emulation and rejection of the West while international events continued to stoke anger among people who were forced to give up the wealth and global influence they felt was their birth right. But it is not going to continue like that, Khan argues. The forces unleashed by the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have forced Muslims to snap out of their dysfunctional relationship with the West. Muslims are finding that Western power is not all conquering and those who present themselves as polar opposites to all things Western are not necessarily Islamic. As the struggle ends, the opportunity to build a new relationship arises. Amil Khan spent 10 years working as a journalist in the Middle East, Africa and Britain before pursuing in depth research and working on counter extremism projects.

Reviews:
In a surprisingly readable format for a scholarly presentation, the author takes the reader on a fascinating journey through personal conversations with Jihadi fighters, fellow journalists and young teenaged Muslim extremists in the UK.

This is a well-researched book and an excellent read for those wanting to understand Muslim world history and outlook; keep up-to-date on unfolding events in the Middle East; and separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to truth and fiction about the Islamic world and organizations.

~ June Maffin, Bookpleasures

For those who do not have an extensive knowledge of the West’s dealings with the Middle Eastern countries in the last century or so this is an excellent, concise and balanced introduction. The current focus on radicalized Islam tends to obscure our understanding of the genuine historical grievances and frustrations that have prevented civil freedom and statehood emerging in the Middle East. This book deftly clarifies a complex picture, especially at a time of tremendous change.

~ Simon Iredale, The Goodbookstall

Across the Arab and Islamic worlds, argues the author, nearly all political trends, whether secular or Islamist, share a sense of humiliation at having lost former glory at the hands of the West and therefore tend to define their politics in terms of their relationship to the West, alternately calling for emulating or rejecting the West. He offers a capsule history describing the relations with the West and how it impacted politics in the region, contending that the dysfunctional relationship with the West is beginning to change as it becomes evident that the West is incapable of actually controlling events in the Arab or Islamic worlds. The time has come, he says, for politics in the Arab and Islamic worlds to be defined by inner dynamics and not in relation to the West.

~ Book News Inc
Made in Brooklyn
by Amanda Wasielewski

The artist is dead. There are only makers now.

Made in Brooklyn is a belated critique of the Maker Movement: from its origins in the nineteenth century to its impact on labor and its entanglement in the neoliberal economic model of the tech industry. Part history, part ethnography, Made in Brooklyn provides a unified analysis of how the tech industry has infiltrated artistic practice and urban space.

Reviews:
This was a great book. Highly researched, Made in Brooklyn offers a perspective on how and why makers culture took over bad areas of NY (and other cities in the world - the motives seem applicable in most big cities with hip neighbourhoods) and transformed them into middle-class, eclectic, gentrified areas. I'll recommend this book to all of my friends who believe that buying triple organic vegetables is better than (average) organic products from local markets.

~ Silvia Patriche , NetGalley

Anybody interested in artist-led urban gentrification in general, and the poster child for this process - Brooklyn, NYC - should read this book. Combining journalistic, ethnographic and academic perspectives, the book is an engaging, provocative, and pleasurable. Read it and you will see your own city in new ways. ~ Lev Manovich

Since the 19th century Paris prototype, the bohemian romance of young artists navigating the perils and possibilities of the great metropolis has proven both remarkably durable and highly dynamic. In this excellent book, Amanda Wasielewski updates bohemia for the 21st century, via the notorious art scene taking shape against the jagged backdrop of a rapidly changing Brooklyn. Digging beneath the facile and pejorative “hipster” stereotype that dogs Millennial artists, she depicts how young creatives operate in the context of hyper-gentrification and an emergent “gig” economy shaped in equal parts by new media and contingent labor. Ever resourceful, these digitally savvy and increasingly entrepreneurial artists invent new styles of self-expression and self-promotion, while struggling, not always successfully, to preserve their autonomy. Avoiding the traps of either utopian boosterism or cynical critique, Wasielewski gifts us with a measured, analytically incisive and vividly rendered account of a major new trends, in both cities and art. ~ Richard Lloyd, author of Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City
Magic Kingdom, The
by Dan Hind

What would you need if you wanted to live in a democracy? What would living in a democracy be like?

Anyone who knows anything about Britain knows that it is a democracy and a constitutional monarchy. The trouble is, it is neither. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is one of the most exotic nations on earth.

In the republican form of government a defined public exercise sovereign power. Most modern states describe themselves as democratic republics. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is an anomaly, in that formal sovereignty is still denied to its people.

In The Magic Kingdom Dan Hind explores what the republican tradition has to offer the British at a time of deep political, social and economic dislocation. He considers what innovations are necessary if liberty is to be secured in current conditions. His argument will surprise many who consider themselves republicans. It will upset those who benefit from the current arrangements. It offers a way forward for those who can no longer tolerate steepening inequality and its associated ills.

Existing republican institutions have not been able to deliver public control of the state. If substantive democracy is to be possible in large and complex societies, the systems of communication, subsidy and credit must be made subject to popular oversight and control. In a disarmingly calm manner, Hind shows how this can be done, by minor adjustments to the existing institutions.

Perhaps, unlikely as it sounds, Britain will provide the venue for the world's first truly republican society.

Longlisted for the BREAD AND ROSES PRIZE 2015

Reviews:
Dan Hind’s short book The Magic Kingdom is perhaps the best read post-referendum. He not only dissects the contradictions of a non-existent British constitution but provides a practical vision for a modern, republican, future. ~ Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football

A good attempt to get people to think, the precondition for becoming truly human. Dan Hind is one of England's very best public writers. ~ Anthony Barnett
Meaning of David Cameron, The
by Richard Seymour

What you won't have got in the televised debates, party manifestos, campaign trail propaganda and media coverage, portaining to Cameron the cipher and the social forces he represents.

David Cameron was sold to the British electorate as a thoroughly modern politician, part Blair, part Thatcher, a one nation conservative with a soft spot for social democracy, the green movement, big and small business, youth, minorities, traditionalists, the armed forces and the old. Has a politician ever been sold as so many things to so many people, at home in fashion magazines as he is at Party conferences? But despite being told, arguably more, about Cameron the man than any other politician he remains vacuous, strangely unformed, a cipher for the real interests and forces he represents. The Meaning of Cameron is an unmasking of the false politics Cameron embodies, and an examination of the face the mask has eaten into.

How does this critique of Cameron match up after five years in Government?

Reviews:
Synopsis: David Cameron has been sold to the British electorate as a thoroughly modern politician, part Blair, part Thatcher, a one nation conservative with a soft spot for social democracy, the green movement, big and small business, youth, minorities, traditionalists, the armed forces and the old. Has a British politician ever been sold as so many things to so many people, at home in fashion magazines as he is at Party conferences? But despite being told, arguably more, about Cameron the man than any other politician he remains vacuous, strangely unformed, a cipher for the real interests and forces he represents. "The Meaning of David Cameron" is an unmasking of the false politics Cameron embodies, and an examination of the face the mask has eaten into.

Critique: David Cameron was the unmeaning-to-architect for the British vote to leave the European Union. Not since Nevil Chamberlain's blunder with respect to misreading Adolph Hitler has the British political system been so misled. An informed and compelling analysis of a British politician, "The Meaning of David Cameron" is very ighly recommended personal reading lists and for college and university library collections.

Michael Dunford

Reviewer

~ Dunford's Bookself, Midwest Bookreview

If the bourgeoisie was indeed a bit more classically conspiratorial and besieged, they'd stop the presses on this one.

"The Meaning of David Cameron" takes its subject, a vague corporate personality known as David Cameron, as the starting point for an examination of the founding lexemes of contemporary political discourse.

...short and pungent apologia for the Marxist categories of class and class war.

...easy to follow if you are a political layman, ...eloquently phrased.

~ What reviewers say on Amazon
Methods Devour Themselves
by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

J. Moufawad-Paul

A dialogue between story and essay, between speculative fiction and radical philosophy...

Methods Devour Themselves is a dialogue between fiction and non-fiction. Inspired by Quentin Meillassoux's Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction that was paired with an Isaac Asimov short story, this book examines the ways in which stories can provoke philosophical interventions and philosophical essays can provoke stories. Alternating between Benjanun Sriduangkaew's fiction and J. Moufawad-Paul's non-fiction, Methods Devour Themselves is an interstitial project that brings fiction and essay into a unique, avant-garde whole.

Reviews:
"Methods Devour Themselves is a unique intervention in the fields of philosophy and literature. Aside from a foreword by Moufawad-Paul and an afterword by Sriduangkaew, the book alternates between three short stories by Sriduangkaew and three essays by Moufawad-Paul. Rarely does it happen that an artist or writer carries out a sustained conversation with a given theoretical intervention through art (in this case, science fiction) and not wearing the hat, as it were, of the critic or theorist who reflectively theorizes about the literature that serves as the terrain and object of interpretation. Whereas Moufawad-Paul responds through theoretical analysis, Sriduangkaew interjects in fiction." ~ Devin Zane Shaw, https://www.c-scp.org/2018/08/30/benjanun-sriduangkaew-and-j-moufawad-paul-methods-devour-themselves

Taking their cue, and title, from Frantz Fanon, Benjanun Sriduangkaew and J. Moufawad-Paul have refused all methodological straitjackets in this genre-defying book. The result is a chaotically dialectical spiral of fiction-critique-fiction whose form is as speculative as its content, imagining new worlds from amid the crumbling wreckage of the old. ~ George Ciccariello-Maher, author of Decolonizing Dialectics and Building the Commune

Compelling science fiction and evocative instant postcolonial criticism entwined in a mutually reproductive double helix. Every page contains an intellectual thrill. ~ Nick Mamatas, author of Sensation and I Am Providence
Millennials and the Moments That Made Us
by Shaun Scott

A generation on the move, a country on the brink, and a young author's search to find out how we got here.

A generation on the move, a country on the brink, and a young author's search to find out how we got here.

Millennials and the Moments That Made Us is a cultural history of the United States, as seen through the eyes of the largest, most diverse, and most disprivileged generation in American history. The book is a relatable pop culture history that critiques the capitalist status quo our generation inherited - a critical tour of the music, movies, books, TV shows, and technology that have defined us and our times.

Reviews:
Shaun Scott is a budding master of prose. His sentences are tied up in humor, contemporary cultural criticism, head-shaking sadness, and hope. His new work might be the beacon Millennials turn to in staggering times, as his pages are filled with inspiringly precise language. ~ Jake Uitti, Contributing Writer, Washington Post

Millennials are presented as a cultural black box at best and a poorly-executed caricature at worse. With references ranging from Milton Friedman to "Hotline Bling," Shaun Scott creates the most accurate portrayal of the Millennial condition currently in print - what we've endured, what we've created, and, perhaps most essentially, what actionable policies we need to enact in order to thrive. ~ Hanna Brooks Olsen, Writer and Cultural Critic

The situation of Millennials in neoliberal capitalism is still under-theorized, and Scott’s analysis is informed theoretical work. ~ Sarah Grey, Writer, Founder of Grey Editing

Shaun Scott’s “Millennials and the Moments That Made Us” is a depiction of what life is like for Millennials in the age of corporatism, racism, and rampant consumerism. Where Orwell’s fictional 1984 leaves off, Scott begins; because you can’t change the future without having a firm understanding of the past. ~ Sylvia Hysen, Managing Editor, Millennial Magazine
Myth and Mayhem
by Ben Burgis

Conrad Bongard Hamilton

Matthew McManus

Marion Trejo

Myth and Mayhem takes Jordan Peterson's work seriously while criticizing it from a leftist perspective; offering the most sustained theoretical and political critique thus far.

Jordan Peterson rocketed to fame in the 2010s and has preached on everything from the evils of postmodern neo-Marxism to the mating habits of lobsters ever since then. The Left has since leveled many criticisms about the Canadian psychologist, characterizing him as everything from an apologist for the alt-right to simply not being interesting or profound.

Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson is intended as a comprehensive critical look at all aspects of his thought, from the philosophical depths to the mundane heights. Written by four authors who each look at a different element of his thought, it shows why taking Peterson seriously doesn't mean embracing him.

Includes an introduction by Slavoj Zizek

Reviews:
Negative Capitalism
by Dan Taylor

A lucid and groundbreaking analysis of contemporary neoliberalism and its devastating effects for young people today.

Thatcher's claim that 'There is No Alternative' to free-market capitalism has long rung hollow. Yet why is it that, despite the best efforts of protest movements, radical theorists and an increasingly liberal popular culture, when it comes to politics a consensus still reigns about the impossibility of change?

Written to provoke reflection and discussion, Negative Capitalism argues that cynicism is the key feeling of our era, and an effect of our collective disempowerment by the political establishment. Produced for an informed but not academic reader, the book charts the negation of democratic power in chapters covering debt, mental health, meaningless political languages, popular cynicism and pornography. It also grounds its account of neoliberalism in political theory and history, focusing particularly on Thatcher's monetarism. It raises pertinent doubts about blind optimism, and concludes with a fiery, startling polemic.

Reviews:
Negative Capitalism represents a new generation of critique by what I've termed graduates without a future. Taylor brings together incisive and provocative analysis alongside personal experience to explore how debt, cynicism, smartphones, psychopharmacology, underemployment and neoliberalism all represent a new era of negation. In a time of economic meltdown and mass struggle, this book offers one way out of the current crisis. ~ Paul Mason, journalist and author of Why its Kicking Off Everywhere

Seriously researched... its sections on London and gentrification, class and the riots, Ruin Porn and DIY Porn, the brave and risky notes on fascism, and the intriguing practical proposals near the end all really stand out. ~ Owen Hatherley, author of A New Kind of Bleak

Negative Capitalism is a timely reminder of how a logic of negation is as central to an analysis of culture, politics, and the economy as it is to the machinations of capital itself. ~ Eugene Thacker, author of In The Dust Of This Planet
Neglected or Misunderstood: The Radical Feminism of Shulamith Firestone
by Victoria Margree

Should pregnancy and childbirth be transformed, in order for women to be free?

Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex proved immediately controversial upon its publication in 1970. The book’s thesis is that the origins of women’s oppression lie in biology: in the fact that it is women and not men who conceive and give birth to children. Firestone’s solution is revolutionary: since it is biology that is the problem, then biology must be changed, through technological intervention that would have as its end the complete removal of the reproductive process from women’s bodies. With its proposal for the development of artificial wombs, its call for the abolition of the nuclear family and its vision of a cybernetic future, Firestone’s manifesto may seem hopelessly out-dated, a far-fetched, utopian hangover of Swinging Sixties radicalism.

This book, on the contrary, will argue for its importance to the resurgent feminism of today as a text that interrogates issues around gender, biology, sexuality, work and technology, and the ways in which our imaginations in the 21st century continue to be in thrall to ideologies of maternity and the nuclear family.

Reviews:
Clear-eyed, pedagogical and contemporary, Victoria Margree's reading of Firestone will be of use to anyone thinking about feminism and technology today. Providing clear historical and philosophical context, Margree provides a supremely balanced account of Firestone in all her complexity. With reference to other great feminist thinkers, the women's political movement, as well as recent developments in reproductive technology, Margree's book brings Firestone firmly up-to-date. ~ Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman

Questioning, rigorous, yet accessible, this is an important contribution to the current reconsideration of the demonized visionary of Second Wave feminism. With careful attention to its intellectual influences and analytical coherence, Victoria Margree offers a lucid exposition of Shulamith Firestone’s argument against the power imbalances created by maternity. As the conservative challenge to contraception and abortion intensifies in Europe and the US, Margree concludes with an invaluable discussion of the post-Firestone politics of reproduction. ~ Mandy Merck, Co-Editor, Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex
Networkologies
by Christopher Vitale

Networks are the future: here's the first philosophy based on networks, a new image of thought for a hyperconnected age.

Networkologies is the first text to develop an entire new philosophy based upon networks. While many contemporary texts on networks have presented critiques or analyses of network formations in our world, this book is the first to develop an entirely new worldview based on the structure of networks themselves. From global capitalism to artificial minds, evolutionary biology to quantum physics, networks are our future. Networkologies presents us with a new image of thought for our hyperconnected age.

Reviews:
We all know that we live in a networked world; but we do not really know just what a "network" is. In this important and vital book, Christopher Vitale provides us with a full-fledged philosophy of networks. He considers the questions of where networks come from, of how they change and develop, and of what conditions may lead to their (and our) continued flourishing. Networkologies is solidly grounded in the latest science, but it is also a powerful work of speculative philosophy. It gives us both a vision of what we are, and intimations of what we might become. ~ Steven Shaviro, author of "The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism"

Vitale is opening a truly philosophical, typological and topological understanding of networks in Contemporary Culture, well beyond the usual technical accounts of Internet development. Entering in a natural dialogue with some masters which have reflected on the concept and practice of relation (Bergson, Deleuze, Simondon among others), Vitale turns himself as a profound new voice which unveals the fascinating philosophical combinatorics of cultural complex systems. Through a series of well-defined tetrads, including immanence/relation/refraction/emergence, and node/link/ground/process, Vitale circumnavigates the explosive contradictions of our times,to offer new perspectives of visualization and integration. ~ Fernando Zalamea, Professor of Mathematics at Universidad Nacional de Cololmbia
Night
by Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh

Engages the myriad dimensions of Night in order to explore the human experience of the after-dark.

This short book engages the myriad dimensions of Night, through ancient rituals, medieval storytelling, modern philosophy, and futuristic images, in order to explore the human experience of the after-dark. It thereby tracks Night through the prisms of its most fascinating practitioners: namely, those who keep strange hours and navigate the various potentialities of nocturnal experience (both of terror and enchantment). The Thief’s Night; The Runaway’s Night; The Drunkard’s Night; The Insomniac’s Night; The Revolutionary’s Night; The Lunatic’s Night; The Sorcerer’s Night. Undoubtedly, each of these conceptual figures provides a unique gateway into understanding the powerful sensorial effects of evening, as well as its vast connections to larger questions of time, space, fear, nothingness, desire, death, forgetting, vision, secrecy, criminality, monstrosity, and the body.

Reviews:
I have read two of the author’s books prior to reading this and I find the latter very much in keeping with his remarkable voice and almost sui generis approach to and retrieval of contemporary non-western thought. Mohaghegh challenges the prevailing contours of philosophy, creatively and philosophically rethinking not only what matters to philosophy but also how philosophy can matter. ~ Jason Wirth, Professor of Philosophy, Seattle University

Night emerges as an intellectually unique and methodologically courageous work...Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh's stylistic and methodological novelty is a great advantage, for it gives the reader the chaotic and multidimensional universe of culture, and increasingly the world in which live. It gives us not a clear and transparent unity, a structure, but an ever-changing, fractal cosmos, and invites the reader to follow the trace of the affect in the everyday. ~ Mahmut Mutman, Professor of Cultural Studies, University of Tampere
Now and Forever: Towards a theory and history of the loop
by Tilman Baumgärtel

A Secret Acoustic History of the 20th Century

Elvis Presley and Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Beatles and Andy Warhol. Terry Riley and Ken Kesey. What all these artists have in common is that loops have played a significant role in their work. The short sequences of sounds or images repeated using recording media have proved to be an astonishingly flexible, versatile and momentous aesthetic method in post-World War II art and music.

Today, loops must be counted among the most important creative tools of postmodern art and music. Yet until now they have been largely overlooked as an aesthetic phenomenon. Now, for the first time, this book tells a secret story of the 20th century: how a formerly inconspicuous basic function of all modern media technology gave rise to complete artistic oeuvres, musical styles such as minimal music, hip hop and techno, and, most recently, entire scenes and subcultures that would have been unthinkable without loops.

Reviews:
"Repetition is both as old as time and the defining characteristic of our postmodern age. In Now and Forever, Tilman Baumgärtel deftly examines this cultural paradox via the cyclical operations inherent to technical media: film and audiotape loops, analog synthesizers, and, ultimately, the computers that now replicate them." ~ Dr Andrew Lison, University at Buffalo, SUNY

"Baumgärtel explores the phenomenon of the loop not just as a music-historical but as a broad socio-cultural phenomenon. A seminal work for anyone interested in the histories, technologies, and aesthetics of musical repetition."

~ Dr Christine Dysers, Uppsala University
Nuclear Futurism
by Liam Sprod

In the time of ends, the most dangerous technology of nuclear weapons confronts us with a new philosophy of the future.

Starting from the end of history, the end of art and the failure of the future set out by such ends, Nuclear Futurism reinvigorates art, literature and philosophy through the unlikely alliance of hauntology and the Italian futurists. Tracing the paradoxes of the possibilities of total nuclear destruction reveals the terminal condition of culture in the time of ends, where the logic of the apocalyptic without apocalypse holds sway. These paradoxes also open the path for a new vision of the future in the form of experimental art and literature. By re-examining the thought of both Derrida and Heidegger with regards to the history of art, the art of history and their responses to the most dangerous technology of nuclear weapons the future is exposed as a progressive event, rather than the atrophied and apocalyptic to-come of the present world. It is happening now, opening up through the force of art and literature and charting a new path for a futural philosophy.

Reviews:
Un libro come Nuclear Futurism di Liam Sprod (Zer0 books 2012), in cui Derrida viene confrontato con Marinetti, è il segno di una apertura del mondo di lingua inglese in altri tempi inconcepibile

[A book like Nuclear Futurism by Liam Sprod (Zer0 books 2012), in which Derrida is compared with Marinetti, is the sign of an opening of the English-speaking world that was inconceivable in the past] ~ MAURIZIO FERRARIS, La Repubblica : http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2013/12/19/web-platonico-cosi-il-dibattito-filosofico-si.html?ref=search

The central thesis of the book, that this hauntological futurity is applicable to a study of Italian Futurism, remains an interesting topic, and my only criticism would be that I would have preferred a longer study which pays greater attention to Futurist works of art themselves, as well as the famous manifestos. The care and attention paid to the construction and qualification of the arguments in Nuclear Futurism is both admirable but also the reason why you wouldn’t exactly pick this book up unless you had a specific interest in doing so. It is most definitely ‘difficult theory’, not because it is particularly difficult per se, or lacking in clarity, rather, the arguments are so dense and well qualified that any clumsy turns of thought are banished, and what remains is 120 pages of taut and challenging philosophical investigation. The book doesn’t let up until the endnotes, so anyone spying its slim spine and considering a quick theory fix should be warned off - this is hardcore. ~ Callam Green, Review31: http://review31.co.uk/article/view/118/apocalypse-tomorrow
OccupyMedia!
by Christian Fuchs

OccupyMedia! shows how Occupy activists confront capitalism and communication in a world of crisis, capitalism, surveillance and social media.

The Occupy movement has emerged in a historical crisis of global capitalism. It struggles for the reappropriation of the commodified commons. Communications are part of the commons of society. Yet contemporary social media are ridden by an antagonism between private corporate control (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and self-managed, commons-based activist media. In this work, Christian Fuchs analyses the contradictory dialectic of social media in the Occupy movement. Drawing on a political economy framework and interpretation of the results of the OccupyMedia! Survey, in which more than 400 Occupy activists reported on their social media use, OccupyMedia! The Occupy Movement and Social Media in Crisis Capitalism shows how activists confront the contradictions of capitalism and communication in the age of crisis and social media. The book discusses the contradiction between commercial and alternative social media and argues that the existence of a surveillance-industrial complex expressed in the PRISM system shows the urgent necessity to create social media beyond Facebook and Google.

Reviews:
Occupy Media! by Christian Fuchs is in part a recognition of how deep the change that is needed in the theories and practice of traditional oppositional politics. Christian explains the role of social media, as a model of organisation as well as a tool of communication, in terms of the transformation of protest movements world-wide. Such a role though isn’t by any means automatic ~ Mark Perryman, Philosophy Football

There have been many attempts to examine the Occupy Movement, but none with the theoretical and empirical rigour of Fuchs’ masterful book. OccupyMedia! offers a critical vision of a world in crisis, a detailed description of the voices of resistance, and a thorough analysis of new forms of communication. The result is a much-needed model for research on social movements and a rich store of information for today’s movement activists. ~ Prof. Vincent Mosco, Queen's University – Author of “The Political Economy of Communication”

Christian Fuchs has written an indispensable guide - based on new research - to the breaking story of the relationship of the massive explosion in worldwide protest and upheaval and social media. The book is a terrific read and has important insights into the most serious issues facing media scholars and activists. It deserves close attention. ~ Prof. Robert W. McChesney, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Author of “Digital Disconnect"
Officious
by Josie Appleton

Anatomy of the new breed of state regulation colonising everyday life.

In Anglo-Saxon countries there is a new and distinctive form of state: the busybody state. This state is defined by an attachment to bureaucratic procedures for their own sake: the rule for the sake of a rule; the form for the sake of a form. Its insignias are the badge, the policy, the code and the procedure. The logic of the regulation is neither to represent an elite class interest, nor to serve the public, nor even to organise social relations with the greatest efficiency as with classic bureaucracy, but rather to represent regulation itself.

This book analyses the logic of the busybody state, explains its origins, and calls for a popular alliance defending the free realm of civil society.

Reviews:
An intellectually gripping analysis of what its author Josie Appleton characterises as a new kind of state power, one that is arbitrary and encroaching on what is left of our unregulated lives. Overall this is a subtle and intelligently argued essay. Its reconstruction of the essential trajectory of the officious state will be a valuable weapon for those keen to argue for greater freedom in everyday life. (http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-rise-of-the-officious-state/19081#.WHOgfnipvFI) ~ James Heartfield, spiked

This is a must read for anyone thinking about the workings and nature of the modern State. It combines sensitive insights from the author based on her experience of working as hard as possible to uphold freedoms, and a genuinely thought provoking argument about the State and its purposes, drawing on serious intellectual work. I would recommend that anyone teaching in the areas of Social Policy, Sociology or Politics and Government reads this book and uses it for teaching. ~ Dr Ellie Lee, Director of Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, Reader in Social Policy, University of Kent

The antics of meddlesome bureaucrats are frequently so ridiculous that it is tempting to laugh them off. Officialdom is no joke, however, as Josie Appleton’s insightful book makes clear. Our freedoms will be lost unless we confront these incremental steps towards an authoritarian state. ~ Nick Cater, Executive Director, Menzies Research Centre; author, 'The Lucky Culture (and the rise of an Australian ruling class)'

"The state once left us alone unless we committed a crime or fought in a war. Now its tendrils creep everywhere. Josie Appleton, a doughty champion of the free citizen, brilliantly exposes the meddlesome bossiness of the modern state". ~ Philip Johnston, author, 'Bad Laws'
On a Common Culture
by Brian Russell Graham

What common culture is, what it offers, and how to generate it.

In the United Kingdom, the notion of a common culture has always been suggestive of a national culture which is accessible to all and provides various kinds of benefits to all, including participation in national cultural life. Brian Russell Graham's exploration of the theme aims to clarify how we might define common culture in the twenty-first century, and offers a perspective on specific benefits of such a shared culture. Common culture can generate a sense of inclusive national identity, he argues. Additionally, it can even out differences in our so-called ‘cultural capital’ – it can make people more equal in terms of their cultural lives.

Reviews:
"On A Common Culture acutely manages to produce something distinctive and relevant here today, whilst also providing absorbing, and at all times, sophisticated contributions to cultural studies." ~ Anne Carlini, Exclusive Magazine

“A really useful contribution to the left-conservative tradition that absorbs the best from left and right and produces something distinctive and increasingly relevant.” ~ David Goodhart, Head of Demography, Immigration & Integration Unit, Policy Exchange;

"An elegant and significant contribution to cultural studies, informed by a much more pluralistic and wider field of theory, which includes Richard Hoggart, George Orwell and Matthew Arnold. The argument here has the authority and importance of Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy: it’s an intelligent and enlightening exploration of the uses of culture." ~ Tim Crook, Emeritus Professor in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies. Goldsmiths, University of London
Other Paradises
by Jessica Sequeira

A collection of essays exploring imaginative responses to science and technology.

Why do people choose to play with ideas considered antiquated? Why do they elect to act in non-productive ways? Perhaps the question can be asked in reverse: What comes to mind when we think of technology? That which is practical, efficient, invisible, fast, optimistic, constantly updated. So how can one explain the search for the opposite, that which is useless, inefficient, physically present, slow, dystopian, obsolete and governed by chance? The matter of what motivates the search for ‘antiquated’ forms strikes deep into the heart of value. Are people simply following trends? Are they idiots? Are they sentimental? Are they artists? Are they interested in kitsch? Are they uninformed? Are they poets?

Other Paradises is a collection of essays exploring imaginative responses to science and technology, and is about people who choose to build ‘other paradises’, fully conscious of the alternative they offer to the dominant paradigm of technological progress.

Reviews:
In Other Paradises, Jessica Sequeira brings fresh insights to our new machine age and those that have led us here. Technology is at the center of her inquiry, but to call it simply a book about technology would do a disservice to its variety, joy and playfulness. I finished it with the best sort of feeling: the desire to read more. Madeleine Schwartz, reporter and former editor at the New York Review of Books, Robert Bosch Stiftung fellow. ~ Madeleine Schwartz

A rich, testing and pleasing book... I'm still thinking about its discussion of our relationship with technology: its endless variety, the surprise of how playful it can be, and the joyous inventiveness of the human mind capable of writing like this. ~ Jon Lindsay Miles, translator of Haroldo Conti's Southeaster, publisher at Immigrant Press

In Other Paradises, Jessica Sequeira reads generously, cleverly, with clarity and elan. She is spot on about how technology is recreating literature IRL, but even better, Sequeira’s essays recreate criticism, imaginative response by imaginative response. Reading this book one imagines yet another paradise, one where we don’t read any critic who can’t match Sequeira for energy and acuity. ~ Daniel Bosch, poet and translator, lecturer in English literature at Emory University, senior editor of Berfrois
Outside the Revolution; Everything
by Tom Astley

Through the reclamation of a left-wing identity, disparate groups of Cuban musicians seek a collective Cubanness ‘outside of the Revolution’.

Outside the Revolution; Everything is aimed at an audience of those interested in the music and culture of Cuba, but who wish to expand their understanding beyond the often narrow portrait presented in world music circuits. Ultimately, this is a book that attempts to reconnect Cuba socially, culturally, historically and politically into a global narrative, and as such may be of interest to people working in any of those fields, particularly within Caribbean or Latin American studies.

Reviews:
Porno Para Ricardo... are among the artists highlighted by author Tom Astley... who are not only challenging the notion of what Cuban music can be, but are also seeking to advance discourses pertaining to what being "left wing" in Cuba really means today... Astley succinctly details a recalcitrant music scene in this fascinating book which examines their quest for a new alternative. ~ The Crack Magazine

"An astute and well grounded book that captures the musical landscape of contemporary Cuba in its richness and complexity." ~ Sujatha Fernandes, Associate Professor of Sociology, CUNY, email

Outside the Revolution; Everything: A Redefinition of Left-Wing Identity in Contemporary Cuban Music Making by Thomas Astley revisits and redefines the quest for a left-wing Cuban identity through a thoughtful and provocative analysis of the incorporation of musics not traditionally defined as “Cuban” —punk, rap, and, to some extent, certain singer-songwriter styles. It is bound to raise some eyebrows at various points along the political spectrum (as such works always do), but it is well researched and documented and, building upon previous work with original research and interpretation, adds significantly to the body of knowledge addressing this topic. The historical moments that provide the focal points for analysis — the Revolution, the Special Period, and the present — are well chosen to illustrate Astley’s themes. And the particular artists he profiles — punk rockers Porno Para Ricardo, rapper Escuadron Patriota, and singer-songwriter Pedro Luis Ferrer — demonstrate the diversity of styles that incorporate outside influences and a more global cosmopolitanism in the construction of contemporary Cuban identity.

~ Professor Reebee Garofalo

http://www.journallive.co.uk/culture-newcastle/book-reviews/2012/08/25/heaton-author-tom-astley-on-his-new-cuban-music-book-61634-31692153/

~ Kate Proctor, The Journal
Pantomime Terror
by John Hutnyk

The war on terror thrives on pantomime demons, created and maintained by political opportunism, convenient stereotype and uncritical celebrity scholarship.

Pantomime is a theatrical form that has come to rule our everyday lives as terror. In the early years of the 21st century, a dissembling political demonology has sometimes placed otherwise merely lyrical musicians in a volatile predicament. The discussion here is of Fun-da-Mental's Aki Nawaz portrayed as a 'suicide rapper', Asian Dub Foundation striking poses from the street in support of youth in Paris and Algiers, and M.I.A., born free fighting immigration crackdown with atrocity video.

Along the way, bus bombs, comedy circuits, critical theory, Arabian Nights, Bradley Wiggins, Dinarzade, Karl Marx, Paris boulevards, Molotov, Mao, the Eiffel Tower, reserve armies, lists, Richard Wagner, Samina Malik, Slavoj Žižek, Freudian slips, red-heads, Guantanamo. The book offers some sharp critiques of our contemporary complacency, and the failures of theory as more than ten years of war on terror turns anxiety at home and drone-strike assassinations abroad into a normal everyday. This pantomime is a terror story told over and over to distract from the workings of a despotic power. The need for an adequate (winning) counter-narrative was never more clear.

Reviews:
If you’re of the opinion that music and politics should generally keep the fuck out

of each other’s way, then Pantomime Terror will be a tough sell. But author John Hutnyk’s polemic is rational, convincing and supported by relentless, tirelessly researched cross-referencing, so consider us sold. ~ Record Collector UK

This book starts with the countless provocations that surround us in the ambient war on terror. However, rather than retreating into either loathsome self-pity or indignant self-righteousness, Hutnyk responds with the thumping provocation to think and get real! ~ Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Melbourne

For two decades, Hutnyk's research on diasporic music and politics has been at the political and scholarly cutting edge. Moving from ADF and Fun-Da-Mental, to MIA and Wagner, his work is always contextualised with relevance and an unstinting anti-racist, anti-imperialist commitment. Here in the not-so-great British tradition of pantomime parody with its Molotov cocktail caricatures of hero(in)es, villains and sidekicks, Hutnyk urges us to look at how horror is accompanied by the ludic, and how the culture industry is reined into the post 9/11 war on terror: ‘the pantomime of politics, the theatre of power, the double-plays of deception’. War peculates through every cell and membrane in our numbed bodies, only to be resigned to the waste basket of disposable culture. With its cogent attack on what have become cultural icons, Pantomime Terror updates Adorno for this terror-saturated age - masterful in its sweep, engaging in its style and thought-provoking in its analysis. ~ Raminder Kaur, University of Sussex
Politics by Other Means
by Alison Hugill

Houman Barekat

A collection of the site's very best reviews on art, culture & theory.

Launched in October 2011, the online literary journal Review 31 - www.review31.co.uk - enjoys a growing reputation as one of the most intelligent and thoughtful literary resources on the web. Publishing accessible and informed reviews of the most interesting new titles, Review 31 covers non-fiction books on politics, history, art & culture, as well as literary fiction.

This volume is a collection of the site’s very best reviews on art, culture & theory. Contributors include Nina Power, Benjamin Noys, Ian Birchall, Gee Williams, Robert Barry and Sebastian Truskolaski. The volume covers an expansive array of topics from hipsterism and digital technology to the rise of what Neal Curtis calls ‘idiotism’ in contemporary culture, through literary theory, architecture and continental philosophy. The title - a nod, of course, to Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is ‘politics by other means’ - is an acknowledgement of the radical political current that informs much of the criticism in these pages.

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