mstyslavity/zer0-books huggingface dataset:
Politics of Debt, The
by Sjoerd van Tuinen

Arjen Kleinherenbrink

In this collection of essays and interviews philosophers, political scientists and economists reflect on the political role played by debt.

The Politics of Debt brings together philosophers, political scientists, and economists and sets them the task of reflecting on the political role played by debt. Focusing on the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, particularly in the United States and Europe, the book is split into groups. It contains six essays and five interviews that aim to fully comprehend the political consequences of the economic crisis and specifically of debt.

Reviews:
Porn Panic!
by Jerry Barnett

The Rise of the New British Anti-Sex Movement.

First they came for the pornography, and then strip clubs, lads' mags and music videos. Then they came for hate speech, and then speech that was merely offensive. They eroded free speech online and on university campuses. They sought to divide people by gender and by race.

Porn Panic! charts the rise of a new social conservatism for the new millennium, coinciding with the collapse of liberalism as a political force. A new fascism is here, and it’s nothing like anyone expected...

Reviews:
What an informative read! It gives a very comprehensive summary of the evolution of porn from print to online, and how (British) society has reacted to the changes. I especially enjoyed the author's personal insights and quips. Him having gone through the "porn revolution" first hand gives it an air of credibility and it is peppered with personal anecdotes, which makes for a fun read. Of course, the author is absolutely biased towards porn. (In fact, the whole point of the book is to convince us that there is too much fuss being made about porn, and that the fuss has been far more detrimental than porn itself.) However, one can't help but nod along and agree as the points made are valid, and the author presents the facts as they are (with solid references too), without resorting to overly obtuse language or complex reasoning meant to befuddle the reader.

Pick up this book if you are

1. confused about feminism, or if you identify as a feminist

2. curious about why anyone would write a book defending porn

3. interested in politics and censorship

4. intrigued by the eye-catching cover on this book (as I was!) ~ J. Lee, GoodReads

Great window into the society of GB in the last decades, it is well written and with a lot of humor combined, it makes for an interesting read and yes lets face it...we humans all enjoy a little voyeurism too....after all it is an x-rated subject and god knows the general human reaction to the word porn always makes for so many memorable hilarious moments!

I learned some....laughed a lot and will be recommending this one to friends for sure! (at least to some of my friends...lol...).

~ Philippa Song, NetGalley

Porn Panic! documents new and rising threats to free expression, and mounts a fierce and entertaining defence. ~ Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law, New York Law School and former ACLU President
Post Cinematic Affect
by Steven Shaviro

This book ponders the fate of the movies in a world of digital media, globalization, and massive financial flows.

Post-Cinematic Affect is about what it feels like to live in the affluent West in the early 21st century. Specifically, it explores the structure of feeling that is emerging today in tandem with new digital technologies, together with economic globalization and the financialization of more and more human activities. The 20th century was the age of film and television; these dominant media shaped and reflected our cultural sensibilities. In the 21st century, new digital media help to shape and reflect new forms of sensibility. Movies (moving image and sound works) continue to be made, but they have adopted new formal strategies, they are viewed under massively changed conditions, and they address their spectators in different ways than was the case in the 20th century. The book traces these changes, focusing on four recent moving-image works: Nick Hooker's music video for Grace Jones' song Corporate Cannibal; Olivier Assayas' movie Boarding Gate, starring Asia Argento; Richard Kelly's movie Southland Tales, featuring Justin Timberlake, Dwayne Johnson, and other pop culture celebrities; and Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Gamer.

Reviews:
A nimble and incisive explication of contemporary social shifts, and it makes concrete some dense and tricky theoretical terrain. For these reasons, it would be a useful addition to a graduate or advanced undergraduate course. ~ Greg Goldberg, Viral Book Review, Women's Quarterly Journal

Post-Cinematic Affect offers an important commentary on the condition of contemporary cinema overtaken by digitization. Zero books aims at inspiring new paths of critical thought, and Post-Cinematic Affect succeeds in this.

~ Varpu Rantala, Aferimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Critism

Shaviro touches on multiple sources for his post-Marxist critique, including Spinoza , Fredric Jameson and Deleuze . His analysis identifies markers for our evolving relationship with new media, but no definite outcome. This book presents an excellent overview of the changing shape of cinema and our engagement with film.

~ Emmet O'Cuana, http://abookadaytillicanstay.wordpress.com
Printed in Utopia
by Ed Simon

In sailing to Utopia, we must first chart our ships through the Renaissance to discover our radical intellectual origins.

Printed in Utopia examines the bloody era of the Renaissance in all of its contradictions and moments of utopian possibility. From the dissenting religious anarchists of the 17th century, to the feminist verse of Amelia Lanyer and Richard Barnfield's poetics of gay rights. From an analysis of the rhetoric of feces in Martin Luther, to the spiritual liberation of Anna Trapnell.

What is presented is the radical Renaissance too often hidden away, an age which birthed our modern world in all of its ugliness, but which still holds the latent seeds for a new and better future world.

Reviews:
In the pages of "Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance's Radicalism", Ed Simon deftly examines the bloody era of the Renaissance in all of its contradictions and moments of utopian possibility.

From the dissenting religious anarchists of the 17th century, to the feminist verse of Amelia Lanyer and Richard Barnfield's poetics of gay rights, from an analysis of the rhetoric of feces in Martin Luther, to the spiritual liberation of Anna Trapnell, what is presented in "Printed in Utopia" is the radical Renaissance that is too often hidden away from the general reading public. It was an age which birthed our modern world in all of its ugliness, but which still holds the latent seeds for a new and better future world.

A meticulous work of historical scholarship that is presented in a narrative style making it an ideal and thoroughly accessible introduction for the non-academic general reader while holding an immense value for the history student and academia, "Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance's Radicalism" is unreservedly recommended for community, college, and university library Renaissance History & Culture collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. ~ James Cox, Midwest Book Review

From rambunctious Restoration poetry to sceptical Shakespearean metaphysics, Printed in Utopia presents a unity of historical essays at once ludic and lucid. Ed Simon writes about faith with a vivacious originality, celebrating the radically eternal essence of the Renaissance. ~ Russell Bennetts, Editor and Founder of Berfrois
Productive Body, The
by Stephen Shapiro

Philip Barnard

François Guéry

Didier Deleule

What can a body do under capitalism? Ground-breaking explanation that links Marx to Foucault.

The Productive Body asks how the human body and its labor have been expropriated and re-engineered through successive stages of capitalism; and how capitalism’s transformation of the body is related to the rise of scientific psychology and social science disciplines complicit with modern regimes of control. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault cited Guéry and Deleule in order to link Marx’s diagnosis of capitalism with his own critique of power/knowledge. The Productive Body brings together Marxism and theories of the body-machine for the goal of political revolution.

Reviews:
This edition is intended to create a bridge between the later Foucauldian analysis of the relations between power and the body with more canonical Marxist discourse in the Anglo sphere to offset the artificial break between the two philosophers created, involuntary, by Foucault's critique of, and subsequent distancing from, the French Communist party, as well as a general carelessness towards his most left-wing activist writing. ~ Francesco Tenaglia, Kaleidoscope

If Thomas Piketty now alerts us to the deleterious consequences of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, perhaps it might also be useful to remember that, as Guéry and Deleule affirm: "capitalism is the sophisticated and materialized form of the hatred of Man and of his body."

--Ed Cohen, The Los Angeles Review of Books ~ Ed Cohen, The Los Angeles Review of Books

How exactly should we understand this famous productivity that is attributed to labor power [la force du travail], and how should we describe, or rather re-describe it? This is the theme that Didier Deleule and François Guéry took up in their succinct work on The Productive Body. ~ Pierre Macherey, “Power: From Politics to the Economy [Le Pouvoir, de la Politique à l’Economie]”

François Guéry, in his commentary [in The Productive Body] on the fourth section of Book 1 of Capital shows that the humanist protests, such as those of Friedman or Marcuse, against part time work rest on an error in the localization of the scission of the body. ~ Jean-François Lyotard, “The Desire Named Marx” in Libidinal Economy

Very interesting analysis...

The technological mutations of the apparatus of production, the division of labour and the elaboration of the disciplinary techniques sustained an ensemble of very close relations (cf. Marx, Capital, vol. i, chapter XIII and the very interesting analysis in Guerry and Deleule). Each makes the other possible and necessary; each provides a model for the other. ~ Michel Foucault
Rebel Rebel
by Chris O'Leary

David Bowie: every single song. Everything you want to know, everything you didn't know.

David Bowie: every single song. Everything you want to know, everything you didn't know.

David Bowie remains mysterious and unknowable, despite 45 years of recording and performing. His legacy is roughly 600 songs, which range from psychedelia to glam rock to Philadelphia soul, from avant-garde instrumentals to global pop anthems. Rebel Rebel catalogs Bowie's songs from 1964 to 1976, examines them in the order of their composition and recording, and digs into what makes them work.

Rebel Rebel is an in-depth look at Bowie's early singles and album tracks, unreleased demos, session outtakes and cover songs. The book traces Bowie's literary, film and musical influences and the evolution of his songwriting. It also shows how Bowie exploited studio innovations, and the roles of his producers and supporting musicians, especially major collaborators like Brian Eno, Iggy Pop and Mick Ronson.

This book places Bowie's music in the context of its era. Readers will discover the links between Kubrick's 2001 and "Space Oddity"; how A Clockwork Orange inspired "Suffragette City". The pages are a trip through Bowie's various lives as a young man in Swinging London, a Tibetan Buddhist, a disillusioned hippie, a rock god, and a Hollywood recluse. With a cast of thousands, including John Lennon, William S. Burroughs, Andy Warhol and Cher.

Reviews:
4 stars. “The detail is, at times, breathtaking, the cultural contextualizing mostly secure, and the analysis quirky and honest.” ~ David Buckley, Mojo

4 stars. “O’Leary is interested in anything the magpie genius squeezed into his songs…and he can nail a song’s mysterious power in a line…This essential handbook makes old songs feel new again.” ~ Dorian Lynskey, Q

“The only place you’ll get more in-depth details about Bowie’s life is in his Heavenly Book of Life. Unless you have access to God’s archives, you’ll find Rebel Rebel to be an essential book for Bowie enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike.” ~ Joseph Kyle, The Recoup

"This book isn’t the blog splurged on the page. Each entry has been rebuilt from the ground up. Expanded, edited, revised, reworked, remixed. For any self-respecting Bowie fan, it’s essential.” ~ Mayer Nissim, Digital Spy

“The writing is both meticulous and colourful. At times O’Leary is almost too intense…but he does it through love. He’s written a poem in a letter. ~ Chris Roberts, Classic Rock

Chris O'Leary's "Pushing Ahead of the Dame" contains the best writing on David Bowie bar none. ~ Bob Stanley, writer and a member of the pop group Saint Etienne

If you're a David Bowie fan, you'll love Chris O'Leary's Pushing Ahead of the Dame. Each post is devoted to analyzing a Bowie song, in roughly chronological order: its words, music, history, precursors and influence on other performers...Even if you're not an admirer of the artist sometimes known as Ziggy Stardust, the site's a rewarding read. If nothing else, it may leave you wishing that your favorite musician had a fan as perceptive and prolific as O'Leary. (TIME's Best Blogs of 2011) ~ Harry McCracken, TIME
Remapping 'Crisis': A Guide to Athens
by Aylwyn Walsh

Myrto Tsilimpounidi

A taste of austerity, the limits of democracy and the overlooked, untold stories of a country in 'crisis'.

In periods of intense crisis the pressing need to take sides comes to the surface and trumps neutrality. The claim to objectivity, always a little problematic, can no longer be sustained, and becomes itself a ground of confrontation as the conflicts amongst economists and constitutional lawyers show. As the world is moving towards a state of permanent crisis the engaged intellectual and the committed media are coming back (Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law and Contributor to The Guardian).

This is a crucial collection that provides a new perspective on the social dimension of crisis - exemplified in the new wave of social mobilization gaining ground across the globe. The collection is an invigorating addition to the market of ideas circulating at this time of uncertainty, austerity and social change. It is an important and timely contribution to the study of social movements and the rise of direct civil action in pursuit of democracy. In this milieu of social change, Athens is its muse. This book is one of the first collections of chapters devoted to the specificities of Greece’s crisis in English that does not focus solely on economics. Its scope and intention aligns it with other recently published books on the ‘Arab Spring’ and the ‘Occupy’ movements, although its register moves away from journalistic commentary to academic considerations of futurity and the potential of the city to reinvent itself. This makes it a unique interdisciplinary project with a broad appeal.

Reviews:
This volume pursues the classical virtues of parrhesia and andreia at a period of crisis. My hope is that this and similar initiatives will revive again the somewhat lost honor of the intellectual. ~ Prof Costas Douzinas
Rowdy Entrepreneurs and Insecure Dinosaurs
by Murat Karamuftuoglu

Mingling popular-culture theory with innovation theory and entrepreneurship in a lively style with textual and visual puns.

Rowdy Entrepreneurs and Insecure Dinosaurs is about invention and innovation in the context of postmodern society and information economy. It applies "popular culture" theory to such companies as Virgin, Microsoft, and Apple, to analyse their innovation strategies. This is the first book of its kind that mingles popular culture theory with innovation theory and entrepreneurship. It is written, true to the spirit of popular culture, in a lively style with abundant popular cultural references, and textual and visual puns.

Reviews:
Well-researched and entertaining...crisp and well-paced...will appeal to the widest possible audience, from those who appreciate Krugman to those who revel in Branson. ~ Carol Givner, Best-selling author and literary agent

The subject of the book is very interesting, and describes the unfolding of so many cultural and social formulations that are part of the day to day life here in the Bay Area of California.

Phil Ross, artist, educator, inventor. ~ Phil Ross, Personal communication (email)
Selling Our Death Masks
by Yesenia Barragan

Are we pawning our golden immortality for a fistful of cash?

A radical historical ethnography on the meaning of a fundamentally new physical landscape of our age of austerity: cash-for-gold shops that numerically exploded in the wake of the worst economic crisis of our times.

Reviews:
It is not easy to deal with a curse as old as mankind, to keep it at arms’ length and, if possible, transform its ominous power into healing. Yet this is what Yesenia Barragan achieves—to the extent possible—in her fast-paced brilliant, and exceedingly original history of gold and its roller coastering life under contemporary capitalism…This is the sparkling achievement of Yesenia Barragan. ~ Michael Taussig (Columbia University), author of My Cocaine Museum and The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America

Yesenia Barragan’s world-tour, deeply political but no less personal, brings back to mind the old aphorism that money, or rather the gold backing for money, is the root of all evil—or at least both symbolizes and worsens the social evils all around us. Beautifully written, the book finds in the “cash-for-gold” enterprises the very essence of the global crisis, not only for those who are pressed to sell anything precious but for every inch of the planet penetrated in search of new gold supplies. Read, cry, and learn. ~ Paul Buhle (Brown University), author of Marxism in the United States and A People's History of American Empire

From Colombia to China and from Greece to Spain, gold, which once evoked the warmth and power of the sun, became the legal tender of super-exploitation and suffering. Yesenia Barragan, with the language, sensibility, and power of an epic poet, reaches from the gold bars and gold exchanges that have marked the most recent period of capitalist crisis back to the history of the conquests of Latin America, Asia, and Africa to show how gold underwrote a Boschian world of capitalist exploitation. Yet, despite the horror to which Barragan bears witness, she still holds out the hope that consciousness, struggle, and poetry can bring. Everyone committed to social transformation must read this book. ~ Temma Kaplan (Rutgers University), author of Crazy for Democracy and Taking Back the Streets
Shakespeare for Snowflakes
by Ian Burrows

An examination of how dramatists including Shakespeare, Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett manipulated actors' bodies for laughter or sympathy, discussed in relation to the social construction of ‘snowflake culture’ as a 21st century phenomenon.

Drawing on plays by Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Sophocles, Samuel Beckett, and others, this book examines the ways in which these dramatists manipulated the actor’s body to demand laughter and/or sympathy. Ian Burrows shows how these strategies can be thought about beyond the stage-space: in the classroom, in the media, and in relation to the social construction of ‘snowflake culture’ as a 21st century phenomenon.

Reviews:
Shakespeare for Snowflakes is a provocative book, and a brave, thoughtful attempt to reclaim the meaning and context of those trigger warnings. It makes intriguing connections between contemporary conservative anxieties and the ontology of spectatorship. It takes real delight in physical comedy; it ranges from custard pies to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; it takes non-scholarly material seriously as evidence for audience reactions; and it works with exemplary courtesy and rigour to refute lazy and reactionary thinking. [...]

Burrows’ is a calmly and idiosyncratically ethical voice. His elegant ability to literalize metaphors and figures of speech in refreshing ways, and his steely critical urgency, softly presented in this book for a wider audience, are full of intellectual promise. I look forward to the next one. ~ Emma Smith, University of Oxford; author of 'This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright'

A lively and nuanced foray into the culture wars, inspired by both theatrical scholarship and personal experience ... This brisk consideration of the power of words to suppress or awaken empathy strikes a timely note in the context of today’s debates about free speech and tolerance. ~ Publishers Weekly

It’s probably the best presentation of this sort of an argument I’ve seen about content warnings in university classrooms. ~ Andy Boyd, New Books Network

The line between laughter and tears is dotted at best, and Ian Burrows’ inspired alignment of slapstick and tragedy gets to the heart of human response to pain and the unexpected. In his nuanced analysis of drama from Sophocles to Kane, Burrows unpacks the complexities of reaction to trauma and the ways in which artists have utilised laughter. Alongside this, in responding to the wider media discourse generated by the lectures in which the book originated, Burrows turns controversy in on itself, offering mature, important reflection on what it means to find empathy in the ridiculous or to mock the trauma of others. ~ Peter Kirwan, University of Nottingham
Slave States
by Yasin Kakande

Enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation. Abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region.

A stark expose of the enslavement, trafficking, sexual starvation and general abuse of workers in the Gulf Arab Region.

Reviews:
..........Kakande reports on the terrible conditions and quandaries faced by Kafala proletarians from Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and the like. Many fall out of the system and continue illegally within the GCC as ‘runaways’ or escapees. Mass deportations occur. Strikes break out which do not last or succeed. The immigrants are the great majority in these countries, which have never had a local proletariat. As such, Kafala is the local capitalists’ way of controlling or crushing that proletariat. Kakande gives you an inside, personal look into how these glitzy profiteering economies work that no GCC government or corporation wants known. ~ Gregg Gibbs, May Day Books & Blog

With the world climate at peak awareness at this point it is important for all of us to become familiar with the information Presented by the fine journalist Yasin Kakande. The more we know the better informed we can be about both sides of the clash of titans that exists at present. Grady Harp ~ Grady Harp, http://www.amazon.com/Slave-States-Practice-Kafala-Region-ebook/dp/B0182XGO88/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

Kakande's expose of the seamy side of life in the Gulf is an important counterweight to the free pass the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) gets in the western press. Oil corrupts, and the oil alliance that the West has with primitive tribal 'emirates' and the Saudi kingdom has poisoned world politics for long enough. Time for a new world order, where the practice of kafala plays no part. ~ Eric Walberg, author of Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games

In this moving and inconvenient account Yasin Kakande makes a compelling case for labor rights, press freedom and a reform of the kafala-sponsorship system. ~ Eckart Woertz, Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and author of Oil for Food
Strangled
by Phil Knight

If the Sex Pistols and The Clash represented punk's sacred, then The Stranglers were its profane. Strangled sets out to explain why discussion of this most taboo of bands has for so long been silenced-a collective cultural Omerta.

The Stranglers occupy a paradoxical position within the history of popular music. Although major artists within the punk and new-wave movements, their contribution to those genres has been effectively quarantined by subsequent critical and historical analyses. They are somehow "outside" the realm of what responsible accounts of the period consider to be worthy of chronicling.

Why is this so? Certainly The Stranglers' seedy and intimidating demeanor, and well-deserved reputation for misogyny and violence, offer a superficial explanation for their cultural excommunication. However, this landmark work suggests that the unsettling aura that permeated the group and their music had much more profound origins; ones that continue to have disturbing implications even today. The Stranglers, it argues, continue to be marginalised because, whether by accident or design, they brought to the fore the underlying issues of identity, status and structure that must by necessity be hidden from society's conscious awareness.

For this, they would not be forgiven.

Reviews:
The precarious existence in a band is vividly described in this book from independent British publisher Zero Books.

~ Gesellschaft + Kultur, May 2015

I finished STRANGLED at three o'clock this morning. Best book, in any genre, I've read in years. A brilliantly unique dissection of postwar Western decline and ... somehow it contains my favourite band, too. Genius. ~ Alison Rae, Managing Editor, Polygon Books

One of the most brilliantly unusual brains to emerge from the blogosphere lovingly dissects one of the most brilliantly unorthodox bands to emerge from punk. Using their savagely under-celebrated songs as a dark prism for the decline of the West, Phil Knight constructs a gripping entertainment for the mind that will convince even anti-fans that The Stranglers were the crucial band of their era. ~ Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up And Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84.
Student as Producer
by Mike Neary

Student as Producer brings critical theory to life in a contribution to the dynamic, emerging genre of critical higher education studies. It is for students and teachers who want to change the world through critical pedagogy and popular education.

Mike Neary's account finds itself set in a particular moment of time: between the student protests and urban riots that erupted in England in 2010-2011 and the 2017 General Election, during which students and young people played a significant role by protesting the politics of austerity and by supporting the politics of Corbynism. The revolutionary curriculum in this book is framed around unlearning the law of labour and the institutions through which the law of labour is enforced, including the capitalist university which, more and more, seeks growth and expansion for the sake of growth, neglecting the intellectual and educational needs of students in favour of the needs of the capitalist state.

Through thought experiments and reference to the work of the Soviet legal theorist, Evgeny Pashukanis, Student as Producer searches for solutions to how cooperatives might be brought about by a sense of common purpose and social defense. This is a practical, probing response to the ongoing assault on higher education by the social power of Money and the State. Mike Neary grounds his answers in a version of Marx's social theory known as 'a new reading of Marx', as advanced by authors such as Werner Bonefeld and Moishe Postone. The theory is applied to various aspects of pedagogy, criminology, and political sociology to create a curricula for revolutionary teaching that will aid activists and those involved with co-operative movements who are seeking ways in which to engage critically with higher education.

Reviews:
Thoughtful and thought-provoking, "Student as Producer: How do Revolutionary Teachers Teach?" is an inherently interesting and occasionally iconoclastic read that will have particular appeal for readers with an interest in higher and continuing education, the philosophy and social aspects of education, Communism & Socialism with respect to the process of education and educational institutions. ~ Midwest Book Review.com

Neary’s brilliant and timely book sets forth an inspiring alternative to today’s neoliberal university – teaching and learning are no longer to be mere training for wage labour but a ‘commons’ in which the roles of student and teacher circulate freely. The production of knowledge – by student and teacher alike – becomes the dynamic principle of a critical pedagogy with revolutionary horizons. In Neary’s fascinating work learning becomes liberation and the university begins to prefigure an emancipated world.

~ Richard Gunn & Adrian Wilding, authors of Revolutionary Recognition
Superactually
by Chuk Moran

A bunch of tiny essays on life after irony, this is a book to help smart people feel hip and hip people feel smart.

To speak ironically is to speak just for the effect. To speak superactually is to do something with words and take responsibility for that action. This is a book of short, provocative essays. Some are on fun topics in pop culture (hackers, dubstep, cat memes, thinking green, parkour, and the girl next door). Others are takes on technical topics in social theory (sensation, hype, discrimination, imagination, and the typical). This is a book to help smart people feel hip and hip people feel smart.

Reviews:
Theory today is not dead, but perhaps it should be euthanized. We can no longer hear signal over the noise of its predictable wheeze, its message long since shrouded by an illness borne long ago from youthful indulgences. Chucking aside this death mask, Moran asks, what if theory arose not from the obsessive study of meaning, representation, sexuality, economics, culture, and so on, but from the real ordinariness of chicken salad and ultimate fighting and hoodies and automobiles. ~ Ian Bogost, author of Persuasive Games and Alien Phenomenology

Superactually is aphoristic anti-philosophy in the spirit of Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. But these short meditations are lighter and sweeter, more writerly, at times funny and fun, directed straight at the world. Something like Barthes' Mythologies for the new millennium. You will find much to like here, from dubstep to sex, from parkour to the apocalypse, from cliches like "the girl next door" to the high theory of Deleuze or Foucault. The question: why write? The answer: to provoke thought. ~ Alexander Galloway, author of The Exploit, Protocol, and Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture.
Surrealpolitik
by John Schoneboom

Dream, myth, delusion, and reality collide in this surrealist navigation of the national security state.

Our times are not just weird, but literally surreal: we live in a paranoid, increasingly authoritarian culture in which the real, the presumed and the purported are indistinguishable strands of a dense hallucinatory web of mediated spectacles. Surrealpolitik takes up cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s challenge to expose capitalist realism’s 'realism' as nothing of the sort.

To subject the symbolic order to a surrealist mode of inquiry is to transgress taboos, reveal biases and inconsistencies, test assumptions and investigate the extent to which the real is, like our dreams - a fungible projection of our unconscious expectations. The nexus of dreams, hyperreality, paranoia, totalitarianism, terror, art, myth and culture is where realpolitik becomes the surrealpolitik of the title.

Reviews:
"Amazing...A fierce, lucid intervention against the regime of an exclusionary 'realism' which, in its marginalization of the dreamlife, not only starves us with a deadly-dull aesthetics but forms a lid clamped on the imaginative urgencies required to fight our way into a post-capitalist, post-surveillance future." ~ Jonathan Lethem, via email

Novelist and cultural critic John Schoneboom confronts the weirdness of modernity with humour, originality and insight. Wide ranging and engagingly written, Surrealpolitik argues that today’s consumerist surveillance state is not merely surreal in the everyday sense, but can be understood through the concerns of the original Surrealist art movement. Surprising and at times unsettling, it’s a consistently thought-provoking intervention in the debate of our time. ~ Andrew Crumey (novelist), via email
The Ultraviolet Catastrophe
by Susan Finlay

A head-trip through capitalism’s final frontier.

Legal-high addict, gaming enthusiast, and principal shareholder of AstroLabs™, Lex Rameses, has recently discovered—and purchased—Proserpina: a planet with a near-identical ecosystem to Earth’s. Yet, although his humanistic, hipster pretensions mean that many people admire him, there is still one thing standing in the way of his space-colonization program: as of yet, there is no way to travel to Proserpina safely.

Enter a cast of mad scientists, Astro–Marxists, a neurorobotic AI hivemind, an extinction anxiety addict, the victims of an interrelated crypto-currency gaming scam, and a seemingly endless succession of ravers and gamers in search of the ultimate hallucinogenic, carcinogenic, neü-space-age high…

Reviews:
"Nothing and no-one is spared by the acid tongue of this novel – not even the kitchen implements, not even you. A techno-utopia-takedown-turned-techno-curious-trip, The Ultraviolet Catastrophe is a jolt to the brain, a nightmare, a riot and, like everything Finlay does, impossible not to love." ~ Amber Husain, author of Tell Me How You Eat

"Susan Finlay's The Ultraviolet Catastrophe is a vivid techno-apocalypso, a work of hard(ly) SF wherein designer-drugged, synthetically-opioid, over-stimulated prose vonnegutly pynchons its way through an alternative present/near future/ five minutes past New Berlin populated by (P.K.) dick-ish characters. It features a proper baddie called Lex Ramesses, giraffes, rubber masks, floating heads, and a hero worried about his sperm count. Follow the book's own (il)logic, get lost, enjoy the detour into (to mod a blurbing cliché) the anxious thrill of what it means to be post-human, or just alive, now, in the MMORPG which we might call the grinning nightmare which is contemporary life." ~ C.D. Rose, Goldsmiths Prize winning author of We Live Here Now

"Susan Finlay has her finger on the pulse of Berlin." ~ Tom McCarthy, two-time Booker Prize shortlisted author of C and Satin Island

"The Ultraviolet Catastrophe is raucous, hilarious, irreverent, and wildly smart, taking aim at techno-salvation fantasies, startup culture, and the eternal humiliation of having a body under the ridiculous conditions of late capitalism. Finlay's new novel is as unexpected and unique as all of her work. Read it now." ~ Elvia Wilk, author of Oval and Death by Landscape

"A wild, genre-bending blast with real scale and sweep. The Three Body Problem meets Blue Lard." ~ Mariel Franklin author of Bonding

Hallucinatory and haunting, the reverse-accelerationist dystopia of The Ultraviolet Catastrophe is pure stinging pleasure. Satire targets range from Muskian tech overlords harvesting memories for an illusory offworld, to gender-blending plebes in a post-woke Berlin. Throughout, there’s an end-of-days dread of pending doom. This Götterdämmerung rings for them and thee. ~ Jack Skelley, author of The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker
Thing, The
by Dylan Trigg

Phenomenology redefined through body horror.

What is the human body? Both the most familiar and unfamiliar of things, the body is the centre of experience but also the site of a prehistory anterior to any experience. Alien and uncanny, this other side of the body has all too often been overlooked by phenomenology. In confronting this oversight, Dylan Trigg’s The Thing redefines phenomenology as a species of realism, which he terms unhuman phenomenology. Far from being the vehicle of a human voice, this unhuman phenomenology gives expression to the alien materiality at the limit of experience.

By fusing the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl, and Levinas with the horrors of John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and H.P. Lovecraft, Trigg explores the ways in which an unhuman phenomenology positions the body out of time. At once a challenge to traditional notions of phenomenology, The Thing is also a timely rejoinder to contemporary philosophies of realism. The result is nothing less than a rebirth of phenomenology as redefined through the lens of horror.

Reviews:
Dylan Trigg's The Thing: A Phenomenology of Horror takes up the central challenge of contemporary philosophy - grappling with the world as indifferent to human constructs and concepts. Trigg's analysis suggests to us that phenomenology - too often regarded as a philosophy of the human par excellence - is uncannily suited to thinking the world-without-us. Husserl writing horror fiction is the spirit of this study. ~ Eugene Thacker, author of In The Dust Of This Planet

Dylan Trigg's The Thing is a sophisticated melding of philosophy, literary criticism, and film criticism that underscores his major thesis that 'the horror of the cosmos is essentially the horror of the body.' Its discussions of the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, the films of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, and other texts and films allow us to look at these works from a fascinating new perspective while shedding light on humanity's fragility in a boundless cosmos. ~ S. T. Joshi
This Space of Writing
by Stephen Mitchelmore

A renewed appreciation of the mystery and promise of writing.

What does 'literature' mean in our time? While names like Proust, Kafka and Woolf still stand for something, what that something actually is has become obscured by the claims of commerce and journalism. Perhaps a new form of attention is required. Stephen Mitchelmore began writing online in 1996 and became Britain's first book blogger soon after, developing the form so that it can respond in kind to the singular space opened by writing. Across 44 essays, he discusses among many others the novels of Richard Ford, Jeanette Winterson and Karl Ove Knausgaard, the significance for modern writers of cave paintings and the moai of Easter Island, and the enduring fallacy of 'Reality Hunger', all the while maintaining a focus on the strange nature of literary space. By listening to the echoes and resonances of writing, this book enables a unique encounter with literature that many critics habitually ignore. With an introduction by the acclaimed novelist Lars Iyer, This Space of Writing offers a renewed appreciation of the mystery and promise of writing.

Reviews:
Stephen Mitchelmore has, over the years, in his blog, This Space, shown himself to be one of the acutest critics of contemporary writing anywhere. I do not always agree with him, but his work always makes me think and often helps me to understand.

~ Gabriel Josipovici, author and critic

Stephen Mitchelmore was the first literary-critical blogger, and has remained the best. His blog, This Space, ten years in existence, and commanding a wide readership, contains exquisite long-form meditations on literary fiction of the kind only the blogosphere can allow. Gathered here, Mitchemore’s essays show a cumulative power, developing a philosophy of literature in a manner that recalls Blanchot’s The Space of Literature.

~ Lars Iyer, author of Spurious and Wittgenstein Jr

It would be fulsome praise indeed to announce that This Space contains some of the very best writing in the literary blogosphere, but it would be more true to say that it contains some of the very finest writing on literature I've ever read anywhere.

~ Mark Thwaite, Head of Online at Foyles and editor of Ready Steady Book

This Space of Writing is such a lovely, luminous thing in my reading life.

~ Jen Craig, author of Panthers and the Museum of Fire

I've been an avid reader of Stephen Mitchelmore's posts on This Space for well over a decade. He not only shows us what to read, but new ways to read. His insights and analysis always leave me inspired. This new collection is a reason to celebrate.

~ Todd Colby, author of Splash State

Stephen Mitchelmore is one of the best minds of my generation and an inspiration. ~ Lee Rourke, author of The Canal

For many years, Steve Mitchelmore has been a source of both inspiration and envy: introducing me not only to new writers but also to new ways of thinking. ~ John Self, blogger at the Asylum
Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures
by Graham Harman

These writings chart Harman's rise from Chicago sportswriter to co founder of one of Europe's most promising philosophical movements: Speculative Realism.

These writings chart Harman's rise from Chicago sportswriter to co founder of one of Europe's most promising philosophical movements: Speculative Realism. In 1997 Graham Harman was an obscure graduate student covering Chicago sporting events for a California website. Unpublished in philosophy at the time he was already a popular conference speaker on Heidegger and related themes. A decade later he is the author of highly visible books on continental philosophy is Associate Vice Provost for Research at the American University in Cairo and a key member of the Speculative Realist movement along with Ray Brassier Iain Hamilton Grant and Quentin Meillassoux. This fascinating collection of eleven essays and lectures from 1997 to 2009 anchored by Harman's rebellious transformation of Heideggerian philosophy show the evolution of his object oriented metaphysics from its early days into an increasingly developed philosophical position. Each chapter is preceded by Harman's witty scene setting commentary.

Reviews:
The style of Harman often evokes that of a William James joined to the spirit of H.P. Lovecraft. ~ Olivier Surel,in Actu Philosophia

In his letter to the young Beatrice [Chapter 9], Graham Harman offers the clearest exposition of object-oriented philosophy to date. With grace, wit, and a remarkable inventiveness Harman invites us to return to basic philosophical questions. Whether or not one agrees with Harman's conclusions his work will be an inspiration for many. ~ Martin HÃ¤gglund, Harvard University, author of Radical Atheism

This wonderfully engaging book asks the most important metaphysical and epistemological questions of our time. What does it mean to be human? How do objects relate to each other? How might our understandings of object relations change if we take the cosmos into account? In a series of beautifully written chapters, Harman carefully builds his pathbreaking argument that objects relate through vicarious asymmetrical causation. Harman transforms complex ideas into digestible form, at the same time that he provides a refreshingly honest account of how his theory has developed over time, and the reactions it has garnered within the academy. This is a must-read for scholars interested in metaphysics, philosophy or science studies, and for students who want invaluable insights into how scholars theory-build. ~ Myra Hird, Queen's University, Canada. Author of The Origins of Sociable Life .
Translating Anarchy
by Mark Bray

An insider's account of the anarchists who ignited Occupy Wall Street.

Translating Anarchy tells the story of the anti-capitalist anti-authoritarians of Occupy Wall Street who strategically communicated their revolutionary politics to the public in a way that was both accessible and revolutionary. By “translating” their ideas into everyday concepts like community empowerment and collective needs, these anarchists sparked the most dynamic American social movement in decades.

Reviews:
This is a remarkable book and, of all the "insider" stories of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), the most compelling. ~ Paul Buhle, author of Marxism in the United States, truthout

Translating Anarchy is an impressive example of movement analysis, one of the most important books about anarchism of its time, and a must read for anyone studying contemporary anarchism and its implications, challenges, and possibilities. ~ Gabriel Kuhn, editor of Gustav Landauer: Revolution and Other Writings and Erich Mühsam: Liberating Society from the State and Other Writings, Alpine Anarchist Productions

Bray's meticulous, rich insider account of Occupy Wall Street demonstrates the central influence of anarchism on its core militants, but refuses to shy away from drawing hard lessons from its limitations. Anarchism, he convincingly argues, must position itself as an everyday movement of the 'ordinary' folks who alone can change the world - this requires a positive, practical programme and message, self-reflective and accountable politics, solid organisation, and clear tactics and strategy. ~ Lucien van der Walt (Rhodes University), co-author of Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism

In Translating Anarchy Mark Bray provides unique insight into the inner workings and politics of OWS and its interactions with the press and the public. The book not only describes how OWS "strategically articulated our politics" to the press and public, but provides an inside narrative of key OWS events; delineates the strands of anarchist and other thought that contributed to its political orientation; and draws lessons regarding key but controversial OWS approaches to the role of demands, the process of consensus, violence and non-violence, and other critical questions for future radical organizing.

Straightforward and non-academic but in fact scholarly and historically informed, it provides an often witty good read. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the OWS phenomenon or who may ever interpret social movements for the public and the media. ~ Jeremy Brecher, author of Strike! and Save the Humans?
Trav
by Taylor Burns

There is the day it happens, and then there is everything after.

Trav, thirteen, is trying to come to terms with the death of his father.

Jay, Trav’s best friend, is tasked with going through a decade’s worth of writing that Trav wrote after finding his father dead.

Stella, Trav’s mother, is trying to keep it together for her son while dealing with irreparable fallout in her adopted family.

Together, they try to make sense of grief and its druggy comedown, and what happens when cursed destinies intersect.

Powered by the prose — the rhythm and technique — of accent, sociolect, and place, this novel is working-class but not council-estate chic, grim but not grey, and blessed with a slangy Birmingham vernacular not readily found in modern fiction.

Reviews:
Trav is told with appropriate bravado. The prose blazes across the page, alive with pinpoint imagery. It had me from the start, with its close attention to detail, its touches of comedy, and the way it follows how relationships between family members alter over the years. I could feel the generosity behind the laser-eyed vision, the longing for a better way of doing things. A very strong, heartfelt, deeply affecting debut. I'm looking forward to more from Burns. ~ Alan Beard, author of Afternoon Drinking

A voice that dazzles as much as it devastates. This is a raw, luminous portrait of growing up, grief and the fragile armour of masculinity. Unsentimental yet unexpectedly full of grace, every page thrums with truth, humour and heartbreak. A phenomenal achievement. ~ Ashley Hickson-Lovence, author of About to Fall Apart

With maximum verve and energy, the world of Travis Barnes is rendered with authenticity and a glorious specificity. Taylor Burns writes with exceptional heart, intelligence, and fearlessness. ~ Wendy Erskine, author of The Benefactors

A moving, memorable exploration of masculinity, class and family, Trav fizzes with life. Taylor Burns navigates these prickly themes with an unflinching eye and brio; there is verve in every sentence. ~ Nicolas Padamsee, author of England is Mine

Trav is funny as fuck and fragile as glass. Rarely do you enter through the eyes and into the heart of a character with such unfiltered access, such vulnerability. But Travis Barnes — the novel's troubled but truthful anti-hero — is all the things that make us the brilliant, brutal, soft and stupid humans we are. Burns' writing, the kind I am endlessly, fruitlessly, in search of, is generous, but don't expect to come out unscathed, unshaken, unmoved. It is THE novel of New Birmingham, a place you think you know but probably, almost certainly do not. You will be closer after reading this. A working-class masterwork from one of the most stylish writers around. ~ Clive Judd, author of Here