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Politics & Polemics
Critical Theory October 5, 2022

A Critical Theory of Police Power

The Fabrication of the Social Order

Mark Neocleous

Hosted by Catriona Gold
A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of Social Order (Verso, 2021) offers a critical look at policing and the power of the state, examining the relationship between our ideas of order …

Politics & Polemics

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Interviews with partisans and polemicists about their new books.

The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones October 4, 2022

The Future of the Legitimate Opposition

A Discussion with Alexander S. Kirshner

Alexander S. Kirshner

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones
Alexander Kirshner’s book Legitimate Opposition (Yale UP, 2022) can be seen as a reaction to the politics of Donald Trump and the questions he has raised about the nature of …
Darts & Letters October 3, 2022

Technocracy Now! Part 1

Noam Chomsky on Intellectuals and Expertise

Noam Chomsky

Hosted by Gordon Katic
Technocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. In fact, it's an idea as old as politics itself, and it emerges just about everywhere across …
Philosophy October 3, 2022

Making Space for Justice

Social Movements, Collective Imagination, and Political Hope

Michele Moody-Adams

Hosted by Robert Talisse
A standard way of proceeding in political philosophy is to start with some form of conceptual inquiry: we first try to figure out what justice, equality, and freedom are and …
General History September 30, 2022

Armed Citizens

The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment

Noah Shusterman

Hosted by Michael Vann
Although much has changed in the United States since the eighteenth century, our framework for gun laws still largely relies on the Second Amendment and the patterns that emerged in …
Law September 29, 2022

The Nation That Never Was

Reconstructing America's Story

Kermit Roosevelt III

Hosted by William Domnarski
There's a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law …
Critical Theory September 29, 2022

Hegemony Now

How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)

Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert

Hosted by Louisa Hann
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cannot change …
Economic and Business History September 29, 2022

The New Goliaths

How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation

James Bessen

Hosted by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo
In The New Goliaths: How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation (Yale UP, 2022), James Bessen explores the idea of how software can actually slow …
Canadian Studies September 28, 2022

Capitalism and Dispossession

Corporate Canada at Home and Abroad

David P. Thomas and Veldon Coburn

Hosted by Phil Henderson
Many Canadians think of their country as a paragon of liberal democratic values at home, and a moderating force on the world stage—not so, argues the compelling new edited collection …
Art September 27, 2022

The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art

Gregory Sholette

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
Since the global financial crash of 2008, artists have become increasingly engaged in a wide range of cultural activism targeted against capitalism, political authoritarianism, colonial legacies, gentrification, but also in …
Critical Theory September 27, 2022

The Labour of Enjoyment

Towards a Critique of Libidinal Economy

Samo Tomšič

Hosted by Reuben Niewenhuis
Enjoyment appears as purely private matter, but this is by far not the case. Ever since Aristotle the philosophical social critique is tormented by the question, whether the libidinal tendencies …
Critical Theory September 23, 2022

Failure of Vision

Michael Harrington and the Limits of Democratic Socialism

Doug Greene

Hosted by Stephen Dozeman
The Democratic Socialists of America have exploded in the last few years, going from just a couple thousand members to close to a hundred thousand. This was from a …
Critical Theory September 22, 2022

Against Decolonization

Taking African Agency Seriously

Olúfemi Táíwò

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’. In …
Environmental Studies September 20, 2022

Cannibal Capitalism

How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It

Nancy Fraser

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Capital is currently cannibalizing every sphere of life–guzzling wealth from nature and racialized populations, sucking up our ability to care for each other, and gutting the practice of politics. In Cannibal …
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas with Renee Garfinkel September 19, 2022

Queering Anti-Zionism

Academic Freedom, LGBTQ Intellectuals, and Israel/Palestine Campus Activism

Corinne E. Blackmer

Hosted by Renee Garfinkel
Why do some scholars sacrifice truth and logic to political ideology and peer acceptance? With courage and intellectual integrity, queer scholar-activist Corinne Blackmer stages a pointed critique of scholars whose …
The Vault September 19, 2022

Tod Gitlin on the Recovery of American Ideals

Tod Gitlin

Hosted by New York Institute for the Humanities
In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear from Tod Gitlin. Gitlin was president of the Students for a Democratic Society, and went on to become a sociologist, political …
Islamic Studies September 16, 2022

Islam and Anarchism

Relationships and Resonances

Mohamed Abdou

Hosted by Shobhana Xavier
In his new book Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances (Pluto Press, 2022), Mohamed Abdou reimagines the parameters of political Islam and the possibilities of anarchistic interpretation of Islam and Islamic interpretation …
Politics & Polemics September 15, 2022

Remaindered Life

Neferti X. M. Tadiar

Hosted by Shraddha Chatterjee
In Remaindered Life Neferti X. M. Tadiar offers a new conceptual vocabulary and framework for rethinking the dynamics of a global capitalism maintained through permanent imperial war. Tracking how contemporary …
Psychoanalysis September 14, 2022

Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon

Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory

Amber M. Trotter

Hosted by Sebastian Thrul
“Perhaps psychoanalysis survives because it obstinately carries a torch of wild freedom and reverence for the unknowable in a world of rational epistemology and increasingly rigid sociopolitical control. Psychoanalysis does …
Art September 12, 2022

Art After Liberalism

Nicholas Gamso

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a …