The Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno once quipped that much of his work was written without practical applications in mind, and that the constant demand for immediate practical relevance felt like being asked by occupied forces to present one’s papers. While hyperbolic, the frustration is real among many progressive activists and intellectuals, and also points to a real problem within political engagement, with how the need to act right now sometimes can cloud judgment. Against this grain, some occasionally step up in encouraging us to step back and collect ourselves and our thoughts. One such writer is the topic of this episode, Marcello Tari, whose recent book There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution (Common Notions, 2021) recently became the first of his translated into English. Written from and for a scattered and confused left, the book has a style resembling the more esoteric and messianic figures in the lefts history, most notably Walter Benjamin, who appears throughout the books footnotes. In a series of chapters that wander through a number of disparate topics, it slowly develops a few key themes around late capitalism, violence, oppression, revolution and temporality, although a simple definition or analysis of any one of these elements in isolation never comes; instead they are developed and intertwined in various ways as a way of understanding the social and psychological knots we’re caught in. Easy fixes don’t come easy here either; instead Tari’s goal is in many ways to cultivate our sensitivity to our current political predicament, to speak to comrades in a way that generates a productive confusion that might help us think more critically about what’s needed. In the discussion that follows, Tari was unable to join us, but I was instead joined by two artists, Ayreen and Rene, who have known Tari for some time and proved careful and patient guides through the text. My typical formula for working through texts with guests broke down here; with every question I asked if they could define a term, or explain a passage, and every time they would take various detours through topics and themes I hadn’t expected, only to eventually come back to my initial question, but with a newfound angle into it I hadn’t picked up on during my own reading of the book. As a result, I left the conversation feeling like I was finally able to read the book, and I appreciate their willingness to sit with me on it. This book was challenging to read, and is even more challenging to describe, but it should be of interest to anyone engaged in contemporary political struggle. Tari is a self-described ‘barefoot’ researcher of contemporary political movements and struggles, and has published works in both French and Italian. He is also the translator of The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

New Books in Politics

Marcello Tarì, "There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution" (Common Notions, 2021)

Elite white women have branded feminism, promising an apolitical individual empowerment along with sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity. As Rafia Zakaria expertly argues in Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption (W. W. Norton, 2021)﻿, those promises have been proven empty and white feminists have leant on their racial privilege and sense of cultural superiority. Drawing on her own experiences as an American Muslim woman, as well as an attorney working on behalf of immigrant women, Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism that forges true solidarity by bringing Black and brown voices and goals to the fore. Ranging from the savior complex of British feminist imperialists to the condescension of the white feminist-led "development industrial complex" and the conflation of sexual liberation as the "sum total of empowerment," Zakaria presents an eye-opening indictment of how whiteness has contributed to a feminist movement that solely serves the interests of upper middle-class white women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Rafia Zakaria, "Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is often invoked, but usually as a means of cultural critique and analysis. However, my guest Lorenzo Fusaro argues in his recent book Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: From Gramsci's Quaderni to the Contemporary World Economy (Haymarket Books, 2020) that Gramsci’s work is permeated by Marx’s economic critique and his theories of value. Split into two parts, the book is both a critical rereading of Gramsci, followed by a rereading of the last century of economic and political developments. The first half of the book involves a careful rereading of key concepts in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, rethinking concepts such as hegemony as being more closely related to the base, instead of simply being superstructural description. Hegemony is not above and beyond economic dynamics and antagonisms, but emerges from them and changes alongside them. This allows for a broadening of the theory conceptually, and also allows him to apply it to international relations, instead of being confined to a particular state. The second half of the book then traces the economic history of the 20th century, starting with the rise of the United States in the international scene in the 1920’s, and following through to its eventual unraveling on the world stage in the present day. And even though the book was first published in 2018, at the end Fusaro offered some speculations on how this reworked theory of hegemony might help us think about the recent COVID crisis and its aftermath. Synthesizing theory, history and economics, this is a book that offers a powerful punch, and will reward readers from a number of different angles, and offers some dynamic theoretical resources for understanding our current crisis, and what might be just around the corner.  The book was first published by Brill as part of the Historical Materialism book series, and is now available in paperback from Haymarket. Lorenzo Fusaro received his PhD in international political economy at King's College, London. He is an associate professor of political economy at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico, and is also one of the editors of Revisiting Gramsci’s Laboratory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Lorenzo Fusaro, "Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: From Gramsci's Quaderni to the Contemporary World Economy" (Haymarket Books, 2020)

Scott Krzych's book Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria (Oxford University Press, 2021) offers the first scholarly study of contemporary right-wing documentary film and video. Drawing from contemporary work in political theory and psychoanalytic theory, the book identifies what author Scott Krzych describes as the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary in particular, and right-wing media more generally. In our chat, Scott and I review the development of conservative documentaries and discuss the various frameworks used to present ideas, as well as specific methods used to present information. Joel Tscherne is an Adjunct History Professor at Southern New Hampshire University. His Twitter handle is @JoelTscherne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Scott Krzych, "Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria" (Oxford UP, 2021)

According to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) 'Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.' Connecting the politics of abolition to wider emancipatory struggles for liberation and social justice, David Scott's book For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics (Waterside Press, 2020) argues that penal abolitionism should be understood as an important public critical pedagogy and philosophy of hope that can help to reinvigorate democracy and set society on a pathway towards living in a world without prisons. For Abolition draws upon the socialist ethics of dignity, empathy, freedom and paradigm of life to systematically critique imprisonment as a state institution characterised by 'social death'. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

David Scott, "For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics" (Waterside Press, 2020)

"The point of studying the world – including the past and other’s writings – is not just to understand it but to use that understanding to change it." – Harry Cleaver (33 Lessons from Capital – On Reading Marx Politically) Listening to Robert Ovetz explain the origins of his interest in the study of labor and his academic influences I was reminded of the title of the late A.O. Hirschman’s book A Propensity for Self-Subversion – you’ll know what I mean even though Robert uses the phrase ‘suicide pact for my academic career’! Seriously though, for those unfamiliar with Professor Ovetz’s engaging first book, When Workers Shot Back – Class Conflict from 1877 to 1921, the Hirschman reference is just a hint at the breadth of the professor’s experiences beyond academia that bring much to bear to his insightful and active approach to writing and labor studies. He has worked in politics and as a public policy advocate including as an aide for members of the Texas legislature, executive director of an NGO, and as a campaign director and policy advocate for other non-governmental organizations on debt, development, human rights, and ocean conservation issues. Robert has appeared on NPR, CNN, and the BBC and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Labor and Society. Most recently he edited and contributed to Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives published by Pluto Press in 2020. We talk about both books and endeavor to connect the theory with the methodology as exemplified in this edited volume of research from both academic and activist contributing authors representing labor studies from nine different countries over multiple industry sectors. In the course of the conversation Robert confirms the relevance and value of a ‘worker’s inquiry’ while broadening our understanding of class composition and struggle both historically and through recent developments with Amazon in our own global gilded age. Robert Ovetz is a lecturer in Political Science and the graduate program in Public Administration at San Jose State University. Keith Krueger lectures at the SILC Business School – Shanghai University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Robert Ovetz, "Workers' Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives" (Pluto Press, 2021)

We’ve been ​“saving the planet” for decades…and environmental crises just get worse. All this Tesla driving and LEED building and carbon trading seems to accomplish little to nothing — all while low-income communities continue to suffer the worst consequences. Why aren’t we cleaning up the toxic messes and rolling back climate change? And why do so many Americans hate environmentalists? Jenny Price says, enough already! — with this short, fun, fierce manifesto for an environmentalism that is hugely more effective, a whole lot fairer, and infinitely less righteous. In Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto (W. W. Norton, 2021), she challenges you, Exxon, and the EPA alike to think and act completely anew — and to start right now — to ensure a truly habitable future. Jenny Price is a public writer and artist, and a Research Fellow at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University-St. Louis. Author of Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America, she is co-founder of the public art collective LA Urban Rangers and a co-creator of the Our Malibu Beaches mobile-phone app. She has been a resident artist at MOCA and the Orange County Museum of Art, and has held visiting professorships at Princeton University. She is currently working on “St. Louis Division,” a hometown collection of projects about environmental justice. Brian Hamilton is Chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Twitter. Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Jenny Price, "Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

If many people were shocked by Donald Trump’s 2016 election, many more were stunned when, months later, white supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace us!” Like Trump, the Charlottesville marchers were dismissed as aberrations—crazed extremists who did not represent the real US.  It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU Press, 2021) demonstrates that, rather than being exceptional, such white power extremism and the violent atrocities linked to it are a part of American history. And, alarmingly, they remain a very real threat to the US today. Hinton explains how murky politics, structural racism, the promotion of American exceptionalism, and a belief that the US has have achieved a color-blind society have diverted attention from the deep roots of white supremacist violence in the US’s brutal past. Drawing on his years of research and teaching on mass violence, Hinton details the warning signs of impending genocide and atrocity crimes, the tools used by ideologues to fan the flames of hate, and the shocking ways in which “us” versus “them” violence is supported by inherently racist institutions and policies. It Can Happen Here is an essential new assessment of the dangers of contemporary white power extremism in the United States. While revealing the threat of genocide and atrocity crimes that loom over the country, Hinton offers actions we can take to prevent it from happening, illuminating a hopeful path forward for a nation in crisis. Jeff Bachman is Senior Lecturer in Human Rights at American University’s School of International Service in Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Alexander Laban Hinton, "It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US" (NYU Press, 2021)

Students of American history know that the framers of the Constitution were deeply concerned that the United States would founder on the shoals of mob rule. They designed a system meant to ensure rule by an elected elite, a republic rather than a democracy. While democratic elements have been introduced over the past two centuries, that basic structure still stands. In Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton UP, 2020), Landemore argues that it is time to create a more truly democratic system, one in which elections do not play a major role. While she thinks it unlikely that the national arena is necessarily the best place to start implementing such changes, she does see opportunities for creating local assemblies or “mini-publics” where citizens chosen by lot would deliberate on and enact policies and laws. She points out that hundreds of experiments in this direction have been initiated in the past two decades, and she lays down principles and approaches that make the likelihood of success greater. Her work is profoundly optimistic about the potential for citizens from all walks of life to participate in governing their society. Jack Petranker, MA, JD, is the founder and Senior Teacher at the Center for Creative Inquiry and the Director of the Mangalam Research Center. www.jackpetranker.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Hélène Landemore, "Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century" (Princeton UP, 2020)

From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish.  Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System (New Press, 2019) is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums. He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional. Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beings--an everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification.  **Special announcement for teachers: Usual Cruelty is available free of charge for your students and for each student assigned a complimentary copy of Usual Cruelty will be circulated in prisons. Learn more https://thenewpress.com/books/... Lee M. Pierce (she/they) is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Geneseo specializing in rhetoric, race, and U.S. political culture. They also host the Media & Communications and Language channels for New Books Network and their own podcast titled RhetoricLee Speaking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Alec Karakatsanis, "Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System" (New Press, 2019)

In Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet (U Mississippi Press, 2021), author Wendy K. Z. Anderson details how white nationalist and alt-right women refine racist rhetoric and web design as a means of protection and simultaneous instantiation of white supremacy, which conservative political actors including Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ivanka Trump have amplified through transnational politics. By validating racial fears and political divisiveness through coded white identity politics, postfeminist and motherhood discourse functions as a colorblind, gilded cage. Rebirthing a Nation reveals how white nationalist women utilize colorblind racism within digital space, exposing how a postfeminist framework becomes fodder for conservative white women’s political speech to preserve institutional white supremacy. Wendy K. Z. Anderson (she/her) is an independent researcher and instructor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities. Lee M. Pierce (they & she) is Asst Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the State University of New York College at Geneseo. Connect on Twitter, Gmail, etc. @rhetoriclee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Wendy K. Z. Anderson, "Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet" (U Mississippi Press, 2021)

Matthew Karp is a historian of the U.S. Civil War era and its relationship to the nineteenth-century world. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and joined the Princeton faculty in 2013. The piece we are talking about is The Politics of a Second Gilded Age, published in February 2021 in The Jacobin. His first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy (Harvard UP, 2016) explores the ways that slavery shaped U.S. foreign relations before the Civil War. Karp is now at work on a book about the emergence of anti-slavery mass politics in the United States, and in particular the radical vision of the Republican Party in the 1850s. Agata Popeda is a Polish-American journalist. Interested in everything, with a particular weakness for literature and foreign relations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Matthew Karp on Writing Engaged History

In recent years Americans have experienced a range of assaults upon the truth. In The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth (Brookings Institution Press, 2021), Jonathan Rauch describes the various ways in which our understanding of truth has come under attack, and the mechanisms that exist to fight back. As Rauch explains, the challenge of determining truth is as old as civilization itself, with the system we use today a product of concepts formulated in the 17th and 18th centuries. Today this system faces an unprecedented challenge created by the digital revolution, which has inverted the social incentives on which the reality-based community depends and fractured reality for millions of people. The consequences of this today can be seen today in both the numerous agenda-driven disinformation campaigns and the coercive conformity of “cancel culture” that challenges diversity of thought. Yet for all of the threats posed to the Constitution of Knowledge, Rauch argues that within it are contained the tools with which people can fight back successfully in order to maintain our social system for turning disagreement into truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Jonathan Rauch, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth" (Brookings, 2021)

Interviews with Authors about their New Books

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New Books in Politics

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