Verso Books

Book SynopsisEarly in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and on the African continent. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism; in his efforts to build mass organizations, catalyze rebellious ferment, and theorize an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation, he can be counted among its prime authors. Decolonial Marxism records such a life by collecting previously unbound essays written during the world-turning days of Black revolution. In drawing together pages where he elaborates on the nexus of race and class, offers his reflections on radical pedagogy, outlines programs for newly independent nation-states, considers the challenges of anti-colonial historiography, and produces balance sheets for a dozen wars for national liberation, this volume captures something of the range and power of Rodney's output. But it also demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.Trade ReviewIf Walter Rodney's assassins were under the impression that they could arrest the flow of his ideas by destroying his body, they could have not been more wrong ... In the context of the new resistance to global capitalism, his captivating analysis resonates more than ever before. -- Angela Davis, author of Women, Race and ClassRodney's perspective is alive, dazzling with the potential of revolution. -- Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations and Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social ResearchHighly original ... It is very rare to find a thinker in the contemporary world who is equally committed to both theory and action and perhaps Rodney is one those few who does it seamlessly and that is what marks him as unique. -- Viswesh Rammohan * Marx & Philosophy *Walter Rodney galvanised liberation by awakening radical Pan-African consciousness ... [Decolonial Marxism's] messages are consequential for our day and age. -- Donari Yahzid * Race & Class *Table of ContentsEditorial Note IntroductionPart 1: Marxist Theory and Mass Action1. A Brief Tribute to Amilcar Cabral2. Masses in Action3. Marxism and African Liberation4. Marxism as a Third World Ideology 5. Labour as a Conceptual Framework for Pan-African Studies 6. The Angolan QuestionPart 2: Development and Underdevelopment7. The Historical Roots of African Underdevelopment8. Problems of Third World Development 9. Slavery and UnderdevelopmentPart 3: Their Pedagogy and Ours10. The British Colonialist School of African Historiography and the Question of African Independence11. Education in Colonial Africa 12. Education in Africa and Contemporary TanzaniaPart 4: Building Socialism13. Tanzanian Ujamaa and Scientific Socialism14. Class Contradictions in Tanzania 15. Transition 16. Decolonization

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Book SynopsisSince the disastrous Pompidou years, working-class Paris has been steadily nibbled away, either by destruction or more insidiously by a kind of internal colonization. Take for example a small outlying district populated by Arabs, blacks and poor whites twenty years ago, the L'Olive neighbourhood north of La Chapelle The area is noted as pleasant, people frequent it and explore it, and as the rents are low some settle there. Others follow, first friends and then anyone else. Rents go up, buildings are renovated, bars open, then an organic food shop, a vegan restaurant...The earlier indigenous inhabitants are driven out by the rising rents and settle further away, in Saint-Denis if they are lucky, or else in Garges-lès-Gonesse, Goussainville or God knows where.But new neighbourhoods are emerging, for example the Chinese quarter of Bas Belleville, which has grown since the 1970s to the point that in some streets, such as Rue Civiale or Rue Rampal, the restaurants and shops are all Chinese, with many Chinese sex workers on Boulevard de la Villette. These Chinese almost all come from Wenzhou, a large province south of Shanghai, whose inhabitants are reputedly known for their commercial skills.Paris is constantly changing as a living organism, both for better and for worse. This book is an incitement to open our eyes and lend an ear to the tumult of this incomparable capital, from the Périphérique to Place Vendôme, its markets of Aligre and Belleville, its cafés and tabacs, its history from Balzac to Sartre. In some thirty succinct vignettes, from bookshops to beggars, Art Nouveau to street sounds, Parisian writers to urban warts, Jacobins to Surrealism, Hazan offers a host of invaluable aperçus, illuminated by a matchless knowledge of his native city.Trade ReviewA jewel of a book. A must read for any aspirant Parisian flâneur or intellectually curious visitor to the city. Hazan reminds us that Paris is so much more than its wide boulevards and antiseptic tourist spots. He invites us to consider its multi-layered, multi-linguistic, multicultural, amorphous past and present. Paris in Turmoil is the perfect aperitif to the city and will enrich any visit. Better still, it can be read in one sitting on the Eurostar on your way there. -- Edward Chisholm, author of A Waiter in Paris: Adbentures in the Dark Heart of the CityHazan meshes history, architecture, philosophy, and social geography in this concise yet wide-ranging tribute to his native Paris. Throughout, Hazan expertly reflects on the city's cultural and intellectual transformations, and spotlights writers who "left their mark on the city," including Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac. The result is an astute and opinionated tour of one of the world's great cities. * Publishers Weekly *Hazan, a political activist and insatiable flâneur ("stroller," roughly), has compiled something far greater than musings on the City of Light. Read together, these pieces offer an extended invitation to the reader to take the many layers of Parisian life and history more seriously and give them the attention they merit...Readers already familiar with Paris will find this fiery and charming volume the perfect companion for a thought-provoking walk around the City of Light. -- Library JournalFascinating ... Hazan's focus on the detail, colour and texture of Paris has the effect of transporting you there. -- Rhian E. Jones * New Humanist *

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Book SynopsisIn this fiery, theoretical tour de force, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant offer an overview of life and death under capitalism and argue for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its primary tools: health.Written by co-hosts of the hit "Death Panel" podcast and longtime disability justice and healthcare activists Adler-Bolton and Vierkant, Health Communism first examines how capital has instrumentalized health, disability, madness, and illness to create a class seen as "surplus," regarded as a fiscal and social burden. Demarcating the healthy from the surplus, the worker from the "unfit" to work, the authors argue, serves not only to undermine solidarity but to mark whole populations for extraction by the industries that have emerged to manage and contain this "surplus" population. Health Communism then looks to the grave threat capital poses to global public health, and at the rare movements around the world that have successfully challenged the extractive economy of health.Ultimately, Adler-Bolton and Vierkant argue, we will not succeed in defeating capitalism until we sever health from capital. To do this will require a radical new politics of solidarity that centers the surplus, built on an understanding that we must not base the value of human life on one's willingness or ability to be productive within the current political economy.Capital, it turns out, only fears health.Trade ReviewThis book changed the way I think about health, power, state capacity, extraction, social welfare, and resistance. It is an immensely useful tool for wrestling with the most urgent questions facing our movements in these terrifying times. Readable and filled with concise histories and clear examples to illustrate nuanced analysis, it will no doubt become required reading among those struggling against the death cult that is racial capitalism. -- Dean Spade, author of Mutual AidBeatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant bring us a galvanizing proposition: Unlike the rest of us, capital is not alive; it merely animates itself through our host bodies. This book shares the impressive truth that we are all surplus in the political economy of health, whether we are presently 'healthy' or 'sick.' Adler-Bolton and Vierkant teach that our shared condition of vulnerability is ever ready to transform into our collective strength. -- Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender ChildBeatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant have been a lifeline for many during the COVID-19 pandemic through their Death Panel podcast, deconstructing the failed American response with a knife that cuts like truth. Here, they do something even more remarkable: imagine a better future. Health Communism doesn't tinker around the edges. It makes a direct assault on the idea that health can survive under capitalism, where the sick are simply disposable, while the system making a killing along the way. No one talks like Adler-Bolton and Vierkant do - those in public health and medicine are too deeply embedded in the status quo to even acknowledge the searing logic of their words. They stake out the far edge of what is possible and remind us that only the journey towards that horizon will make us free. -- Gregg Gonsalves, Yale School of Public Health and Yale Law SchoolHealth against health! I can't remember the last time I learned so much in under 200 pages. Nor can I imagine a more needful book for the pandemic we are still in, let alone the pandemics yet to come. This exquisitely researched 'surplus manifesto' made me cry tears of rage, but demonstrated powerfully to me that our collective illness can be 'turned into a weapon.' In my view, everyone new to disability liberation should read this text. Everyone who wants to stop the destruction of their bodies by capitalism should join the Death Panel community. If we let them, Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant will teach the left how to really understand capitalism, at the cellular and somatic levels. So, if you are holding this book, congratulations. Here is deep wisdom to arm a struggle towards forms of human embodiment as yet undreamed-of; inspiration for a million insurgencies of communist health. -- Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the FamilyI could not help but cheer as I read Health Communism. The most analytically sharp analysis of the relations between capitalism and disability since the pioneering work of Marta Russell, this powerfully explicative work is a rousing manifesto for the sick and becoming-surplus to unite. -- Jasbir Puar, author of The Right to MaimHealth Communism illustrates how people are viewed as fuel from which to extract profits through the medicalization and financialization of health outputs...[it] serves as a wake-up call for the dehumanization of healthcare delivery. -- Roberta E. Winter * The New York Journal of Books *In Health Communism, [Adler-Bolton and Vierkant] show how members of the 'unproductive' surplus class are cast as burdens even as health capitalism sets up entire cottage industries (e.g. for-profit nursing homes, prisons) to extract value from this very population. -- Charlie Markbreiter * Bookforum *This seamless book fills an urgent void in leftist theories of illness...the achievement of such a concise yet cogent framework (aided by the fact that the past years have only confirmed its conclusion) is a marvel. -- Selen Ozturk * PopMatters *Surveying a century of sickness under an increasingly privatized system, in Health Communism Adler-Bolton and Vierkant argue that we have to demand much more than Medicare for All in order to fix health care. -- Spencer Green * The New Republic *This is a book you should read before you die, because the ideas synthesized by Adler-Bolton and Vierkant could save our collective lives. Health Communism diagnoses our shared social sickness correctly. Rooted in the contemporary reality of mass death and disability, it reworks our familiar, commonsense concepts of sickness and health, care and cure, labor and waste to show how capitalist biomedicine wrings every last drop of productive labor from us before discarding us into the trash heap of 'surplus population' to carelessly be picked over and plundered until our death...Indeed, we are all ill under capitalism. Read this book. Care for your neighbors. Smash capitalism. Malingerers of the world unite. -- Jon Shaffer * Peste Magazine *Health Communism is itself a blueprint, in the (roughly translated) words of SPK, for turning illness into a weapon. -- Jess McAllen * The Baffler *[Health Communism] is a new way to find the universal in the particular, which is the kind of thinking tool we are in desperate need of at the moment. Turning those ideas into practice is a greater challenge. Where to start? Health communists begin with a compelling vision of society not as divided between abled and disabled or sick and well but as a vast web of people, all of whom have both abilities to contribute and needs to meet. -- Malcolm Harris * New York Magazine *Heath Communism is not "well-behaved": It is not interested in sober consideration, dry pontifications. It thrives through a sense of optimism. There is a joy to a manifesto that sits alongside its anger. If it is birthed from complaint and fury, these emotions are funneled through a hope that things could be otherwise-most of all, an optimism for a new collective. -- Jon Venn * Full Stop *Best Books of 2022 -- Joshua Frank * Counterpunch *If you have ever gone to work sick because you need the job to treat the sickness, you know the basic argument of Health Communism to be true: health under capitalism is an impossibility. -- Natalie Adler * LUX Magazine *Health Communism is, most fundamentally, a call for a new and expansive concept of health as a commons, a collective experience, and a collective commitment to human flourishing, freed from the ideological and financial strictures of market discipline. -- Abby Cartus * The New Republic *This creative, wide-ranging book would be important under any circumstances since it helps readers understand widespread social processes that are genuinely violent in their operations yet often curiously bloodless in their ideological depictions. The book is especially urgent in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Health Communism helps make clear both the fundamental social patterns that gave rise to the pandemic, and stresses that any real solutions to those patterns will require far-reaching social change. -- Nate Holdren * Theory & Event *An exciting contribution to materialist disability studies * Critical Inquiry *

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Book SynopsisWhat does gentrification look like? Can we even agree that it is a process that replaces one community with another? It is a question of class? Or of economic opportunity? Who does it affect the most? Is there any way to combat it? Leslie Kern, author of the best selling Feminist City, travels from Toronto, New York, London, Paris and San Francisco and scrutinises the myth and lies that surround this most urgent urban crisis of our times.First observed in 1950s London, and theorised by leading thinkers such as Ruth Glass, Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, this devastating process of displacement now can be found in every city and most neighbourhoods. Beyond the Yoga studio, farmer's market and tattoo parlour, gentrification is more than a metaphor, but impacts the most vulnerable communities. Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the crisis that seek to reveal the violence based on class, race, gender and sexuality. She argues that gentrification is not natural That it can not be understood in economics terms, or by class. That it is not a question of taste. That it can only be measured only by the physical displacement of certain people. Rather, she argues, it is an continuation of the setter colonial project that removed natives from their land. And it can be seen today is rising rents and evictions, transformed retail areas, increased policing and broken communities. But if gentrification is not inevitable, what can we do to stop the tide? In response, Kern proposes a genuinely decolonial, feminist, queer, anti-gentrification. One that demands the right to the city for everyone and the return of land and reparations for those who have been displaced.Trade ReviewA concise but also comprehensive account of gentrification, offering solutions and understanding of one of the major social battlegrounds of our times. -- Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and The 1%An excellent job of puncturing the myths and exposing the ideologies that make gentrification seem natural, inevitable, and desirable. And with incisive clarity, she develops an account of what a radical, intersectional anti-gentrification politics might look like. -- David Madden, co-author of In Defense of HousingA sweeping and fluid new book on gentrification. Kern expertly weaves theory, concepts, and up-to-date debates about gentrification together, making it accessible not only to urban scholars but to general readers too. A superb book I would have liked to have written but didn't. A must-read for anyone interested in gentrification. -- Loretta Lees, Director of the Initiative on Cities, Boston University, USAConfronts gentrification with a multidimensional and intersectional critique, revealing the process of urban 'improvement' as an unending campaign of social exclusion and a biting metaphor for making money. She combines her own experience as a city dweller with extensive social research to provide both a call for creative collective action and a good read. -- Sharon Zukin, author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban PlacesFrom the forced removal of Indigenous people to the redlining of Black neighbourhoods, from the disenfranchisement of women through suburbanization to the expulsion of the LGBTQ+ community, Kern's writing is a rallying cry for the decolonization of placemaking and a blueprint for an urbanism rooted in social justice and fairness. -- Christine Murray, editor-in-chief of The Developer and director of the Festival of PlaceKern is a wonderful writer, and this compelling, important, and highly original intervention in the gentrification debates is a staggering tour de force. At once a devastating critique of the limitations of established perspectives on gentrification and a convincing plea for an intersectional approach, this book offers sparklingly clear analysis and numerous possibilities for political action. Anyone who reads it will never forget it -- Tom Slater, author of Shaking Up the City: Ignorance, Inequality, and the Urban QuestionIn this clear and smartly written book, Leslie Kern brings together some of the most recognizable and essential elements of urban gentrification, making this familiar and ubiquitous term strange, in the most effective and generative ways. Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies arms geographers, cultural theorists, planners, and the general public with an essential understanding of the myths, markings, and formation of global gentrification -- Brandi Thompson Summers, author of Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate CityIn 10 succinct chapters, Kern defines and outlines the current arguments surrounding gentrification while focusing on the inability to adequately discuss it with each other or within communities. Each chapter contains solid examples of where, when, and why gentrification is appearing in communities, and what the impact is on each respective group. The impact of gentrification on race, class, gender, age, and Indigenous peoples are astutely explored...A first class analysis and tool kit. -- Tina Panik * Library Journal, starred review *[Kern] ends with a decisive call to action, broken down into small, accessible, and implementable steps. It emphasizes that gentrification touches everyone's lives, and that everyone therefore has a responsibility to devote their specific skills to reducing its impact on vulnerable populations. Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is a humane analysis of the many contributing and consequential factors of urban takeovers. * Foreword Reviews *Drawing on research from Buenos Aires, Chicago, Toronto, and other cities, Kern documents neighborhoods in the process of change and those that have stopped or reshaped gentrification. She lucidly explains modern feminist and urban theories and brings fresh insights and a measure of hope to a vexing social issue. [A] searing yet inspirational polemic. * Publishers Weekly *Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Sharon Zukin, urban scholar Leslie Kern proposes an intersectional way at looking at the gentrification crisis amid our current economic climate, based on class, race, gender, and sexuality. * Fortune *Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies is an accessible read thanks to Kern's storytelling skills and her conscious intent to write for a broad audience outside of academia. * Quill & Quire *In Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern travels to Toronto, Vancouver, New York, London and Paris to look at how gentrification is killing our cities and what we can do about it. She examines the often invisible forces that shape urban neighbourhoods, including settler colonialism, racism, sexism, ageism, ableism and how city lovers can work together to turn the tide. * CBC, 60 works of nonfiction to watch for in fall 2022 *Leslie Kern dissects seven common myths about gentrification, asserting that any study of the urban phenomenon should be examined not only in terms of class but also through the lenses of queer-feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial points of view. The final chapter explores these three frameworks in depth, offering actionable steps toward a more equitable urbanism that centers such concepts as infrastructures of care, Land Back movements, reparations, and environmental justice. * Metropolis Magazine *Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies challenges a number of well-entrenched perspectives on gentrification from the anticapitalist left as well as the market-minded right...Kern's book is thorough in its intersectionality. -- Scott McLemee * Inside Higher Ed *[Gentrification Is Inevitable and Other Lies] examines the forces behind displacement in North America and beyond, arguing for an intersectional way of understanding gentrification, one that acknowledges the harms done to working people based not just on class but also on race, gender, and sexuality. The problem is vastly greater than the individual choices of the middle-class. -- Michael Friedrich * The New Republic *Kern makes an informed, engaging, and impassioned case. -- Richard Harris * Journal of Urban Affairs *Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XI GENTRIFICATION IS . . . 1 GENTRIFICATION IS NATURAL 17 GENTRIFICATION IS ABOUT TASTE 31 GENTRIFICATION IS ABOUT MONEY 51 GENTRIFICATION IS ABOUT CLASS 71 GENTRIFICATION IS ABOUT PHYSICAL DISPLACEMENT 103 GENTRIFICATION IS A METAPHOR 133 GENTRIFICATION IS INEVITABLE 151 CHANGE THE STORY, CHANGE THE ENDING 175

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Book SynopsisIn Balzac’s vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail - the cafés, landmarks, avenues, parks - and captures the populace in countless meticulously drawn portraits: its lawyers, grisettes, journalists, concierges, usurers, salesmen, speculators.Balzac gathered the elements of this Paris by sauntering through it. ‘To saunter is a science,’ he writes, ‘it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live.’ Eric Hazan follows in Balzac’s footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist’s outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistre

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Book SynopsisThe award-winning, highly acclaimed Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as "social practice." In recent decades, the art gallery and the museum have become a place for participatory art, where an audience is encouraged to take part in the artwork. This has been heralded as a revolutionary practise that can promote new emancipatory social relations. What was it is really? In this fully updated edition, Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawel Althamer and Paul Chan.Bishop challenges the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art this practise. She not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. In response Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.Trade ReviewClaire Bishop has articulated an important historical overview of the global emergence of participatory art ... Her controversial and thought-provoking conclusions courageously trouble our assumptions about the effectiveness of political artworks, questioning their oppositional quality, their effects on the audiences they reach, and their relation to the institutions that promote them. * Frank Jewett Mather Award, 2013 *Bishop's arguments are convincingly supported and potentially very contentious...A critically challenging work of vital scholarship. * Publishers Weekly *An essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has witnessed a participatory art 'happening' and thought, 'Now that's art!' or 'That's art?' * Library Journal *Bishop seeks a standard for judging participatory works...She draws on the writings of French philosopher Jacques Rancière to argue that art must maintain a degree of autonomy and unreadability in order to resist co-option by the political and economic forces intent on imposing a false social consensus. -- Eleanor Heartney * Art in America *Pellucid -- Alexander Provan * New York Observer *The good intentions of contemporary artists frequently pave a road to hell. Claire Bishop follows their descent into the inferno and invites her readers to share her fascination with what she finds along the way. Artificial Hells combines vast historical knowledge with a precise analysis of individual artistic practices. So much so that at the end of her new book we have begun to fall in love with hell-under the condition that it remains artificial. -- Boris Groys, author of Art Power

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Book SynopsisIn this reissue of the 1972 classic of social anatomy, Richard Sennets adds a new introduction to shows how the injuries of class persist into the 21st century. In this intrepid, groundbreaking book, Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb uncover and define a new form of class conflict in America?an internal conflict in the heart and mind of the blue-collar worker who measures his own value against those lives and occupations to which our society gives a special premium.The authors conclude that in the games of hierarchical respect, no class can emerge the victor; and that true egalitarianism can be achieved only by rediscovering diverse concepts of human dignity. Examining personal feelings in terms of a totality of human relations, and looking beyond the struggle for economic survival, The Hidden Injuries of Class takes an important step forward in the sociological critique of everyday life.Trade ReviewTheir work is subtle, refined and sympathetic. It is an excellent example of social-science work in which the authors do not pretend impartiality but state their values and allow their readers to learn from their findings and argue with their conclusions. * The New Yorker *Among the many recent studies of working class life...this stands out both for its compassion and its willingness to venture into subjective psychic realities painfully difficult to articulate and impossible to quantify. * Kirkus Review *The book is an exercise in secular prophecy, frequently involuted, sometimes contradictory, and often brilliant * New York Times *They are strongly marked by a personal style of thought which delights in para- dox and digs into the mind of the American worker in the manner of a Shakespearian critic analyzing the character of Hamlet * Political Science Quarterly *

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Book SynopsisFrom authors including National Book Award winner Pete Hautman, Deadly Ink 2007 winner Darrell James, and renowned social commentator turned short-story writer Mike Davis, Politics Noir is a chilling and subversive collection of new crime stories featuring greed, corruption, insatiable ambition-and murder in the very highest places.Trade ReviewThe author's grasp of Southern California politics is razor sharp. * Booklist (in praise of Gary Phillips) *

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Book SynopsisIn this acclaimed exploration of the culture of others, Rebecca Solnit travels through Ireland, the land of her long-forgotten maternal ancestors. A Book of Migrations portrays in microcosm a history made of great human tides of invasion, colonization, emigration, nomadism and tourism. Enriched by cross-cultural comparisons with the history of the American West, A Book of Migrations carves a new route through Ireland's history, literature and landscape.Trade ReviewTruly exceptional, a paradise for readers. * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisMarxist Modernism is a comprehensive yet concise and conversational introduction to the Frankfurt School. It is also a new resource from one of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers: Gillian Rose.Her 1979 lectures on the Frankfurt School explore the lives and philosophies of a range of the school’s members and affiliates, including Adorno, Lukács, Brecht, Bloch, Benjamin, and Horkheimer, and outline the way each theorist developed Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism into a Marxist theory of culture.Edited by Robert Lucas Scott and James Gordon Finlayson

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Book SynopsisNeurodiversity is one of the most urgent political issues of our time. As the number of diagnoses of autism, ADHD, and other types of neurodivergence rises, we are starting to understand that there is no such thing as a 'normal' brain. But society is still organised around neuronormativity, and autism is treated as a disease.Jodie Hare, diagnosed with autism at twenty-three, argues it is time to redefine the politics of who we are. She calls for the recognition of diversity as part of natural variation, rather than a departure from sameness. This will have an impact on the places where we learn, work, and socialise - and Hare shows how these can be adapted to be more inclusive and accessible. She shows how we might commit to building a world where we can all thrive, one that works to combat discrimination based on race, class, gender, and disability.

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Book SynopsisAfter a successful career, a twenty-year marriage, and two kids, McKenzie Wark has an acute midlife crisis: coming out as a trans woman. Changing both social role and bodily form recasts her relation to the world. Transition changes what, and how, she remembers. She makes fresh sense of her past and of history by writing to key figures in her life about the big themes that haunt us all-love and money, sex and death.In letters to her childhood self, her mother, sister, and past lovers, she writes a backstory that enables her to live in the present. The letters expand to address trans sisters lost and found, as well as Cybele, ancient goddess of trans women. She engages with the political, the aesthetic, and the numinous dimensions of trans life and how they refract her sense of who she is, who she has been, who she can still become. She confronts difficult memories that connect her mother's early death to her compulsion to write, her communist convictions, her coming to New York, the bittersweet reality of her late transition, and the joy to be found in Brooklyn's trans and raver communities.Trade ReviewSeeing the world unfold from the perspective of a self is easier than seeing that self as a particular folding-up of the world. MacKenzie Wark's special genius, in this wild ride across the late twentieth century and its aftermath, is to offer both perspectives at once, shimmying and shaking between the two with gleeful and brilliant abandon. -- Susan Stryker, author of Transgender HistoryMcKenzie Wark's account of her life to this point fuses friendship and history, love and ideas. Radically honest and beautifully light, her memoir offers brilliant and challenging ways of understanding how fluidly gender is actually lived by those who dare. Like all of her work, it's really a personal manifesto. I was inspired and energized reading this book. -- Chris Kraus, author of I Love DickA capacious offering to transfeminine truth-witty and wild, soft and scathing, broken-hearted and open-hearted. Moving toward the future by excavating the past, Wark makes space for complexity, innovation, self- determination, and communal possibility in "the sparkle of one's difference." -- Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of The Freezer DoorIn writing letters to former selves, mothers, lovers and others McKenzie Wark has captured life lived in and as transformation with rigour and poetry. From an oppressive but formative 1960s Australian childhood, to the physical and intellectual expansiveness of New York City in the 21st century, Wark witnesses her beginnings and endings, her coming and unbecoming. She is bracing, sharp, argumentative and tender all at once -- Sophie Cunningham, author of The Devastating FeverA sharp epistolary memoir about gender, family, disability, and age...Wark's analysis of gender, sexuality, and queerness is both ebullient and trenchant. * Kirkus Reviews *Sad and tender and sassy and smart. A love letter to life and transition, to the endless possibilities of the body and the mind, to love itself. -- Fiona Kelly McGregor, author of IrisWark is one of the only scholars to take young people seriously-not as a spectacle or site of extraction, but as friends to learn from and hang out with. This lack of judgment, which radiates, not just through the book, but through the author herself, is what is so winning in the end. I am grateful for Love and Money, Sex and Death, and I'm grateful for McKenzie, too. -- Charlie Markbreiter * The New Inquiry *This memoir plumbs erasures in Wark's personal experiences in order to understand her personal formation outside of the 'born this way' narrative...there's something refreshing, even relieving, about the book's lack of a neat, packaged gender narrative. Love and Money, Sex and Death is a memoir that seeks understanding around a personal formation; it extends that spacious anarchy for others to play in too. * Foreword Reviews *[This] memoir is an attempt to make sense of the edited self and the person who we once were. A portrait of selfhood under construction. -- Isle McElroy, 24 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall * Vulture *Wark revisits and reexamines her past by writing letters to major figures in her life in her new memoir and a stunning look at transition, history, art, and memory. -- September 2023's Must Read Books * Nylon *[Love and Money, Sex and Death] outright embodies not just the communal, but the femmunal, the sprawling network of weirdo-others that make the self. -- Anahi Molina * Guernica *Wark's work is always worth checking out, and this new book looks to be an especially essential part of her bibliography. * Vol. 1 Brooklyn *Wark's poetic and direct language crafts an unusually moving text that draws on art, popular culture, and mythology. The result is an introspective narrative that both tells an individual's story and conveys essential insights into gender and queerness, family, friends, and change. -- Natalie Haddad * Hyperallergic *In glimpses that are both emotionally and intellectually breathtaking, [Wark] recalls her coming-of-age in Newcastle, Australia, in the 1960s and '70s; her career as a poet; her marriage and grief; parenthood; her various lovers and her transition, in her 50s. -- Melissa Bond * The New York Times Book Review *[Wark] turns the idea of a traditional, linear memoir on its head, using hindsight as a tool to reapproach, and in some cases recover, past relationships. -- Allison Armijo * The Gay & Lesbian Review *McKenzie Wark is one of the sharpest, most exciting voices writing at the intersections of capitalism, community, gender, and sex - more broadly, everything in this title - and she is also criminally underread. -- Arianna Rebolini, Best Memoirs of 2023 * Vulture *

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Book SynopsisOur marriage was, from any conventional point of view, wildly implausible; and you, my dear son, are the miraculous product of this beautiful, rather crazy, and all too brief love affair. When Dylan Riley received the devastating news that his wife, Emanuela, had cancer, he turned to writing to express the anguish and disarray brought by her worsening symptoms and then her passing. Perdita, composed for their teenage son, Eamon, is the result of this attempt to represent loss. It is at once a portrait of youth, a lyrical memoir of a marriage, and a raw and moving account of bereavement.Riley describes cancer, Perdita’s central antagonist, as a pitiless opponent, draining hope of its power and reducing it to self-delusion. Its course forces a progressive foreshortening of time. Next year might be terrible, but there can be a few good months now; tomorrow will likely be bad, but let’s focus on today.In this memoir, the disease provokes a broader

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Book SynopsisMiss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. She has shared tips with other sex workers in the nascent drag ball scene of the late 1960s, and helped found one of America's first needle exchange clinics from the back of her van. Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life-told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity-and a roadmap for the challenges black, brown, queer and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today. Her incredible story of a life lived and a world survived becomes a conduit for larger questions about the riddle of collective liberation. For a younger generation, she warns about the traps of 'representation,' the politics of 'self-care,' and the frequent dead-ends of non-profit organizing; for all of us, she is a strike against those who would erase these histories of struggle. Miss Major offers something that cannot be found elsewhere: an affirmation that our vision for freedom can and must be more expansive than those on offer by mainstream institutions.Trade ReviewTo sit at Miss Major Griffin-Gracy's feet is a gift. I've experienced it firsthand, with her fixed, embracing gaze, her mischievous, generous laugh, and her sharp tongue lashing unfiltered truth without the ache to impress or perform. -- Janet Mock * Out Magazine *The extraordinary insights in this book, always punctuated by Miss Major's razor-sharp wit, allow us to understand how liberation movements for trans, queer and other routinely marginalized people can hold the most emancipatory potential for all. -- Angela Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant StruggleMiss Major has shaped the world in countless ways from Stonewall to today by being her unruly, fabulous self, leading communities, making time, and caring for and keeping her girls going. Lucky us to live in a moment where she is radiantly shining her light unto us all through this book! -- Tourmaline, artist, writer, and filmmakerThough she has faced many struggles in her eight decades on Earth, Major's resilience, optimism, and often bawdy humor shine through...a powerful and enlightening read. -- Pax Ahimsa Gethen * Trans Writes *[Miss Major's] most vital and resonant message is around self-hood: a continual creation and a journey to be enjoyed. -- Dinyar Godrej * New Internationalist *When a figure such as Major speaks, you cannot help but eat each and every single word up. -- Tara Okeke * The Skinny *Miss Major is an icon of Black trans womanhood. -- McKenzie Wark * LIBER *Miss Major has been a crucial source of hope and support to many trans people ... In some ways, this book is a new version of the community building and emotional support that is Miss Major's life's work. -- Vic Parsons * Huck *Major has played the role of lifeline and saviour to countless trans daughters ... [Miss Major Speaks] tracks her frontline learnings from community work, sex work, and her experiences of incarceration both in prison and in mental health facilities. -- Amelia Abraham * Dazed *Miss Major speaks with such profound wisdom, highlighting the realities for Black trans women and how much the mainstream LGTBQ+ movement has left the most vulnerable behind.If there is a book to read and someone to listen and learn from, it's Miss Major. -- Elliot Page * Oprah Daily *Miss Major Speaks is part biography, part interview and is full of Miss Major spitting truths and laying it down like it is....Change-making seems possible and even easy after reading Miss Major's words. -- Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware * Xtra Magazine *Major's personality shines through unfiltered ... Her perspective has never been more pertinent. -- Felix Moore * openDemocracy *

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Book SynopsisThis expansive history traces the hidden connections between oil and capitalism from the late 1800s to the current climate crisis. Beyond simplistic narratives that frame oil as 'prize' or 'curse', Crude Capitalism uncovers the surprising ways that oil is woven into the fabric of our modern world: the rise of an American-centered global order; the breakdown of Empire and anti-colonial rebellion; contemporary finance and US dollar hegemony; debt and militarism; and the emergence of new forms of synthetic consumption. Much more than an energy source or transport fuel, oil has a foundational place in all aspects of contemporary life - no challenge to the fossil fuel industry can be effective without taking this fact seriously.Crude Capitalism maps the varied geographies of oil, including the rise of OPEC, the importance of revolutionary and Post-Soviet Russia, the crucial role of African upstream reserves, and the new petrochemical circuits that link

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Book SynopsisAcross the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasingly dystopian management technologies.In Cyberboss, Craig Gent takes us into workplaces where algorithms rule to excavate the politics behind the newest form of managerial power. Combining worker testimony and original research on companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Deliveroo, the cutting edge of algorithmic management technology, this book reveals the sometimes unexpected effects these new techniques have on work, workers and managers. Gent advances an alternative politics of resistance in the face of digital control.

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Book SynopsisIn his most wide-ranging and accessible work, Fredric Jameson argues that postmodernism is the cultural response to the latest systemic change in world capitalism. He seeks here to crystallize a definition of a term which has taken on so many meanings that it has virtually lost all historical significance.He presents an extensive discussion on the cultural landscape—both ‘high’ and ‘low’—of postmodernity, evaluating the political fortunes of the new term and surveying postmodern developments in a range of different fields—from market ideology to architecture, from painting and instalment art to contemporary punk film, from video art and high literature to deconstruction.Finally, Jameson revaluates the concept of postmodernism in light of postmodern critiques of totalization and historical narratives—from the notion of decadence to the dynamics of small groups, from religious fundamentalism to hi-tech science fiction—Trade ReviewFrederic Jameson is America's leading Marxist critic, a prodigiously energetic thinker whose writings sweep magisterially from Sophocles to science fiction...Postmodernism is a intellectual blockbuster ... a timely riposte to fashionable leftist pessimism as much as it is an intellectual feast. -- Terry Eagleton * Irish Times *For anybody hoping to understand not just the cultural but the political and social implications of postmodernism...Jameson's book is a fundamental, nonparaeil text. * Sunday Times *The scope and profundity of Postmodernism, covering theory, architecture, film, video and economics, is truly staggering...Brilliant. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisLouis Althusser's renowned short text "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" radically transformed the concept of the subject, the understanding of the state and even the very frameworks of cultural, political and literary theory. The text has influenced thinkers such as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Zizek.The piece is, in fact, an extract from a much longer book, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, until now unavailable in English. Its publication makes possible a reappraisal of seminal Althusserian texts already available in English, their place in Althusser's oeuvre and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary theory. On the Reproduction of Capitalism develops Althusser's conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow.Written in the afterglow of May 1968, the text addresses a question that continues to haunt us today: in a society that proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty and equality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproduction of relations of domination? Both a conceptually innovative text and a key theoretical tool for activists, On the Reproduction of Capitalism is an essential addition to the corpus of the twentieth-century Left.Trade Review‘The elegant theorist, the man who redefined the concept of “ideology”’—Alice Kaplan, Los Angeles Review of Books ‘One of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century … nothing short of electric. His renewal of Marxism represented a liberation for a younger generation’ —Radical Philosophy"One reads him with excitement. There is no mystery about his capacity to inspire the intelligent young."—Eric Hobsbawm"Louis Althusser influenced so many discourses, actions and existences by the radiant and provocative force of his thought."—Jacques Derrida

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Book SynopsisAs the crisis of capitalism unfolds, the need for alternatives is felt ever more intensely. The struggle between radical movements and the forces of reaction will be merciless. A crucial battlefield, where the outcome of the crisis will in part be decided, is that of theory. Over the last twenty-five years, radical intellectuals across the world have produced important and innovative ideas. The endeavour to transform the world without falling into the catastrophic traps of the past has been a common element uniting these new approaches. This book-aimed at both the general reader and the specialist-offers the first global cartography of the expanding intellectual field of critical contemporary thought. More than thirty authors and intellectual currents of every continent are presented in a clear and succinct manner. A history of critical thought in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is also provided, helping situate current thinkers in a broader historical and sociological perspective.Trade ReviewA dizzying menagerie of anti-capitalist thought. * Pop Matters *

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Book SynopsisThis book places two key notions up against each other to imagine a new way of conceptualizing historical time. How do the experience of déjà vu and the idea 'End of History' relate to one another? Through thinkers like Bergson, Kojève and Nietzsche, Virno explores these constructs of memory and the passage of time. In showing how the experience of time becomes historical, Virno considers two fundamental concepts from Western philosophy: Power and The Act, reinterpreting these with respect to time. Through these, he elegantly constructs a radical new theory of historical temporality.Trade ReviewPaulo Virno is one of the most radical and lucid thinkers of the postoperaist political tradition * Meditations Journal *

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Book SynopsisIn the history of European revolutions, the barricade stands as a glorious emblem. Its symbolic importance arises principally from the barricades of Eric Hazan's native Paris, where they were instrumental in the revolts of the nineteenth century, helping to shape the political life of a continent.The barricade was always a makeshift construction (the word derives from barrique or barrel), and in working-class districts these ersatz fortifications could spread like wildfire. They doubled as a stage, from which insurgents could harangue soldiers and subvert their allegiance. Their symbolic power persisted into May 1968 and, more recently, the Occupy movements.Hazan traces the many stages in the barricade's evolution, from the Wars of Religion through to the Paris Commune, drawing on the work of thinkers throughout the periods examined to illustrate and bring to life the violent practicalities of revolutionary uprising.Trade ReviewHazan's account combines some fine vignettes about particular revolutionary episodes with a telling eye for detail; the maps of the different insurrections are also handy. -- Sudhir Hazareesingh * Times Literary Supplement *Indeed, until I read Eric Hazan's fascinating book, I too used to think that it was only during the French Revolution that the barricade stopped being a purely civilian object,designed primarily "to prevent admittance," like a modern swing-beam-type barrier or a turnstile. I was wrong. I feel like quoting endlessly from this revealing compact book, which, on top of everything else, is beautifully written and no-less beautifully translated. The idea of tracing centuries of tempestuous European history by looking just at one significant engineering object strikes me as brilliant. This little volume will find a prominent place in the 'golden shelf' of my favourite books of all time. -- Vitali Vitaliev * E&T Magazine *Hazan's short sharp book rises and falls like a battle cry and a keen of mourning both at once (...) For all the twilittonalities of Hazan's book, there is something joyous about it. It affirms that one of the options available to common people, one chosen over and over in the most desolate situations, is fighting back. -- Joshua Clover * LA Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisIn July 2012, aged thirty, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery-a process she chronicled with unflinching honesty in a serialised national newspaper column. Trans tells of her life to the present moment: a story of growing up, of defining yourself, and of the rapidly changing world of gender politics. Fresh from university, eager to escape a dead-end job and launch a career as a writer, she navigates the treacherous waters of a world where, even in the liberal and feminist media, transgender identities go unacknowledged, misunderstood or worse. Revealing, honest,humorous, and self-deprecating, Trans includes an epilogue with Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be?Trade ReviewTrans challenges us all, no matter what our gender or sexuality. Ultimately, it makes us look at ourselves, and wonder what price we pay for the identities we assume, or which we have thrust upon us. -- Philip Hoare * New Statesman *Juliet Jacques's Trans ... provides a lyrical exploration of her own gender journey against the background of increasing media interest in transgender issues. Thoughtful and intimate, it's a fine successor to books such as Jan Morris's Conundrum. -- Helen Lewis * Guardian *Powerful and engaging. . . it's hard not to see her as anything other than brave, even as she pushes readers to recognize that what is revolutionary is the very ordinariness of her day-to-day life * New York Times *Brutally honest and funny. * Marie Claire *Provides a lyrical exploration of her own gender journey against the background of increasing media interest in transgender issues. Thoughtful and intimate, it's a fine successor to books such as Jan Morris's Conundrum * Helen Lewis, Guardian, Books of the Year *Challenges us all, no matter what our gender or sexuality. Ultimately, it makes us look at our selves, and wonder what price we pay for the identities we assume, or which we have thrust upon us. * Philip Hoare, New Statesman *Brave and moving, Trans is necessary reading for anyone who cares about gender,power, freedom and desire. Juliet Jacques deals with the forces of cruelty andignorance with hard-won clarity and calm. A vital voice in our turbulent times * Olivia Laing, author of The Trip to Echo Spring *Amarvelously nuanced journey through gender, brilliantly contextualized in thedisparate worlds of pop culture, football, mass media, and the NHS . a terrificread by an accomplished author. * —Kate Bornstein, author of A Queer and Pleasant Danger *Understated and urgent, Jacques comes across as a woman carrying an ambiguity she doesn't seem to want or feel able fully to shed...She confounds the distinction, not just between male and female, but also between the emotional atmospheres which the various trans identities are meant - 'instructed' may be the right word - to personify. -- Jacqueline Rose * London Review of Books *A thoughtful and honest account of the realities of life as a trans woman ... accessible and relatable, regardless of your gender identity * Independent *

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Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of French thought and radical theory, reconstructing Western Marxism from its foundations. Louis Althusser, the French Marxist philosopher, maintained that Marx's project could only be revived if its scientific and revolutionary novelty was thoroughly divested of all traces of humanism, idealism, Hegelianism and historicism. In order to complete this critical rereading, Althusser and his students at the École normale supérieure ran a seminar on Capital, re-examining its arguments, strengths and weaknesses in detail, and it was out of those discussions that this book was born.Previously only available in English in highly abridged form, this edition, appearing fifty years after its original publication in France, restores chapters by Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Rancière. It includes a major new introduction by Étienne Balibar.Trade ReviewOne of the central texts of French structuralism (and of modern Marxism as well). Its critique of humanism and what Althusser called historicism remains relevant and ought to be renewed in our time. -- Fredric JamesonThe complete edition of Reading Capital returns us to the excitement of the book's first publication. It not only makes available some remarkable essays not included in previous English editions but also allows us to see clearly how the essays emerged from the dynamic interactions of a university seminar. -- Michael Hardt, co-author of the Empire trilogy

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Book SynopsisExamining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives.Trade ReviewDavis has given us a book of substantial contemporary relevance as well as great historical interest...this highly informative book foes well beyond its immediate focus. -- Amartya Sen * The New York Times *Davis's range is stunning...He combines political economy, meteorology, and ecology with vivid narratives to create a book that is both a gripping read and a major conceptual achievement. Lots of us talk about writing 'world history' and 'interdisciplinary history': here is the genuine article. -- Kenneth Pomeranz, author of The Great DivergenceThe global climate meets a globalizing political economy, the fundamentals of one clashing with the fundamentalisms of the other. Mike Davis tells the story with zest, anger, and insight. -- Stephen J. Pyne, author of World FireDavis, a brilliant maverick scholar, sets the triumph of the late-nineteenth-century Western imperialism in the context of catastrophic El Niño weather patterns at that time ... This is groundbreaking, mind-stretching stuff. * Independent *Late Victorian Holocausts will redefine the way we think about the European colonial project. After reading this, I defy even the most ardent nationalist to feel proud of the so-called 'achievements' of empire. * Observer *Devastating. * San Francisco Chronicle *Eloquent and passionate, this is a veritable Black Book of liberal capitalism. -- Tariq AliGenerations of historians largely ignored the implications [of the great famines of the late nineteenth century] and until recently dismissed them as 'climatic accidents'...Late Victorian Holocausts proves them wrong. * Los Angeles Times (Best Books of 2001) *Wide ranging and compelling...a remarkable achievement. * Times Literary Supplement *A masterly account of climatic, economic and colonial history. * New Scientist *A hero of the Left, Davis is part polemicist, part historian, and all Marxist. -- Dale Peck * Village Voice *The catalogue of cruelty Davis has unearthed is jaw-dropping . Late Victorian Holocausts is as ugly as it is compelling. -- Sukhdev Sandhu * Guardian *Controversial, comprehensive, and compelling, this book is megahistory at its most fascinating-a monument to times past, but hopefully not a predictor of future disasters. * Foreign Affairs *Devastating. * San Francisco Chronicle *

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Book SynopsisAccording to leading economist Ann Pettifor, one of the few people to predict the 2008 financial crisis, money is not a commodity but a promise. This radical reconsideration of the power of money means that we can reimagine the way the economy works. The Production of Money also examines popular alternative debates on, and innovations in, money, such as "green QE" and "helicopter money." She sets out the possibility of linking the money in our pockets (or on our smartphones) to the improvements we want to see in the world around us.Trade ReviewAnn Pettifor was always the ideal author of a book that shatters the fantasy of apolitical money and the toxic myth that monetary policy must remain a democracy-free zone. This book is now a reality -- Yanis VaroufakisPettifor has a splendidly clear vision, both of money creation and of the role of banks. There is a great deal to applaud here, including her critique of mainstream economic models, which continue to ignore money and banking or, alternatively, get that horribly wrong -- Charles Goodhart, Emeritus Professor, London School of EconomicsAnn deserves a lot of credit because she was trying to highlight these issues many, many years ago, and unfortunately, there weren't enough people who were trying to map the system, model it, and then above all else, modify it. We have to map the financial system and then work out how to change it. -- Gillian Tett, author of The Silo EffectOur livelihoods and ecosystem are deeply affected by the world of money production and finance. But it's a world largely hidden from us by vested interests. In language we can all understand, Ann Pettifor explains the issues and the debates around money, shadow banking, QE and 'helicopter money.' A must-read. -- Caroline Lucas, Co-Leader of The Green Party of England and WalesCoolly authoritative, soberly trenchant, unexpectedly compelling, Ann Pettifor's book is vital in both senses, important and full of life. -- Zoe Williams * Guardian *Pettifor's new book aims to elucidate the nature of money, the better to help women advocate for their needs * Vogue US *Pettifor has a gift for breaking down complex economic ideas into notions that feel almost intuitive. If her book cannot hope to wholly democratize money, it could certainly help democratize the understanding of it, which Pettifor sees as the first step to encouraging public demands for a fairer system. * Bookforum *Enlightening. She is unafraid to square up to the mainstream economists who stand 'aloof' from the financial system. * Independent *

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Book SynopsisWhy do patriarchal systems survive? In this groundbreaking work of feminist theory, Nancy Folbre examines the contradictory effects of capitalist development. She explains why the work of caring for others is under-valued and under-rewarded in today's global economy, calling attention to the organisation of childrearing, the care of other dependants, and the inheritance of assets. Upending conventional definitions of the economy based only on the market, Folbre emphasizes the production of human capabilities in families and communities and the social reproduction of group solidarities. Highlighting the complexity of hierarchical systems and their implications for political coalitions, The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems sets a new feminist agenda for the twenty-first century.Trade Reviewan outstandingly provocative book about the economics of care and reciprocity(praise for The Invisible Heart) * New York Times *original, challenging, and illuminating ... ought to change the way we think about the economy, about economics, and about the family (praise for The Invisible Heart) * The Independent Review, A Journal of Political Economy *Folbre makes an important contribution to the discussion of what our society could be, and her humor and insight elevate her book above mere political diatribe.(Praise for The Invisible Heart) * Publishers Weekly *A lively survey of economic thought from the late seventeenth century to the present... A thought-provoking and entertaining read. (Praise for Greed, Lust and Gender) -- Katie Barclay * Women's History Network Magazine. *[praise for Who Pays for the Kids] Nancy Folbre focuses on questions that most economists never think about: how and why people form overlapping groups that influence and limit what they want, how they may behave, and what they get. She has sharp and plausible things to say about group solidarity and group conflict and how they have affected the workings of economic institutions. Anyone would be a better economist, or just a clearer thinker, after reading this book. -- Robert M. Solow, Professor of Economics, MIT, and Nobel Laureate in Economics[Praise for Who Pays for the Kids] Nancy Folbre, offers a provocative rejoinder to standard economic analyses that focus primarily on market forces and wage labor, thereby marginalizing women and children and devaluing the work they perform in the home and community. * The Women's Review of Books *A beautifully written summation of the profound ideas of a feminist political economist at the peak of her powers. This is now the go-to book for anyone wanting to understand the complicated intersections of patriarchy with economy, society and polity. Folbre's incredibly broad sweep offers deep conceptual and historical analyses, and also offers many new nuggets of wisdom. This is a book destined to become a classic: to read, re-read and share widely. -- Jayati Ghosh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New DelhiAs one of the world's leading feminist economists, Nancy Folbre has always been deeply engaged in trying to understand how intersecting forms of hierarchical injustice can be mutually reinforcing, to the detriment of the many. In The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems Folbre brings together her vast range of knowledge and experience to knit together a general theory of social change that enlarges the economic to encompass patriarchal institutions, cooperation and conflict, systems and structures, and actors and actions, so as to demonstrate how historical and contemporary structures of collective power create unjust interlocking hierarchies. The ambition behind The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems is breathtaking in its audacity: to create nothing less than a new academic field, intersectional political economy. That Folbre largely succeeds in doing so is remarkable. This book is a tour de force. -- Haroon Akram-Lodhi, author of Hungry for ChangeDrawing on and challenging aspects of neoliberal and Marxist economic traditions-and showing how patriarchal, capitalist, and other systems interact-Folbre explores how gender gaps have evolved worldwide from the age of hunter-gatherers to the 21st century, when people tend "to view commitments to the care of others as optional lifestyle decisions rather than as socially necessary." She effectively demonstrates how the undervaluation of unpaid care work has profound consequences for U.S. families and the economy as a whole. * Kirkus Reviews *Skilfully weaving together key insights from different theoretical traditions and evidence from history and contemporary life, Nancy Folbre provides us with an ambitious but eminently readable account of the rise and, hopefully, decline of patriarchy. * Naila Kabeer, Professor of Gender and Development, London School of Economics *This eloquent and imaginative book should be read by everyone concerned to contest the many intersecting forms of inequality, exploitation and oppression that shape our world. It analyses multiple forms of cooperation and conflict, choice and constraint, putting the care of human beings centre stage, noting that 'capitalism may be manly, but it is not self-sufficient'. It offers a wide ranging historical narrative of how some progressive changes have been won and hope for a future in which we can build solidarities to do so again. -- Diane Elson, author of Rethinking Economic Policy for Social JusticeThis careful application of intersectional feminism to economic theory yields ample food for thought. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisDoes it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you're confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete - cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids, and so on.In this ground-breaking book, Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek lay out how unpaid work in our homes has come to take up an ever-increasing portion of our lives - how the vacuum of free time has been taken up by vacuuming. Examining the history of the home over the past century - from running water to white goods to smart homes - they show how repeated efforts to reduce the burden of this work have faced a variety of barriers, challenges, and reversals.Charting the trajectory of our domestic spaces over the past century, Hester and Srnicek consider new possibilities for the future, uncovering the abandoned ideas of anti-housework visionaries and sketching out a path towards real free time for all, where everyone is at liberty to pursue their passions, or do nothing at all. It will require rethinking our living arrangements, our expectations and our cities.Trade ReviewWe are taught to think that there's no alternative to the sad model of social reproduction centered on the single-family home and privatized family. Here's is a practical and creative guide to how we might begin to move beyond that paradigm. -- Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem With WorkWhy do breakthroughs of technology so rarely lift the burden of drudgery? And how can we harness these breakthroughs to move beyond the capitalist conditions that they service today? Following their pioneering theory (Xenofeminism and Inventing the Future) Helen Hester and Nick Srinicek's new book After Work tackles this problem, and provides a new vision of a future that moves us past toil. This book advances the case for "the struggle against work - in all its forms", addressing a broad range of concerns from the rise of platform capitalism to the burdens of care that persistent in private households. Neither understating the scale of the social transformation needed for the planet to survive capitalism, nor lapsing into despair over the thorny trail ahead, After Work is indispensable reading for anyone committed to extending the realm of freedom. -- Jules Gleeson, co-editor of Transgender MarxismThis is an incisive critique of the status quo and an earnest appeal to rethink why people work and how they spend their time. * Publishers Weekly *Anyone seeking cosy thoughts about the joys of spring cleaning should look elsewhere ... clear and concise, with a lot of learning worn lightly -- Andy Beckett * Guardian *After Work takes an important look at the implications for the domestic sphere if work is reduced -- Janina Conboye * Financial Times *A meticulously researched and agilely argued plea for the reduction of domestic labor from feminist scholar Helen Hester and Marxist economist Nick Srnicek. -- Becca Rothfeld * Washington Post *As a building block for change this splendidly written book makes a most powerful case for the opposition. * Philosophy Football *After Work will get people talking about their interminable to-do lists. Anyone under 30 who wants to know what their life is going to look like should read it. -- Decca Aitkenhead * Sunday Times *A dazzling work of applied utopianism -- Enrico Monacelli * The Quietus *After Work fuses visions for a post-work world with calls to recognise and tackle the crisis in care. -- Holly High * Inside Story *Interesting and thought-provoking ... If even existing capitalist technologies can give a glimpse of the benefits of a different way of organising society, imagine what would be possible if we had full democratic working-class control of the means of production and a democratic planned economy. -- Christine Thomas * Socialism Today *

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2023This book presents an encompassing, detailed and thorough overview and reconstruction of Lefebvre's theory of space and of the urban. Henri Lefebvre belongs to the generation of the great French intellectuals and philosophers, together with his contemporaries Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. His theory has experienced a remarkable revival over the last two decades, and is discussed and applied today in many disciplines in humanities and social sciences, particularly in urban studies, geography, urban sociology, urban anthropology, architecture and planning. Lefebvre, together with David Harvey, is one of the leading and most read theoreticians in these fields. This book explains in an accessible way the theoretical and epistemological context of this work in French philosophy and in the German dialectic (Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche), and reconstructs in detail the historical development of its different elements. It also gives an overview on the receptions of Lefebvre and discusses a wide range of applications of this theory in many research fields, such as urban and regional development, urbanization, urbanity, social space, and everyday life.Trade ReviewChristian Schmid's reception and interpretation of Lefebvre's oeuvre refers strictly to the French originals and represents the first comprehensive epistemological reconstruction of the theory of the production of space. On that basis many of the previous confusions in the development of a critical spatial theory are clarified. This is where I see the highest significance of this path-breaking publication. -- Prof. Dr. Benno Werlen, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, GermanySchmid's publication is a superb theoretical treatise on Lefebvre, clarifying many common misunderstandings. It is particularly timely for those urban China researchers who are keen to avoid past mistakes of randomly indigenising and appropriating Western concepts and develop locally relevant theories in fruitful conversation with critical urban research. -- Prof. Dr. Wing-Shing Tang, Hong Kong Baptist UniversityChristian Schmid provides us with a wonderfully lucid guide through the complexity and richness of Henri Lefebvre's oeuvre. Among the many contributions of the book is the powerful new light it sheds on Lefebvre's spatio-historical and dialectical theory of society. Without question, it opens up vital new possibilities for a renewal of social theory, empirical research and political practice. -- Gillian HartChristian Schmid's carefully translated and strategically updated volume offers the most comprehensive reconstruction of Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space available in the English language today. On the basis of an unusually methodical discussion of the various intellectual currents that converge in Henri Lefebvre's vast life work, Schmid gives us crucial insights about the deeply dynamic and richly multidimensional ways in which space is produced. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space constitutes mandatory reading for a wide audience ranging from specialists of 20th century social theory to thoughtful political organizers and practitioners of urban research. -- Stefan Kipfer, Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York UniversityIn this authoritative book, Christian Schmid systematically reconstructs Henri Lefebvre's theory of space production as a general theory of the urban society. By critically expanding the German-language original, this volume shows both the basis and the outcome of four decades of Schmid's thinking and studying cities with Lefebvre. -- Lukasz Stanek, University of Michigan, Ann ArborChristian Schmid has written the most meticulous, comprehensive and lucid interpretation of French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre's incomparable oeuvre on space. Henri Lefebvre and the Theory of the Production of Space is distinguished above all by Schmid's imaginative grasp of Lefebvre's dialectical method, especially in exploring spatial mediations of everyday life, state and capital. This book will be essential and exhilarating reading for anyone interested in how space is political. -- Kanishka Goonewardena, Geography and Planning, University of TorontoIn an age of planetary urban transformation, crisis and insurgency, Henri Lefebvre's ideas continue to inspire radical urban research and practice around the world. In this long-awaited translation and elaboration of a work originally published in German over two decades ago, Christian Schmid offers a comprehensive reconstruction and systematic interpretation of Lefebvre's philosophy of space, framed in direct relation to the challenges of deciphering ongoing patterns and pathways of urban restructuring, their contradictions and their potentialities. In so doing, makes a path-breaking contribution to radical urban theory. -- Neil Brenner

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Book SynopsisFriends of Israel provides a forensically researched account of the activities of Israel's advocates in Britain, showing how they contribute to maintaining Israeli apartheid. The book traces the history and changing fortunes of key actors within the British Zionist movement in the context of the Israeli government's contemporary efforts to repress a rising tide of solidarity with Palestinians expressed through the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Offering a nuanced and politically relevant account of pro-Israel actors' strategies, tactics, and varying levels of success in key arenas of society, it draws parallels with the similar anti-boycott campaign waged by supporters of the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa.By demystifying the actors involved in the Zionist movement, the book provides an anti-racist analysis of the pro-Israel lobby which robustly rebuffs anti-Semitic conspiracies. Sensitively and accessibly written, it emphasises the complicity of British actors - both those in government and in civil society. Drawing on a range of sources including interviews with leading pro-Israel activists and Palestinian rights activists, documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests and archival material, Friends of Israel is a much-needed contribution to Israel/Palestine-related scholarship and a useful resource for the Palestine solidarity movement.Trade ReviewFriends of Israel is a meticulous study of the organizations seeking to reverse widening support for the Palestinian cause in Britain. On a topic that is fraught with exaggeration, distortion, and propaganda, Aked proceeds with precision and nuance, giving us a much-needed, authoritative analysis. Grounded in anti-racism, Friends of Israel paints a complex picture of Zionism in Britain, giving readers the tools to oppose both anti-Semitism and Israeli apartheid. -- Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims Are Coming! and What Is Antiracism?This book expertly maps out the key figures supporting and defending the Israeli apartheid regime in Britain whilst also illuminating how the British government remains deeply complicit in the oppression of Palestinians. It is an invaluable addition to the literature and whilst it focuses on pro-Israel actors, Aked explains that Israeli regime and supporters strategies are a direct response to over a century of Palestinian resistance. This book thus not only makes an important academic contribution but also a political one to a struggle that is ultimately for freedom and justice. -- Yara Hawari, author of The Stone HouseAt last, a thoughtful, meticulously-researched study of the well-organised disinformation campaign against Palestinian rights, BDS and for supporting Apartheid Israel in Britain. In a work comprising the multiplicity of aspects of the Israel Lobby work in the British public and political spheres, Hil Aked offers the means for deconstructing Zionist myths, innate in British discourse since the Balfour Declaration, if not before. A must for anyone interested in understanding and countering this oppressive influence. -- Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, author of An Army Like No OtherIn this compelling analysis and history of Britain's sordid relationship with Israel, we understand the individuals and organisations committed to endless occupation and violence against Palestinians, along with those courageous to imagine a humane alternative. -- Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine LaboratoryNot only the definitive study of political influence, state propaganda and lobbying by British actors on behalf of 'Brand Israel', but also a passionate defence of the universal application of anti-racist principles. Hil Aked has grasped the indivisibility of the fight against Israeli Apartheid and the fight against antisemitism. A lucid and thoroughly courageous intervention that will stand the test of time. -- Liz Fekete, Director, Institute of Race Relations, author of Europe's Fault LinesNo one who reads Hil Aked's meticulously-researched book can be left in any doubt about how Israel's friends operate to subvert British popular perceptions and the British political process in favour of Zionism. An essential and timely expose of an important and hitherto neglected subject. -- Ghada Karmi, author of ReturnThose who are supporting Palestine in Britain know too well that they are targeted by a well-oiled and ruthless campaign. This is the first book that examines closely and meticulously this campaign of suppression and silencing. Now more than ever before, it is important to learn how Israeli propaganda and pro-Israel lobbyists in Britain operate. Hil Aked's brilliant book is a must read. -- Ilan Pappe, author of Ten Myths About IsraelThis book is as urgent as it is a long-awaited critique of the Zionist movement and all those in government and civil society who support and defend Israeli apartheid, or work to dismiss and vilify solidarity with Palestinians. Hil Aked's is a brave intervention in addressing a topic considered taboo in part due to a concerted effort by pro-Israel advocates to resist, and make dangerous, critical scrutiny. This book deserves to be widely read and will be treasured by all those who support the Palestinian struggle for liberation -- Nadine El-Enany, author of (B)ordering BritainAn essential contribution to anti-imperalist movements, which details the role of top-down civic organisations in manufacturing consent for Zionism in the UK. A book for activists and scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the tactics of imperialism. A must read for those who believe that a free Palestine will be achieved through grassroots anti-racist struggle in solidarity with those fighting to end anti-semitism and all forms of racism. -- Aviah Sarah Day, co-author of Abolition RevolutionFriends of Israel is an important publication and its wealth of information a vital resource for realizing that Palestinian solidarity and resistance to settler colonialism is driving pro-Israel lobbies to increase their efforts to mask the country's apartheid policies. -- Sean Sheehan * The Prisma *Aked grounds Friends of Israel in an anti-racist analysis, which applies a holistic and transnational approach to understanding the pro-Israel movement in the UK and its efforts to counter the growing solidarity with Palestinians. Friends of Israel, through its careful analysis, is a welcome contribution to this effort and deserves to be read widely. * Washington Report on Middle East Affairs *A necessary book. It touches upon multiple dimensions of the Israel Lobby in the UK that had long needed investigation. -- Marc Martorell Junyent * Informed Comment *Brilliantly researched ... Aked's message, rightly, is that our civic society is right now our best and only channel for changing minds at the top about how Britain should tackle the Israel-Palestine question. -- Tim Llewelyn * Balfour Project *

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Book SynopsisIn his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated.In this classic work published in the heady days of anti-colonial revolution, Groundings with My Brothers follows the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, from the black students of North America to the Rasta counter-culture of Jamaica and beyond. The book is striking in its simultaneous ability to survey the wide and heterogenous international context while remaining anchored in grassroots politics, as Rodney offers us first-hand accounts of mass movement organizing. Having inspired a generation of revolutionaries, this new edition will re-introduce the book to a new political landscape that it helped shape, with reflections from leading scholar-activists such as Carole Boyce DaviesTrade ReviewIf Walter Rodney's assassins were under the impression that they could arrest the flow of his ideas by destroying his body, they could have not been more wrong. . .In the context of the new resistance fo global capitalism, his captivating analysis resonates more than ever before. -- Angela Davis, author of Women, Race and ClassGrounds with My Brothers issues an open call, even today, for the black intellectual to engage in the discourse of black consciousness and black power, and also to actively seek out concrete tactics and strategies which are necessary for our liberation -- Carlos Clarke, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BelizeRodney's perspective is alive, dazzling with the potential of revolution -- Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations and Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social ResearchIn short order, Groundings became the single most influential Black Power text in the Caribbean as well as the region's most notable ideological contribution to Black Power globally. -- Michael West * Groundings: Development, Pan-Africanism, Critical Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2018 *

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Book SynopsisA decade ago, a wave of mass mobilisations described as "horizontal" and "leaderless" swept the planet, holding the promise of real democracy and justice for the 99%. Many saw its subsequent ebb as proof of the need to go back to what was once called "the question of organisation". For something so often described as essential, however, political organisation remains a surprisingly under-theorised field. In this book, Rodrigo Nunes proposes to remedy that lack by starting again from scratch. Redefining the terms of the problem, he rejects the confusion between organisation and any of the forms it can take, such as the party, and argues that organisation must be understood as always supposing a diverse ecology of different initiatives and organisational forms. Drawing from a wide array of sources and traditions that include cybernetics, poststructuralism, network theory and Marxism, Nunes develops a grammar that eschews easy oppositions between "verticalism" and "horizontalism", centralisation and dispersion, and offers a fresh approach to enduring issues like spontaneity, leadership, democracy, strategy, populism, revolution, and the relationship between movements and parties.Trade ReviewThis is the book we've been waiting for: Rodrigo Nunes systematically assesses the problems the left has faced since the Occupy movement and its failure. A must-read for the activists of our time. -- Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, author of Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of PossibilityThis is quite an achievement: one of those period-defining books that turns all usual assumptions upside down. -- Wu Ming, authors of Q and AltaiThis is an exciting, innovative book. Rodrigo Nunes has utterly revitalised the stale theory of political organisation with new evidence, new thinking and new strategic concepts. All of the suffocating clichés of both horizontalists and vanguardists are briskly overturned here. Everyone can learn something from this book. -- Richard Seymour, author of Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical PoliticsHow is to be done? With whom? With what? Soberly reckoning with the limits of a decade of mass movements against austerity and authoritarianism, and writing in the harsh glare of our warming condition, Nunes enjoins us to revisit the theory of organisation beyond the party as fetish or bogeyman. Drawing on a rich trove of sources - from Spinoza to Bogdanov, cybernetic theory to contemporary activism - Neither Vertical nor Horizontal is an indispensable critical and clinical intervention into the principal political problem of our time. -- Alberto Toscano, author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an IdeaA tremendous book - a thoughtful, deep synthesis of lessons learned over the last twenty years of struggle for a world beyond capital. I was not only constantly struck by the many insights you generate from a novel theoretical collocation (I love the second-order cybernetics plus Spinozist Marx combination), but also deeply moved. Reading the book was therapeutic: after completing it I felt partially healed from the political disappointments, traumas and feuds of the last two decades, because you demonstrate how something can be learned from it all, something that goes forward. It's a courageous and brilliant volume. -- Nick Dyer-Witheford, University of Western Ontario, author of Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital VortexA crucial part of our thinking on the future of organisation is rooted in Rodrigo Nunes' work. -- Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, authors of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without WorkIn Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal, Rodrigo Nunes has handed a great gift to anyone attempting to create a more just world. Both theoretically rich and intensely practical, Nunes's book is not a guide to what is to be done. Rather, it is much more important: it is a guide to thinking more honestly, clearly, and generously about the work of social movements. It will help us to ask better questions and to be better comrades, to be more willing to admit to and learn from mistakes as well as successes. Most importantly, it will help the thing we call "the movement" not just to fail better but to have a real chance to win. -- Sarah Jaffe, author of Necessary Trouble and Work Won't Love You BackThe sudden explosions, fleeting victories, and apparent failures of the last fifteen years have raised very difficult questions for people committed to building a better world. This book provides many of the answers. -- Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing RevolutionNeither Vertical Nor Horizontal charts a clear path out of the conceptual and tactical impasse within which much of the radical left has found itself stuck for decades. Clear, rigorous and readable, this is one of the most important books to have been published at the junction between political theory and political strategy for many years. -- Jeremy Gilbert, University of East London, co-author of Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (and How We Win it Back)In this book Rodrigo Nunes brings classic issues of political organisation back to the table in light of the experiences that social movements have encountered in the first decades of the 21st century. With a style that stresses provocations and contradictions as a method for transcending exclusive dichotomies between horizontality versus verticality and between the subjective versus the objective, this book updates for the struggles of the present debates that cannot be taken for finished, let alone settled. Full of useful formulas for synthesising contemporary debates, this work is an exhaustive analysis of how "diversity of strategies" can coexist with the search for structural effects on various scales. The non-linear and combined strategy that emerges from Nunes' proposal is of both philosophical and political interest, and a key contribution to the movements facing the urgent dilemmas of our day. -- Verónica Gago, University of Buenos Aires, author of Feminist International: How to Change EverythingThis is a book born out of a passionate participation in movements and struggles over the last twenty years in different parts of the world. It makes key contributions to the vexed question of organization, revisiting it in a world made up by complex dependences, circuits, and connections. Rethinking organization and political action ecologically, Rodrigo Nunes displaces alternatives that have haunted debates on the left for some time now, as for instance the between vertical and horizontal, movement and party, micro and macropolitics. In so doing, he opens a new space for political experiments on the field of organization -- that is, for the effectiveness (or "fitness") of transformative political action. -- Sandro Mezzadra, University of Bologna, co-author of Border as Method and The Politics of Operations"Don't Mourn, Organize" is a slogan that gained popularity in the wake of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. However, the imperative to organize contains its own divisions and contradictions: between notions of organization from outside and within, hierarchy and spontaneity, vertical and horizontal. Rodrigo Nunes examines the unstated philosophical presuppositions underlying these divisions in order to advance a new theory of organization based on a diverse ecology of different forces and factors, overcoming those dualisms for good. In doing so, Nunes engages with thinkers as diverse as Spinoza, Bateson, and Lenin, demonstrating that such concepts as affect, transindividuality, and ecology are not philosophical distractions from the political but necessary to rethink the basis of politics itself. -- Jason Read, University of Southern Maine, author of The Politics of TransindividualityPolitical theory and philosophy have relegated the question of organization to the social sciences and management. In breaking this mold, Rodrigo Nunes releases the debate on organization from historical experiences of trauma and melancholia. Neither Vertical nor Horizontal opens vistas in which the left can win, not once and for all but here and now. -- Brett Neilson, Western Sydney University, co-author of Border as Method and The Politics of OperationsIs vertical or horizontal organisation more desirable for social movements and left-wing parties? Rodrigo Nunes intervenes in this longstanding debate about more hierarchical and participatory forms of organisation by thoughtfully revealing how organisational decisions always need to be taken in light of a broader ecology of organisations and relations. No man is an island, an no organisation exists in the void. -- Paolo Gerbaudo, King’s College London, author of The Great Recoil: Politics After Populism and PandemicNeither Vertical nor Horizontal provides compelling insights about several key issues of contemporary militancy, in particular the need for social movements to organize ecologically in order to be effective. It also assesses the link between the rise of complexity theory and the process of increasing depoliticization since the 1980s in such a way that a radical 'reclaiming strategy' becomes not only possible, but necessary. -- Emanuele Leonardi, University of BolognaRodrigo Nunes's triple background as philosopher, journalist, and activist make him the ideal person to write this wonderful book. Nunes deftly sidesteps the stagnant debates structured by the "horizontalism" vs "party" distinction, showing that organization is essential, but has many forms beyond that of the party. The most interesting move for me is the way Nunes places intentional political organization in a wider field of natural self-organizing processes. With this move, Nunes is able to bring to bear an astonishingly wide variety of scientific and philosophical investigations, from thermodynamics to Spinoza, from cybernetics to Simondon, and more besides. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a second look at their system of thought and practice. -- John Protevi, Louisiana State University, author of Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the SomaticA compelling book that alternates the critique of classic and contemporary authors of the revolutionary tradition with an analysis of the social movements that have disrupted the past decade. Rodrigo Nunes' beautiful and dense book deserves to be read and discussed collectively. -- Davide Gallo Lassere * Contretemps *Neither Vertical nor Horizontal is neither just a book of political theory, nor just a critique of organizational failures. Nunes takes theory seriously while also never losing sight of the precise limitations and challenges that organizers and political actors confront. -- Kevin Potter * Jacobin *Nunes creates a vocabulary to begin conversations about what organization there is, and therefore what organization we may desire, as agents seeking a particular change. (.) Neither Vertical nor Horizontal should be crucial reading for those attempting to overcome the impasses we face on the left. -- Alex James * Cosmonaut *Neither Vertical nor Horizontal offers a sober theory of organisation that builds on an eclectic mix of theorists and historical experience. It does not provide an ideal model to be followed but prompts the scholar/activist/organiser to ask, 'what can we do now, in these circumstances?' instead of the disengaged 'what should be done?' Indeed, the greatest strength of the book lies in Nunes's skilfulness at offering practical tools for activists and organisers while retaining scholarly rigour, without compartmentalising theory from practice. -- Birgan Gokmenoglu * LSE Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThe Future of Difference theorises contemporary regimes of power as engaged primarily in the violent production of difference. In this moment, the logic of 'other and rule' thoroughly permeates the social and the political; our contemporary condition is increasingly premised on endless subtle hierarchical distinctions, which determine whole populations' attitudes, feelings and actions. Hark and Villa make a compelling case for the detoxification of public and political discourse, in favor of an ethical mode of living-with the world, that is, living with plurality and alterity.Trade ReviewAgainst those who would pit a feminism for white women against migrant communities and a multi-racial feminism, this brave and brilliant work of critical feminism refuses to be divided from its allies, conquered by those who would appropriate and defame feminism itself. This work is not only a model for socially engaged critique for our times, but thought set into action, mobilizing for the future of difference. -- Judith ButlerThe Future of Difference offers a powerful indictment of the ways mainstream feminism has been coopted by ethnonationalists to promote Europe's increasingly punitive border regime. Hark and Villa offer a thorough, impassioned analysis of the dire consequences of combating sexual violence without an intersectional lens. An urgent book for our times. -- Arlene Stein, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers UniversityThis is an outstanding, timely and courageous work of feminist scholarship. The book extends and renews the important writing of Stuart Hall in his 1978 Policing the Crisis. This excellent translation will ensure the book by Sabine Hark and Paula -Irene Villa will be a major contribution to multiple disciplines. -- Angela McRobbie, Professor, Goldsmiths University London and author of Feminism and the Politics of ResilienceIn this breathtaking text, two of Germany's leading feminist thinkers address some of the biggest questions of our time. In the face of unprecedented global migration, large scale anti-sexual violence movements, and a simultaneous right-wing backlash against feminism, Hark and Villa ask us to consider anew the political question of cultural difference. Based upon their in-depth analysis of the entanglements between sexism, (racist) feminism, and anti-gender ideologies in Europe and beyond over the past decade, the authors propose a "grammar of coexistence of the different" that engages in the "art of encountering others without erasing their otherness". Reading this text as I do in the midst of a global pandemic, Hark and Villa's book offers invaluable reflections on ethical coexistence at times of great global precarity. -- Dr. Susanne Luhmann

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