Progressive Geographies

D.J.S. Cross, Deleuze and the Problem of Affect – Edinburgh University Press, May 2023 (paperback)

Systematically analyses affect as the fundamental problem in and for Deleuze’s philosophy

• Re-examines Deleuze’s status as a pillar of affect theory and, a fortiori, affect theory itself
• Demonstrates simultaneously ‘radical’ and ‘conservative’ tendencies of Deleuze’s philosophy 
• Develops affect as the operator of interdisciplinarity according to Deleuze
• Challenges the portrayal of Deleuze as an unambiguous champion of affect

Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Deleuze has been pivotal for the recent ‘affective turn’ in philosophy and the humanities at large. Critics and proponents alike, however, have yet to appreciate the extent to which Deleuze himself remains profoundly ambivalent toward affect and embodiment in general. In this book, D. J. S. Cross argues that this ambivalence and its longevity have been overlooked because they only become apparent through a systematic analysis of affect throughout Deleuze’s work. 

By outlining how, from beginning to end, Deleuze’s system of thought both ruptures and complies with the tradition, Cross recalibrates Deleuze’s philosophy and the recent ‘affective turn’ that hinges upon it.

Annie Pfeifer, To the Collector Belong the Spoils: Modernism and the Art of Appropriation – Cornell University Press, 2023

To the Collector Belong the Spoils rethinks collecting as an artistic, revolutionary, and appropriative modernist practice, which flourishes beyond institutions like museums or archives. Through a constellation of three author-collectors—Henry James, Walter Benjamin, and Carl Einstein—Annie Pfeifer examines the relationship between literary modernism and twentieth-century practices of collecting objects. From James’s paper hoarding to Einstein’s mania for African art and Benjamin’s obsession with old Russian toys, she shows how these authors’ literary techniques of compiling, gleaning, and reassembling constitute a modernist style of collecting that reimagines the relationship between author and text, source and medium. Placing Benjamin and Einstein in surprising conversation with James sharpens the contours of collecting as aesthetic and political praxis underpinned by dangerous passions. An apt figure for modernity, the collector is caught between preservation and transformation, order and chaos, the past and the future.

Positing a shadow history of modernism rooted in collection, citation, and paraphrase, To the Collector Belong the Spoils traces the movement’s artistic innovation to its preoccupation with appropriating and rewriting the past. By despoiling and decontextualizing the work of others, these three authors engaged in a form of creative plunder that evokes collecting’s long history in the spoils of war and conquest. As Pfeifer demonstrates, more than an archive or taxonomy, modernist collecting practices became a radical, creative endeavor—the artist as collector, the collector as artist.

Sheryl Lightfoot and Elsa Stamatopoulou eds., Indigenous Peoples and Borders – Duke University Press, February 2024

The legacies of borders are far-reaching for Indigenous Peoples. This collection offers new ways of understanding borders by departing from statist approaches to territoriality. Bringing together the fields of border studies, human rights, international relations, and Indigenous studies, it features a wide range of voices from across academia, public policy, and civil society. They explore the profound and varying impacts of borders on Indigenous Peoples around the world and the ways borders are challenged and worked around. From Bangladesh’s colonially imposed militarized borders to resource extraction in the Russian Arctic and along the Colombia-Ecuador border to the transportation of toxic pesticides from the United States to Mexico, the essays examine sovereignty, power, and the obstruction to Indigenous rights and self-determination as well as globalization and the economic impacts of borders. Indigenous Peoples and Borders proposes future action that is informed by Indigenous Peoples’ voices, needs, and advocacy.

Tone Bleie, Andrea Carmen, Jacqueline Gillis, Rauna Kuokkanen, Elifuraha Laltaika, Sheryl Lightfoot, David Bruce MacDonald, Toa Elisa Maldonado Ruiz, Binalakshmi “Bina” Nepram, Melissa Z. Patel, Manoel B. do Prado Junior, Hana Shams Ahmed, Elsa Stamatopoulou, Liubov Suliandziga, Rodion Sulyandziga, Yifat Susskind, Erika M. Yamada

“This insightful and important volume offers readers, teachers, scholars, and students a collection of essays that widen our understanding of the global phenomenon of Indigenous People’s politics. Indigenous Peoples and Borders is a singular, well-structured source for teaching and analyzing Indigenous studies through a comparative and global perspective. It will become a go-to book for the field.” — Kevin Bruyneel, author of Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States

I have the French translation of the first edition of Marco Filoni’s biography of Alexandre Kojève, which stops rather abruptly in the early 1940s. It’s good to know that there is a new edition which completes the story – Marco Filoni, L’azione politica del filosofo: La vita e il pensiero di Alexandre Kojève, 2021.

There is an English-language review by Kyle Moore in Studies in East European Thought.

And a French interview with Gerardo Muñoz in Grand Continent Alexandre Kojève, philosophe de la politique mondiale, une conversation avec Marco Filoni

Update: Marco tells me there will be a French translation of the second edition with Gallimard. No plans for an English version as far as I know. In English, Jeff Love’s The Black Circle: A Life of Alexandre Kojève came out with Columbia University Press a few years ago. Update 2: There is an English version of Filoni’s biography forthcoming]

Alexandra Homolar, The Uncertainty Doctrine: Narrative Politics and the US Hard Power after the Cold War – Cambridge University Press, October 2023

The post-Cold War era is often seen as a missed opportunity of epic proportions for the United States to turn swords into ploughshares, with much of the blame placed on international developments. The Uncertainty Doctrine challenges the conventional take on post-Cold War history as imposed on the US by events largely outside its control. It shows in rich empirical detail how America’s ‘peace dividend’ did not merely fall by the wayside but was actively undermined by the narrative contests over the security implications of the New World Order. Committed to understanding the ontological significance of narrative in (inter)national security, Alexandra Homolar demonstrates that political agents have the capacity to respond to a systemic shock through discursive adaptation and reorganization. While narrative politics may not always matter in US defense policy, at moments perceived as bifurcation points it can be decisive in why some strategic responses prevail over possible alternatives.

‘A deeply impressive and sustained disquisition on one of the most vexed and contentious areas of study: US foreign policy since the end of the cold war. This is a work brimming with ideas and arguments: it deserves a large audience and to become a seminal scholarly text.’

Timothy J. Lynch – Professor of American Politics, the University of Melbourne

“Deleuze/Guattari and A Thousand Plateaus“: Michael Hardt in conversation with Brad Evans

“A Century of Violence” – co-hosted with the Centre for the Study of Violence at the University of Bath: https://www.bath.ac.uk/research-centr…

To coincide with the 100th year anniversary of The Philosopher, renowned philosopher of violence Brad Evans will discuss five of the seminal philosophical texts on violence from the past century.

At the time of its publication in 1980, Deleuze & Guattari’s “A Thousand Plateaus” was seen as a cluster bomb of concepts. A book that breaks apart the very idea, form and structure of what a book could be, it has since become one of the defining texts of post-structuralism. It is also a book that has had a marked impact on how we understand the spatial and temporal dimensions of violence. Navigating through a number of key concepts in the text, from multiplicity to nomadism and revolution, this conversation with eminent political philosopher Michael Hardt situates “A Thousand Plateaus” in the radical moment in which it was written, while asking what relevance it has today.

Michael Hardt is professor of literature at Duke University. His writings explore the new forms of domination in the contemporary world as well as the social movements and other forces of liberation that resist them. In the Empire trilogy (Empire (2000), Multitude (2004), and Commonwealth (2009)), Hardt and Antonio Negri investigated the political, legal, economic, and social aspects of globalization, along with the political and economic alternatives that could lead to a more democratic world. Their pamphlet Declaration (2012) attempted to articulate the significance of the encampments and occupations that began in 2011, from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park, and to recognize the primary challenges faced by emerging democratic social movements today. Homepage: https://scholars.duke.edu/person/hardt

Brad Evans is a political philosopher, critical theorist, and writer whose work focuses on the problem of violence. He is the author of twenty books and edited volumes, along with over a hundred and fifty academic and international media articles. He is the founding director of the Centre for the Study of Violence (to be launched 2023) and holds a Chair in Political Violence & Aesthetics at the University of Bath.

Website: https://www.brad-evans.co.uk

Research Centre: https://www.bath.ac.uk/research-centr…

Thanks to dmf for the link.

Recasting the Political: Perspectives from Deep History – Cambridge, 3-4 July 2023

This conference brings together historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, political theorists, and global studies and international relations scholars to showcase and discuss the merits and challenges of adopting a deep historical perspective on the political, and what contribution a deeper historicisation of power, domination, inequality, order, hierarchy, community, security, or rule can make to our empirical and conceptual understanding of the political sphere of human existence, beyond—or against—the established canon of political theory/philosophy. As deep history transcends the boundaries, methods, and scales of traditional ‘history’ and invites us to examine the transformation of political forms in relation to wider life-processes evolving in deep time, the discussion will also assess how deep history might help us illuminate—and potentially transform—the politics of the Anthropocenic present and future.

Attendance: In person.

Registration: Places are limited. Please book here.

Venue: Bradfield Room, Darwin College (Silver Street, CB3 9EU, Cambridge).

Barry Buzan (London School of Economics)

Yale Ferguson (Rutgers University)

Barry K. Gills (University of Helsinki)

Håkon Glørstad (Museum of Cultural History, Oslo)

Inanna Hamati-Ataya (University of Cambridge)

Jaakko Heiskanen (Queen Mary University of London)

Martin Jones (University of Cambridge)

Maarten Meijer (University of Groningen)

Jan Nederveen Pieterse (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Iver B. Neumann (Fridtjof Nansen Institute)

Nicholas G. Onuf (Florida International University)

Amanda Rees (University of York)

Susan Sherratt (University of Sheffield)

Daniel Lord Smail (Harvard University)

Fred Spier (University of Amsterdam)

Ayşe Zarakol (University of Cambridge)

Karine Varley, Vichy’s Double Bind: French Collaboration between Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War – Cambridge University Press, May 2023

Vichy’s Double Bind advances a significant new interpretation of French collaboration during the Second World War. Arguing that the path to collaboration involved not merely Nazi Germany but Fascist Italy, it suggests that the Vichy French government was caught in a double bind. On the one hand, many of the threats to France’s territory, colonial empire and power came from Rome as well as Berlin. On the other, Vichy was caught between the irreconcilable yet inescapable positions of the two Axis governments. Unable to resolve the conflict, Vichy sought to play the two Axis powers against each other. By exploring French dealings with Italy at diplomatic, military and local levels in France and its colonial empire, this book reveals the multi-dimensional and multi-directional nature of Vichy’s policy. It therefore challenges many enduring conceptions of collaboration with reference to Franco-German relations and offers a fresh perspective on debates about Vichy France and collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.