Progressive Geographies

Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People – Hachette, October 2024

The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the French philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth-century thought  
 
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a deterministic, predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of individual consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him “the most dangerous man in the world.”   
 
In Herald of a Restless World, Emily Herring recovers how Bergson captivated a society in flux. She shows how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, laughter, and the creative continue to shape how we see the world around us.  
 
Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect. Bergson’s extraordinary insight into life’s fundamental questions remains urgent and relevant to this day. 

Swati Srivastava, Hybrid Sovereignty in World Politics – Cambridge University Press, March 2024

The idea of ‘hybrid sovereignty’ describes overlapping relations between public and private actors in important areas of global power, such as contractors fighting international wars, corporations regulating global markets, or governments collaborating with nongovernmental entities to influence foreign elections. This innovative study shows that these connections – sometimes hidden and often poorly understood – underpin the global order, in which power flows without regard to public and private boundaries. Drawing on extensive original archival research, Swati Srivastava reveals the little-known stories of how this hybrid power operated at some of the most important turning points in world history: spreading the British empire, founding the United States, establishing free trade, realizing transnational human rights, and conducting twenty-first century wars. In order to sustain meaningful dialogues about the future of global power and political authority, it is crucial that we begin to understand how hybrid sovereignty emerged and continues to shape international relations.

David Beer, Why do writers write? (via his Half Thoughts blog)

For some reason, I’ve written a little piece about George Orwell’s four motives for writing.

The reason why writers write is mostly mysterious, even to the writers themselves. When occasionally invited to account for their work, the reflections usually tend toward the practical and the material. Take the podcasts dedicated to the craft of writing, questions of practice are commonly the focus. There is talk of daily schedules, desk spaces, locations, word counts, repeated routines, trusted productivity techniques, chapter plans, editing tips, promotional activities and the like. There are the occasional biographical tales too, often centred on how they got into writing. All are welcome insights into process. Writers often talk in interesting and amusing ways about their toils.

Oz Hassan, Why the European Union Failed in Afghanistan: Transatlantic Relations and the Return of the Taliban – Bristol University Press, September 2024

In August 2021, the US-led coalition withdrew from Afghanistan. The Taliban quickly returned to power leaving many wondering what 20-years’ worth of state-building efforts, and considerable loss of life and treasure, had been for. The EU had been a key actor in state-building activities, and, in 2022, the author was asked by the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee to undertake the first external evaluation of the EU’s efforts in Afghanistan. This book will publish the conclusions of this research, providing a critical analysis of the EU’s policies towards Afghanistan and offering evidence-based recommendations to address these failures, providing valuable lessons for future EU state-building efforts worldwide. It will show that the EU’s state-building exercises were inadequate and deeply flawed; failing to account for the growing insecurity within Afghanistan and changes within the US strategy. While the EU did have successes, such as the establishment of a peace deal that held for some time, corruption and working at cross-purposes with the USA’s shorter-term commitments hindered these successes.

Gideon Baker, Questioning: A New History of Western Philosophy – Edinburgh University Press, paperback February 2024

Studies the questions of 18 ancient, medieval and modern philosophers, from Socrates to Judith Butler

• Takes a new approach to the history of Western philosophy around the theme of questioning
• Looks at an equal balance of ancient and modern philosophers (plus two medieval philosophers) showing how the ancient and the modern are connected
• Questions Western philosophy without claiming a God’s-eye view from above it

Gideon Baker provides a gripping genealogy of Western philosophy as a history of questioning. As well as revealing the ancient in the modern, Baker reflects on newer questions in Western philosophy, including: is human being uniquely defined by questioning? And does the negativity of questioning lead to nihilistic despair? 

Staying faithful to his theme, Baker calls Western philosophy itself into question, asking why questioning should be seen as central to the true life. Is this not the same prejudice that led Socrates, at the beginning of Western philosophy, to ask whether the unexamined life is worth living?

Far from being timeless, the questioning that lies at the heart of Western philosophy has a strange and unsettling history that concerns us all.

Mark Maguire and Setha Low, Trapped: Life under Security Capitalism and How to Escape It – Stanford University Press, March 2024

Exploring the pernicious influence of security capitalism on neighborhoods, airports, cities, and states.

Calls to defund the police or to stop brutal police violence, argue Mark Maguire and Setha Low, will never succeed as long as there are those who enjoy and take comfort in security capitalism. Security capitalism can be recognized by the marks it leaves on society, remaking public space in its own image—privatized, fortified, unequal, striated, and access-controlled. With a global and comparative lens that takes readers from Nairobi to New York City, Maguire and Low offer intimate portraits of the people behind security capitalism—the police, policy makers, and private contractors who agree that a price must be paid in blood to maintain public safety—and critique phenomena like the transfer of public funds to arms dealers via the militarization of police, securitized housing developments, and ineffectual counterterrorism efforts.

But more than just an exposé of the nefarious corporations, corrupt agencies, and incompetent governments, this book uniquely shines the spotlight on the ordinary citizens whose desires for safety drive these phenomena. Angela Davis has written of the challenge of persuading people that “safety, safeguarded by violence, is not really safety.” Maguire and Low aid us in thinking through the challenge, providing a common language to discuss security capitalism and offering ways to escape its clutches.