Progressive Geographies

Laleh Khalili and Rowland Atkinson – global flows of capital, commodities and people (video, via The Gamming)

As part of Verso Live events, Rowland Atkinson (author of Alpha City) and Laleh Khalili (author of Sinews of War and Trade) in conversation about global flows of capital, commodities and people.

Bradley Garrett, Bunker: Building for the End Times – Allen Lane, August 2020

Update: see also this piece in The Guardian

‘Bunker is an extraordinary achievement; a big-thinking, deep-diving, page-turning study of fear, privilege and apocalypse told through the space of the bunker. Garrett has written a gripping, grim, witty work of geography and ethnography, which he completed – with eerie timeliness – in the first weeks of the COVID pandemic. A book about prepping and prognostication, then, which had already foretold its own future’ Robert MacFarlane

Today, the bunker has become the extreme expression of our greatest fears: from pandemics to climate change and nuclear war. And once you look, it doesn’t take long to start seeing bunkers everywhere.

In Bunker, acclaimed urban explorer and cultural geographer Bradley Garrett explores the global and rapidly growing movement of ‘prepping’ for social and environmental collapse, or ‘Doomsday’. From the ‘dread merchants’ hustling safe spaces in the American mid-West to eco-fortresses in Thailand, from geoscrapers to armoured mobile bunkers, Bunker is a brilliant, original and never less than deeply disturbing story from the frontlines of the way we live now: an illuminating reflection on our age of disquiet and dread that brings it into new, sharp focus.

The bunker, Garrett shows, is all around us: in malls, airports, gated communities, the vehicles we drive. Most of all, he shows, it’s in our minds.

The History of Verso Books – very interesting discussion between Tariq Ali and Sebastian Budgen, which also covers the history of New Left Review, the publishing house New Left Books which became Verso, and the history of the British left more generally. Right at the end there is a discussion of the books they should have published, including one modern classic that they turned down…

Jennifer Forestal, Menaka Philips (eds.), The Wives of Western Philosophy: Gender Politics in Intellectual Labor – Routledge, January 2021

The Wives of Western Philosophy examines the lives and experiences of the wives and women associated with nine distinct political thinkers—from Socrates to Marx—in order to explore the gendered patterns of intellectual labor that permeate the foundations of western political thought.

Organized chronologically and representative of three eras in the history of political thought (Ancient, Early Modern and Modern), nine critical biographical chapters explore the everyday acts of intellectual labor and partnership involving these ‘wives of the canon.’ Taking seriously their narratives as intimate partners reveals that wives have labored in remarkable ways throughout the history of political thought. In some cases, their labors mark the conceptual boundaries of political life; in others, they serve as uncredited resources for the production of political ideas. In all instances, however, these wives and intimates are pushed to the margins of the history of political thought.

The Wives of Western Philosophy brings these women to the center of scholarly interest. In so doing, it provides new insights into the intellectual biographies of some of the most famed men in political theory while also raising important questions about the gendered politics of intellectual labor which shapes our receptions of canonical texts and thinkers, and which sustain the academy even today.

The Wives of Western Philosophy offers a fascinating revisionary history of the women most closely associated with the men who have long dominated the canon of Western political philosophy. By looking at the tradition of Western political thought through the lens of these women’s lives and writings, from Xanthippe to Harriet Taylor Mill, the contributors overturn and challenge the gender biases that have unreflectively pervaded past scholarship and teaching in the field.”

Eileen Hunt Botting, Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

“Abundantly insightful, characterized by an exuberant harmony of purpose and feminist intent, this fresh and inventive collection of essays brings the figure of the “wife” — as thinker, coauthor, concept, and collaborator — out of the shadows cast by heteropatriarchal histories of Western political thought. If you haven’t met the real “wives of political theory” here brought to light, you’ll be thoroughly acquainted by the time you finish this spirited book. The essays are both valuable biographical works that redeem female intellectual labors and illuminating examples of how “reading gender” opens up new ways to understand the production of canonical texts.”

Mary G. Dietz, John Evans Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University