Critical Theory’s books that came out in December

Posted on December 31, 2015 by stuartelden

Most of these are too recent to make my best-of year list, but here’s ten books that came out in December from Critical-Theory.com – Foucault, Bataille, Couture, etc.

december-2015-critical-theory-books-672x372

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Academic Books of 2015 – my top twenty

Posted on December 31, 2015 by stuartelden

The vast majority of academic reading in 2015 was related to Foucault, with a lot of Shakespeare work along the way. Many of these were published some time ago. These were the twenty books published in 2015 I read and most liked.

  1. Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929-2014 (Polity, 2nd edition)
  2. Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone)
  3. Sanjay Chaturvedi and Timothy Doyle, Climate Terror: A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change (Palgrave)
  4. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (University of Minnesota Press)
  5. Jean-Pierre Couture, Sloterdijk (Polity – which I endorsed)
  6. Jacques Derrida, Séminaire La peine de mort: Volume II (2000-2001) (Galilée)
  7. Michael Dillon, Biopolitics of Security: A Political Analysis of Finitude (Routledge)
  8. Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis (MIT)
  9. Jenny Edkins, Face Politics (Routledge – which I endorsed)
  10. Roberto Esposito, Persons and Things: From the Body’s Point of View (Polity)
  11. Michel Foucault, Théories et institutions pénales (Gallimard/Seuil/EHESS – review in Berfrois)
  12. Michel Foucault, Language, Madness, Desire: On Literature (University of Minnesota Press – review forthcoming in Cultural Geographies)
  13. Michel Foucault, The Punitive Society (Palgrave – French original reviewed at Berfrois, and review essay in Historical Materialism)
  14. Ben Golder, Foucault and the Politics of Rights (Stanford University Press)
  15. David Farrell Krell, Phantoms of the Other: Four Generations of Derrida’s Geschlecht (SUNY Press – review forthcoming in Derrida Today)
  16. Thomas Nail, The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford University Press – which I endorsed)
  17. Lisa Smirl, Spaces of Aid: How Cars, Compounds and Hotels Shape Humanitarianism (Zed)
  18. The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire (Verso)
  19. Haim Yacobi, Israel and Africa: A Genealogy of Moral Geography (Routledge)
  20. Perry Zurn & Andrew Dilts, Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition (Palgrave – which I endorsed)

There are also several good books from 2015 in one of the ‘to-read’ piles. These are the novels I read as a break from all this academic reading…

Posted in Books, David Farrell Krell, Foucault's Last Decade, Foucault: The Birth of Power, Haim Yacobi, Jacques Derrida, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Jenny Edkins, Judith Butler, Michael Dillon, Michel Foucault, Peter Sloterdijk, Politics, Publishing, Roberto Esposito, Theory, Wendy Brown, William Shakespeare | 14 Comments

My favourite music of 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

Not an ordered list, but the music I liked most from this year (see also 2014, 2013 and 2012)…

  1. Steven Wilson, Hand Cannot Erase
  2. The Neal Morse Band, The Great Experiment
  3. Lonely Robot, Please Come Home
  4. Umphreys McGee, The London Session
  5. Goblin Rebirth, Goblin Rebirth 
  6. The Dear Hunter, Act IV: Rebirth in Reprise
  7. Van der Graaf Generator, Merlin Atmos: Live Performances 2013
  8. Gavin Harrison, Cheating the Polygraph
  9. King Crimson, Live At The Orpheum
  10. Adrian Benavides, Imposters
  11. Von Hertzen Brothers, New Day Rising
  12. Stick Men featuring David Cross – Midori: Live in Tokyo (two sets, download only)
  13. The Aristocrats, Tres Caballeros
  14. Spock’s Beard, The Oblivion Particle
  15. Gazpacho, Molok
  16. Riverside, Love, Fear and the Time Machine
  17. Moonbound, Uncomfortable News from the Moon 
  18. Caligula’s Horse, Bloom
  19. King Crimson, Thrak Box
  20. Miles Davis, At Newport 1955-75: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4

Live, I enjoyed seeing Big Big Train, King Crimson, Steven Wilson, Fish, The Aristocrats, Lonely Robot and, perhaps the highlight, the two nights of Nik Bärtsch at King’s Place.

Posted in Music | 9 Comments

Novels (mainly) read in 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

These are the novels or non-fiction I read as a break from work-related reading in 2015. Not as many as previous years, which was mainly due to a slow start.

  1. Daniel Coyle and Tyler Hamilton, The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs (non fiction)
  2. Fred d’Aguilar, The Longest Memory
  3. Rebecca Hunt, Mr Chartwell
  4. Simon Sebag Montefiore, One Night in Winter
  5. Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident
  6. Mark Kurlansky, Birdseye (non-fiction)
  7. Peter Temple, Truth (set in Melbourne)
  8. Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara, Rabbit-Proof Fence
  9. Arundati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story (non-fiction)
  10. Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain
  11. Christopher Lee, Lord of Misrule (autobiography)
  12. Honoré Balzac, The Marriage Contract
  13. Michael Connolly, The Black Echo
  14. James Hamilton-Patterson, Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds (non-fiction)
  15. Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist
  16. Eric Rasmussen, The Shakespeare Thefts (non-fiction)
  17. Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic (non-fiction)
  18. Edmund White, Caracole
  19. Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt
  20. Rob Kitchin, Stumped 
  21. William Golding, Pincher Martin
  22. Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun
  23. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (memoir)
  24. Ian McEwan, The Children Act
  25. Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III (play)
  26. Hervé Guibert, À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie
  27. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus and other plays
  28. A.L. Kennedy, Day
  29. William Boyd, Restless
  30. Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk
  31. Ali Smith, The Accidental
  32. Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet
  33. James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
  34. Kate Atkinson, Life after Life
  35. Rebecca Hunt, Everland
  36. Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
  37. Val McDermid, The Skeleton Road
  38. Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice (again – in advance of the film, which I didn’t like)
  39. Annie Proulx, Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other Stories
  40. Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage
  41. John Williams, Stoner
  42. Helen Bryan, The Sisterhood
  43. Vladimir Nabakov, Bend Sinister
  44. J. Robert Lennon, Familiar
  45. Greg Baxter, Munich Airport
  46. Chibundu Onuzo, The Spider King’s Daughter
  47. Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass’s Skin
  48. Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone
  49. A.S. Byatt, The Matisse Stories
  50. Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
  51. Michael Moorcock, Mother London
  52. Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary
  53. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
  54. Valerie Martin, Property
  55. Andrea Levy, Small Island
  56. Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
  57. Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
  58. Ellis Peters, A Morbid Taste for Bones
  59. Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony
  60. Serge Livrozet, De la prison à la révolte: Essai-témoinage (memoir)
  61. Tom Sperlinger, Romeo and Juliet in Palestine: Teaching Under Occupation (non-fiction)
  62. Benoît Peeters, Derrida (biography)
  63. Emile Zola, The Earth

I particularly liked H is for Hawk, Everland, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Familiar and Bel Canto, and thought the Derrida biography was terrific.  I have another pile to take on holiday in a few days…

These lists tend to generate some questions or suggestions – while I am grateful for both, I say a bit about this here.

Posted in Novels read | 5 Comments

Top ten Society and Space posts of 2015

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

Most popular posts on the Society and Space open site in 2015.

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2015 in review

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

WordPress.com has prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 400,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 17 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Judith Butler lectures on the Performative Theory of Assembly

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

9780674967755The Sociological Imagination has gathered up online lectures relating to Judith Butler’s new book Notes Towards a Performative Theory of Assembly. 

Here’s the first of them – the ‘Human Shield’ London Review of International Law lecture given at the LSE in February 2015:

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Radical Philosophy 195 published

Posted on December 30, 2015 by stuartelden

Radical Philosophy 195 is now published.195cover_web

Commentary: Politicizing poerlessness
– Mathieu Bonzom

Commentary: An apology for French republicanism
– Olivier Tonneau

Article: The irony of anatomy
Basquiat’s poetics of black positionality
– Nathan Brown

Article: Radical openness
Chord symbols, musical abstraction and modernism
– Mark Abel

Article: Guattari and transversality
Institutions, analysis and experimentation
– Andrew Goffey

Reviews: 195 Reviews – Frank Engster, Jasper Bernes, Daniel Spaulding, Anthony Iles, Douglas Spencer, Tor Krever, Nardina Kaur and Stephen Howard

Extras: Letter: A response to Aradau on citizenship in the UK
– Nick Moss

 

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A previously unpublished 1983 conversation between Michel Foucault and Jonathan Simon – forthcoming in Theory, Culture and Society

Posted on December 29, 2015 by stuartelden

home_cover“Danger, Crime and Rights: A 1983 conversation between Michel Foucault and Jonathan Simon” is forthcoming in Theory, Culture and Society. I found a recording of the discussion in the Berkeley archive, and since I knew Jonathan, got in touch. We had a conversation about it at Berkeley, and TCS agreed to paid for the transcription. This was done by Katie Dingley, and lightly edited by me – mainly adding a few explanatory notes. I wrote an introduction; Jonathan wrote a commentary.

Daniel Defert and Henri-Paul Fruchaud helped with getting the rights. This will now appear in the journal, hopefully sometime in 2016. A French translation may follow.

The article will be accompanied by a photograph taken a few moments after this one. Jonathan Simon is two to the right of Foucault, between Keith Gandal and Arturo Escobar.
Eribon book photos - Berkeley2

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Foucault, About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Lectures at Dartmouth College, 1980

Posted on December 29, 2015 by stuartelden

9780226188546Foucault, About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Lectures at Dartmouth College, 1980, is now published with University of Chicago Press. 

When the book came out in French I provided a note of the original English-language sources. What this means is that the new volume is mainly of interest for the previously unpublished discussion, the notes and introduction.

I discuss the lectures in Foucault’s Last Decade.

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | Leave a comment