Michael Shapiro on Deadwood and The Wire in Geopolitics

Michael Shapiro discusses Deadwood and The Wire in Geopolitics (requires subscription). Thanks to Elena dell’Agnese for the link.

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A poem by Bud Osborn – ‘Raise shit’

Bud Osborn’s poem, and the whole set of commentaries on the International Conference in Critical Geography, open access to commemorate Bud’s life.

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‘This is not a cover image’ – bad covers of books on Foucault

tumblr_inline_n59vvohFao1r1ogyfA set of images of covers of books on Foucault… and their problems. I actually like the Lois McNay cover, but there are some hideous ones here…

Something to bear in mind for Foucault’s Last Decade, though I continue to like the cover image for the book Jeremy Crampton and I edited on Foucault – one of only two times in my publishing career where my/our suggestion for the cover was enthusiastically welcomed by the press (the other was The Birth of Territory). All my book covers are here.

Posted in Foucault's Last Decade, Michel Foucault, Publishing | 2 Comments

The end of David Beer’s Thinking Culture blog

David Beer has decided to close his Thinking Culture blog – a shame, but understandable given his other commitments. He is using his expertise and enthusiasm to great effect at the Theory, Culture and Society blog.

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Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics – coming soon

A forthcoming book from my friend and co-Society and Space editor, Deborah Cowen – The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade. The book is due out in September 2014.

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A genealogy of logistics, tracing the link between markets and militaries, territory and government

Deborah Cowen traces the art and science of logistics over the past sixty years, from the battlefield to the boardroom and back again. Though the object of corporate and governmental logistical efforts is commodity supply, she demonstrates that they are deeply political—and, considered in the context of the long history of logistics, deeply indebted to the practice of war.

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Interview with Łukasz Stanek about Henri Lefebvre, Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment

An interview I conducted with Łukasz Stanek about the long-lost, and about to be published, book by Henri Lefebvre – Toward an Architecture of Enjoyment.

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The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project, review by Julie Guthman

A review of The Material Gene at the Society and Space open site.

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Pynchon and Philosophy. Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno (2014)

This looks really interesting – though even with the 25% discount until the end of the month, it’s still expensive.

Clare O'Farrell's avatarFoucault News

pynchon Martin Paul Eve, Pynchon and Philosophy. Wittgenstein, Foucault and Adorno. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

PDF flyer for book with details of discount
(Discount valid until 31st May 2014)

Publisher’s site
Author’s site

Thomas Pynchon, perhaps the most important living American author, is famed for his lengthy, complex and erudite fictions. Given these characteristics, an examination of the philosophical dimensions of Pynchon’s works is long overdue. In Pynchon and Philosophy, Martin Paul Eve comprehensively and clearly redresses this balance, mapping Pynchon’s interactions with the philosophy, ethics and politics of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno, resulting in a fresh approach to these seminal novels.

Pynchon and Philosophy is based on the notion that Pynchon’s brand of postmodern literature mocks theoretical frameworks. On these grounds, Pynchon has been accused of being an anti-rationalist, a postmodern nihilist figure who revels in the collapse of logic. In this book Eve shows that…

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Cornel West, Immortal Technique, Marina Sitrin, and Stanley Aronowitz – opening event of LeftForum, NYC, 30 May 2014

Cornel West, Immortal Technique, Marina Sitrin, and Stanley Aronowitz – opening event of LeftForum, NYC, 30 May 2014.

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Boko Haram – an annotated bibliography (repost)

About a year ago, during the last of my four visits to Nigeria, I posted an annotated bibliography of the Nigerian group Boko Haram. I revised it over the next few months.

Given Boko Haram are back in the news with the kidnapping of the schoolgirls, it seemed appropriate to link to it again. I was working on this topic for a potential article which I gave as a talk a couple of times but never sent anywhere. It’s on the list of things to do… In large part, though, my reading was for the purpose of making sense of what was happening. There are a lot of repetitive media reports, but little on the ground reporting, and quite a lot of misleading information. Some of these pieces help provide a better picture.

The bibliography doesn’t include newspaper or online news stories which are easily found. I include links where possible, and have indicated if pieces are open access or require subscription. I haven’t updated the references since May 2013, and of course new material is published all the time, but I think it is still useful. The bibliography can found here.

For those new to the topic, I’d suggest that Davis, Pham 2012 and Walker are the best places to start (all open access), perhaps followed by one of the Adesoji pieces and Elkaim, Omede and Thomson.

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