Progressive Geographies

I am pleased to say that the recordings for the British Academy conference “Futures of Critique in a Pluricentric World” (July 12-13, 2024) are now available on the YouTube channel of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths:

Foucault News update: Bibliography of Foucault’s shorter works in English translation (2024)

The Bibliography of Foucault’s shorter works in English translation which is maintained by Daniele Lorenzini and hosted on this site [Foucault News] has been updated.

As always if you notice anything missing please either post in the comments on the page or email Daniele Lorenzini directly.

Florian Illies, The Magic of Silence: Caspar David Friedrich’s Journey Through Time, trans. Tony Crawford, Polity, November 2024

No German painter evokes such strong emotions as Caspar David Friedrich: his evening skies remain icons of longing, his mountain vistas testaments to the grandeur of nature.  He inspired Samuel Beckett to write Waiting for Godot and Walt Disney to create Bambi. Goethe, however, was so enraged by the enigmatic melancholy of Friedrich’s paintings that he wanted to smash them on the edge of a table.

In a sweeping journey through time, bestselling author Florian Illies tells the story of Friedrich’s paintings and their impact on subsequent generations.  Many of his most beautiful paintings were burned, first in his birthplace and then in World War II; others, like the Chalk Cliffs on Rügen, emerge from the mists of history a hundred years after Friedrich’s death. Illies recounts the story of how Friedrich’s paintings ended up at the Russian czar’s court, others among a pile of winter tires in a Mafia car repair shop, and others still in the kitchen of a German social housing apartment.  Adored by Hitler and Rainer Maria Rilke, despised by Stalin and by the generation of 68, this compelling narrative dances through 250 years of history as seen through Friedrich’s art and life. As a result, the man himself becomes flesh and blood before our very eyes.

Daniel Wortel-London, The Menace of Prosperity: New York City and the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865–1981 – University of Chicago Press, July 2025

Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.
 
Many local policymakers make decisions based on a deep-seated belief: what’s good for the rich is good for cities. Convinced that local finances depend on attracting wealthy firms and residents, municipal governments lavish public subsidies on their behalf. Whatever form this strategy takes—tax-exempt apartments, corporate incentives, debt-financed mega projects—its rationale remains consistent and assumed to be true. But this wasn’t always the case. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, a wide range of activists, citizens, and intellectuals in New York City connected local fiscal crises to the greed and waste of the rich. These figures saw other routes to development, possibilities rooted in alternate ideas about what was fiscally viable.
 
In The Menace of Prosperity, Daniel Wortel-London argues that urban economics and politics are shaped by what he terms the “fiscal imagination” of policymakers, activists, advocates, and other figures. His survey of New York City during a period of explosive growth shows how residents went beyond the limits of redistributive liberalism to imagine how their communities could become economically viable without the largesse of the wealthy. Their strategies—which included cooperatives, public housing, land-value taxation, public utilities, and more—centered the needs and capabilities of ordinary residents as the basis for local economies that were both prosperous and just.
 
Overturning stale axioms about economic policy, The Menace of Prosperity shows that not all growth is productive for cities. Wortel-London’s ambitious history demonstrates the range of options we’ve abandoned and hints at the economic frameworks we could still realize—and the more democratic cities that might result.

Michael Behrent has written a review essay about my Foucault books for Modern Intellectual History. Coincidentally – I didn’t know he was writing this piece – I have a review of his Becoming Foucault forthcoming in Journal of Modern History.

Lieba Faier, The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking – Duke University Press, September 2024 (open access)

In The Banality of Good, Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts to enact the UN’s counter-trafficking protocol and assist Filipina migrants working in Japan’s sex industry, Faier draws from interviews with NGO caseworkers and government officials to demonstrate how these efforts disregard the needs and perspectives of those they are designed to help. She finds that these campaigns tend to privilege bureaucracies and institutional compliance, resulting in the compromised quality of life, repatriation, and even criminalization of human trafficking survivors. Faier expands on Hannah Arendt’s idea of the “banality of evil” by coining the titular “banality of good” to describe the reality of the UN’s fight against human trafficking. Detailing the protocols that have been put in place and evaluating their enactment, Faier reveals how the continued failure of humanitarian institutions to address structural inequities and colonial history ultimately reinforces the violent status quo they claim to be working to change.

Brian Eno and Bette A, What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory (print and e-book)

The e-book is currently available for just £1

WHAT ART DOES examines the function of fictional worlds – such as pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels and the hidden language of haircuts – and suggests a new theory of art.

Why do we do it? How does it help us? And how does it hold us all together?

WHAT ART DOES is a full colour illustrated hardback book, initially available in a limited edition of 777 signed copies. Each copy comes with its own unique slipcase hand painted by Brian and Bette A. This limited edition is available exclusively from Metalabel for North American collectors, and Enoshop for collectors in the rest of the world.

Hardback and ebook editions will be available on general release from Faber on 16th January 2025.

All profits from the limited edition and PDF go to charity