Ties together political economy and affect in a time of decreased expectations.
A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the ......
In Pierre Bourdieus Political Economy of Being, Ghassan Hage explores the great French social theorists work and revitalizes conventional and undertheorized aspects of his thinking. Hage focuses on Bourdieus concern with social being and what constitutes a worthwhile and fulfilling life. Such a life is not something that one either has or does ......
A collection of writings by a fascinating thinker in the history of Marxism, Antonio Gramsci, who wrote on subjects from folklore to philosophy, popular culture to political strategy. The volume features an introduction by a leading Marxist historian, a biographical introduction and a glossary.
In World-Systems Analysis, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a concise, accessible, and comprehensive introduction to the revolutionary approach to understanding the history and development of the modern world that he pioneered thirty years ago. Since Wallerstein first developed world-systems analysis, it has become a widely utilized methodology ......
In 2007, the Watson Affair - the worldwide character assassination and exclusion from public life of Dr. James Watson, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning scientist co-credited with the discovery of DNA - shocked the global public in an early episode of what would come to be called "cancel culture." Watson was as an early and very public victim of ......
Sex, or the Unbearable is a dialogue between Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman, two of our leading theorists of sexuality, politics, and culture. In juxtaposing sex and the unbearable they don't propose that sex is unbearable, only that it unleashes unbearable contradictions that we nonetheless struggle to bear. In Berlant and Edelman's exchange, ......
Habit has long preoccupied a wide range of theologians, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In Habit's Pathways Tony Bennett explores the political consequences of the varied ways in which habit's repetitions have been acted on to guide or direct conduct. Bennett considers habit's uses and effects across the monastic ......
Jean Genet (1910-1986) resonates, perhaps more than any other canonical queer figure from the pre-Stonewall past, with contemporary queer sensibilities attuned to a defiant non-normativity. Not only sexually queer, Genet was also a criminal and a social pariah, a bitter opponent of the police state, and an ally of revolutionary anticolonial ......
The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: "I just want you to be happy"; "I'm happy if you're happy." Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective ......
