Social and Cultural Theory - 2021

Forthcoming Fall 21

Couplets

Travels in Speculative Pragmatism Brian Massumi Thought in the Act September 2021 504pp 18 illus.

9781478014669 £23.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

In Couplets, Brian Massumi presents twenty-four essays that represent the full spectrum of his work during the past thirty years. Conceived as a companion volume to Parables for the Virtual, Couplets addresses the key concepts of Parables from different angles and contextualizes it, allowing its stakes to be more fully felt.

Also by Milton Santos

The Nature of Space

Milton Santos Translated by Brenda Baletti Introduction by Susanna Hecht La�n America in Transla�on September 2021 304pp 1 illus.

9781478014409 £20.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pioneering geographer Milton Santos a�ends to globaliza�on writ large and how local and global orders intersect in the construc�on of space. Santos offers a theory of human space based on rela�onships between �me and ontology. He argues that when geographers consider the inseparability of �me and space, they can then transcend fragmented reali�es and par�al truths without trying to theorize their way around them.

For a New Geography

Milton Santos Translated by Archie Davies November 2021 272pp 9781517909086 £20.99 PB

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

Originally published in 1978 in Portuguese and appearing now for the first �me in English, For a New Geography is a milestone and key work in the history of cri�cal geography. It marked the emergence of its author, Milton Santos (1926–2001), as a major interpreter of geographical thought, a prominent Afro-Brazilian public intellectual, and one of the foremost global theorists of space.

Life in Plastic

Artistic Responses to Petromodernity Edited by Caren Irr November 2021 304pp 25 b&w illus.

9781517909888 £20.99 PB

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

With impressive breadth and compelling urgency, the essays in Life in Plas�c examine the arts and literature of the plas�c age. Focusing mainly on post-1960s North America, the collec�on spans a wide variety of genres, including graphic novels, superhero comics, utopic and dystopic science fic�on, poetry, and sa�rical prose, as well as vinyl records and visual arts. Ul�mately, the contributors think through plas�c with an eye to imagining our way out of plas�c, moving toward a postplas�c future.

Scale Theory

The Burden of Representation

November 2021 352pp 18 b&w illus.

9781517912079 £22.99 PB

November 2021 272pp 40 b&w illus.

9781517912239 £22.99 PB

A Nondisciplinary Inquiry Joshua DiCaglio UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

A pioneering call for a new understanding of scale across the humani�es. Scale Theory provides a founda�onal theory of scale that explains how scale works, the parameters of scalar thinking, and how scale refigures reality—that teaches us how to think in terms of scale, no ma�er where our interests may lie.

Essays on Photographies and Histories John Tagg

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS Drawing on semio�cs, on debates in cultural theory, and on the work of Foucault and Althusser, John Tagg rejects the idea of photography as a record of reality and the no�on of a documentary tradi�on, and traces a previously unexamined history that has profound implica�ons not only for the history and theory of photography but also for understanding the role new means and modes of representa�on were to play in processes of modern social regula�on.

Writings on Media

History of the Present Stuart Hall Edited by Charlotte Brunsdon Stuart Hall: Selected Wri�ngs October 2021 352pp 19 illus.

9781478014713 £21.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Wri�ngs on Media gathers more than twenty of Stuart Hall’s media analyses, from scholarly essays such as “Encoding and Decoding” (1973) to other wri�ngs addressed to wider publics. Hall explores the prac�ces of news photography, the development of media and cultural studies, the changing role of television, and how the na�on imagines itself through popular media.

Critical Race Theory (Third Edition)

An Introduction Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic Foreword by Angela Harris Cri�cal America March 2017 224pp 9781479802760 £14.99 PB

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cri�cal Race Theory is essen�al for understanding developments in this burgeoning field. This new edi�on is updated to include the Black Lives Ma�er movement, the presidency of Barack Obama, the rise of hate speech on the Internet, and more. The new edi�on also covers the ways in which other socie�es and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wan�ng to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new ques�ons for discussion, aimed at outlining prac�cal steps to achieve this objec�ve.

Dear Science and Other Stories Katherine McKittrick

Errantries January 2021 240pp 7 photos 9781478011040 £18.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Katherine McKi�rick presents a crea�ve and rigorous study of black and an�colonial methodologies, exploring how narra�ves of imprecision and rela�onality interrupt knowledge systems that seek to observe, index, know, and discipline blackness. Sugges�ng that black life and black livingness are, in themselves, rebellious methodologies, McKi�rick imagines without totally disclosing the ways in which black intellectuals invent ways of living outside prevailing knowledge systems.

Backlist classics

Cloud Ethics

Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others Louise Amoore May 2020 232pp 27 illus.

9781478008316 £19.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Louise Amoore examines how machine learning algorithms are transforming the ethics and poli�cs of contemporary society, proposing what she calls cloud ethics as a way to hold algorithms accountable by engaging with the social and technical condi�ons under which they emerge and operate.

Cruel Optimism Lauren Berlant

October 2011 352pp 58 illus.

9780822351115 £19.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

A rela�on of cruel op�mism 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 op�mism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democra�c promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained a�ached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, poli�cal and social equality, and durable in�macy— despite evidence that liberal-capitalist socie�es can no longer be counted on to provide opportuni�es for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”

Designs for the Pluriverse

Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds Arturo Escobar New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century March 2018 312pp 9780822371052 £20.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Escobar presents a new vision of design theory and prac�ce aimed at channeling design’s world-making capacity toward ways of being that are deeply a�uned to the Earth. No�ng that most design—from consumer goods and to built environments—currently serves capitalist ends, Escobar argues for the development of an “autonomous design” that eschews commercial aims.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noeri Translated by Edmund Jephcott Cultural Memory in the Present March 2007 304pp 9780804736336 £20.99 PB

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

A new, improved transla�on of the most influen�al publica�on of the Frankfurt School of Cri�cal Theory.

Adorno and Horkheimer aimed “to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”

Fearing the Black Body

The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia Sabrina Strings May 2019 304pp 41 b&w illus.

9781479886753 £20.99 PB

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

This important and original work weaves together an eye-opening historical narra�ve ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment to show that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of “savagery” and racial inferiority. Strings argues that today’s fat phobia isn’t about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.

Hyperobjects

Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World Timothy Morton Posthumani�es September 2013 240pp 15 b&w photos, 8 color plates 9780816689231 £18.99 PB

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

Global warming is perhaps the most drama�c example of what Timothy Morton calls “hyperobjects”—en��es of such vast temporal and spa�al dimensions that they defeat tradi�onal ideas about what a thing is in the first place. Morton explains what hyperobjects are and their impact on how we think, how we coexist, and how we experience our poli�cs, ethics, and art.

Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol

Experimental Futures April 2021 208pp 9781478011415 £18.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our ea�ng, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment.

Annemarie Mol takes inspira�on from these transforma�ve entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. As humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cul�vate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate—and to whom we leave our excesses. Taking human ea�ng seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transforma�ve, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and rela�ng as a ma�er of inescapable dependence.

Homo Sacer

Sovereign Power and Bare Life Giorgio Agamben Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen Meridian: Crossing Aesthe�cs April 1998 228pp 9780804732185 £17.99 PB

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

One of Italy’s most original philosophers aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, poten�ality, and power with the problem of poli�cal and social ethics in a context where the la�er has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding.

Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory Patricia Hill Collins

August 2019 376pp 9781478006466 £22.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Patricia Hill Collins offers a set of analy�cal tools for those wishing to develop intersec�onality’s capability to theorize social inequality in ways that would facilitate social change. While intersec�onality helps shed light on contemporary social issues, Collins notes that it has yet to reach its full poten�al as a cri�cal social theory.

Listening to Images

Necropolitics

April 2017 152pp 136 photos 9780822362708 £17.99 PB

Theory in Forms October 2019 224pp 9781478006510 £19.99 PB

Tina M. Campt

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

In Listening to Images, Tina M. Campt explores a way of listening closely to photography. Employing discourses of fugi�vity, black futurity, and black feminist theory, she engages with lost archives of state iden�fica�on photographs of Afrodiasporan people taken between the late 1800s and the present, showing how to hear the quiet refusal emana�ng from these photos originally intended to dehumanize and police their subjects.

On Being Included

Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life Sara Ahmed March 2012 256pp 3 illus.

9780822352365 £19.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Diversity is an unremarkable feature of ins�tu�onal life. Yet diversity prac��oners o�en experience ins�tu�ons as resistant to their work.

On Being Included offers an explana�on of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as “non-performa�ves” that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of ins�tu�onal whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the ins�tu�onaliza�on of diversity.

On Longing

Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection Susan Stewart December 1992 232pp 12 illus.

9780822313663 £19.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Miniature books, eighteenth-century novels, Tom Thumb weddings, tall tales, and objects of tourism and nostalgia: this diverse group of cultural forms is the subject of On Longing, a fascina�ng analysis of the ways in which everyday objects are narrated to animate or realize certain versions of the world. Addressing the rela�ons of language to experience, the body to scale, and narra�ves to objects, Susan Stewart looks at the “miniature” as a metaphor for interiority and at the “gigan�c” as an exaggera�on of aspects of the exterior.

Achille Mbembe

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Achille Mbembe theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by everincreasing inequality, militariza�on, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and na�onalist forces determined to exclude and kill. Mbembe outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side—which is based on the desires, fears, affects, rela�ons, and violence that drove colonialism—and calls for a radical revision of humanism as the means to create a more just society.

Also by Sara Ahmed

Queer Phenomenology Orientations, Objects, Others Sara Ahmed December 2006 240pp 9780822339144 £19.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to produc�ve use.

Focusing on the “orienta�on” aspect of “sexual orienta�on” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and �me.

Ordinary Affects Kathleen Stewart

September 2007 144pp 9780822341079 £17.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

A singular argument for a�en�on to the affec�ve dimensions of everyday life and the poten�al that animates the ordinary. Known for her focus on the poe�cs and poli�cs of language and landscape, the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart ponders how ordinary impacts create the subject as a capacity to affect and be affected. In a series of brief vigne�es combining storytelling, close ethnographic detail, and cri�cal analysis, Stewart relates the intensi�es and banali�es of common experiences and strange encounters, half-spied scenes and the lingering resonance of passing events.

Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Post-Contemporary Interventions Fredric Jameson January 1992 460pp 24 illus., 8 in color 9780822310907 £15.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a defini�on of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from pain�ng to “punk” film, from video art to literature.

Selected Writings on Race and Difference Stuart Hall Edited by Paul Gilroy & Ruth Wilson Gilmore Stuart Hall: Selected Wri�ngs April 2021 376pp 9781478011668 £23.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

This collec�on gathers more than twenty essays by Stuart Hall that highlight his extensive and groundbreaking engagement with race, representa�on, iden�ty, difference, and diaspora. The volume gives organizers and students of social theory ways to approach the interconnec�ons of race with culture and consciousness, state and society, policing and freedom.

Toward the Critique of Violence

A Critical Edition Walter Benjamin Edited by Peter Fenves & Julia Ng June 2021 368pp 9780804749534 £18.99 PB

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Marking the centenary of Walter Benjamin’s “Toward the Cri�que of Violence,” this cri�cal edi�on presents readers with a fully annotated transla�on of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern poli�cal theory. With its challenging argument concerning violence, law, and jus�ce—which addresses such topical ma�ers as police violence, the death penalty, and the ambiguous force of religion—Benjamin’s work is as important today as it was upon its publica�on.

Sculpting in Time

Reflections on the Cinema Andrey Tarkovsky Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair April 1989 256pp 84 b&w photos 9780292776241 £22.99 PB

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

Andrey Tarkovsky, the genius of modern Russian cinema—hailed by Ingmar Bergman as “the most important director of our �me”—died an exile in Paris in December 1986. In Sculp�ng in Time, he has le� his ar�s�c testament, a remarkable revela�on of both his life and work. Here Tarkovsky sets down his thoughts and his memories, revealing for the first �me the original inspira�ons for his extraordinary films.

Space And Place

The Perspective of Experience Yi-Fu Tuan January 2001 248pp 9780816638772 £14.99 PB

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS

A study of the ways in which people feel and think about space, how they form a�achments to home, neighborhood, and na�on, and how feelings about space and place are affected by the sense of �me.

Vibrant Matter

A Political Ecology of Things Jane Bennett a John Hope Franklin Center Book January 2010 200pp 9780822346333 £18.99 PB

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The poli�cal theorist Jane Benne�, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shi�s her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Benne� argues that poli�cal theory needs to do a be�er job of recognizing the ac�ve par�cipa�on of nonhuman forces in events.

Books stocked at Marston Book Services Tel: +44 (0)1235 465500 | enquiries@combinedacademic.co.uk | combinedacademic.co.uk