New Books in Critical Theory

• Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

  Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes sought to understand the divine in a way independent of religious theology, by turning to the philosophical works of Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato. In doing so, he established standards of scientific inquiry into God that were and remain highly influential on Jewish and Christian thought. Averroes, however, does not provide much in the way of demonstrative knowledge of God, and most of his arguments remain dialectical, rhetorical, or political. This volume explores the various pathways towards attaining divine knowledge that we find in Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, and on Plato’s Republic, along with Averroes’ Epistle on Divine Knowledge, Decisive Treatise, and more. Yehuda Halper is Professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. He is currently a aisiting professor at University of Chicago Divinity School. His first monograph, Jewish Socratic Questions in an Age without Plato (Brill, 2021) won the Goldstein-Goren Book Award for the best book in Jewish Thought in 2019-2021. He is currently directing the ISF grant (#622/22) "Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Explanation of Foreign Terms and the Foundations of Philosophy in Hebrew." Rabbi Marc Katz is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Ner Tamid. His latest book is Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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• On Democracy and Bullshit with Hélène Landemore

  Today I’m speaking with Hélène Landemore, Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about Democracy and Bullshit, with a special focus on her 2020 book, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2020). Bullshit is a feature of both democracies and dictatorships alike, but it takes different forms. In democracies, while citizens enjoy the freedom of speech and the right to vote, a range of forces often conspire to limit their real power in favor of competing elites. The political and economic elite’s toolkit includes the art of bullshit—the persuasive use of language without regard for truth. Whether meritocratic or populist, elites alike have mastered this form of manipulation, amplified by modern tools of dissemination and authority. To help us understand the challenges that bullshit poses to democratic citizens, I’m pleased to welcome Hélène Landemore. Hélène Landemore is a professor of political science at Yale University. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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• Jemma Deer, "Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

  Jemma Deer’s Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020) invites the reader to take a moment and to ponder on the way of reading. In her book, the author challenges the narcissistic position of the human being: a status that has been established for some time and which has already been challenged before but does not seem to be changing quickly. The Anthropocene reveals the dangers which are connected to the human centrality and power; on the other hand, it requires new ways of engaging with the environment. These new ways are not limited to the gestures of consideration in relation to the profound changes that led to climate change in particular. They ask for a new mode of thinking when the inanimate is part and parcel of the human being. In this regard, Jemma Deer draws attention to reading and writing as ways and modes of engaging with the inanimate and with the environment that serves as a habitat for the acts of reading and writing. The book offers strategies for reading literary texts across cultures and times: the works by Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf reveal new echoes in the context of the Anthropocene. Radical Animism is a gentle invitation to abandon human superiority and to explore the ways that subvert a conventional hierarchy of the human and the non-human. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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• Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023)

  In Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford UP, 2023), Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness cannot be represented in modernity's aesthetic regime, but is nevertheless foundational to every representation. Troubling the idea that the aesthetic is sheltered from the antiblack terror that lies just beyond its sanctuary, Bradley insists that blackness cannot make a home within the aesthetic, yet is held as its threshold and aporia. The book problematizes the phenomenological and ontological conceits that underwrite the visual, sensual, and abstract logics of modernity. Moving across multiple histories and geographies, artistic mediums and forms, from nineteenth-century painting and early cinema, to the contemporary text-based works, video installations, and digital art of Glenn Ligon, Mickalene Thomas, and Sondra Perry, Bradley inaugurates a new method for interpretation--an ante-formalism which demonstrates how black art engages in the recursive deconstruction of the aesthetic forms that remain foundational to modernity. Foregrounding the negativity of black art, Bradley shows how each of these artists disclose the racialized contours of the body, form, and medium, even interrogating the form that is the world itself. Drawing from black critical theory, Continental philosophy, film and media studies, art history, and black feminist thought, Bradley explores artistic practices that inhabit the negative underside of form. Ultimately, Anteaesthetics asks us to think philosophically with black art, and with the philosophical invention black art necessarily undertakes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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• Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)

  How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U California Press, 2025) Sophie Bishop, an Associate Professor in the University of Leeds’ School of Media and Communication analyses the lives of artists and influencers to understand the working and living conditions shaping modern culture. The book draws a comparison between the two sets of workers, showing how artists are having to engage with influencer’s techniques to be successful in the online economy, and how both groups struggle with the inequalities of the platform economy. Rich with fascinating case studies, alongside a range of theoretical insights that can be applied across many other aspects of the modern world, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in art, culture and contemporary social life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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