Martin Hägglund: This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (2019)

“This Life offers a profoundly inspiring basis for transforming our lives, demonstrating that our commitment to freedom and democracy should lead us beyond both religion and capitalism. Philosopher Martin Hägglund argues that we need to cultivate not a religious faith in eternity but a secular faith devoted to our finite life together. He shows that all spiritual questions of freedom are inseparable from economic and material conditions: what matters is how we treat one another in this life and what we do with our time.

Engaging with great philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel and Marx, literary writers from Dante to Proust and Knausgaard, political economists from Mill to Keynes and Hayek, and religious thinkers from Augustine to Kierkegaard and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hägglund points the way to an emancipated life.”

Publisher Pantheon Books, New York, 2019
ISBN 9781101870402, 1101870400
450 pages

Interviews with author: Meagan Day (Jacobin, 2019), Adam Kelly (University of York, 2019, video).

Debates: Frederick Neuhouser, Lea Ypi, Jensen Suther (The Philosopher, 2019, with Hägglund’s introductory essay), Brandon M. Terry, Walter Benn Michaels, Benjamin Kunkel, Michael W. Clune, Jodi Dean, William Clare Roberts (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020, with Hägglund’s response), Robert Pippin (The Point, 2019, Hägglund’s response).

Reviews: Samuel Moyn (Jacobin, 2019), Michael A. McCarthy (Jacobin, 2019), Nathan Brown (Radical Philosophy, 2019), Tyler M. Williams (Critical Inquiry, 2020), Jedediah Britton-Purdy (The New Republic, 2019), Mathew Abbott (Marx & Philosophy, 2020), Martin Rayburn (Parrhesia, 2020), Conall Cash (boundary2, 2019), Oliver Burkeman (The Guardian, 2019), James Wood (New Yorker, 2019), Adam Kirsch (Wall Street Journal, 2019), Matt McManus (Areo, 2020), Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and Daniel Zamora (Dissent, 2019), William Egginton (Believer, 2020), Anton Jansson (Ord & Bild, 2020, SW), Matthew Engelke (Public Books, 2019), Kevin Schilbrack (Sophia, 2020), Knox Peden (Sydney Review of Books, 2020), Johan Andreas Trovik (Vinduet, 2022, NO).

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Silvio Lorusso: Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur Nobody Is Safe (2018–) [IT, EN]

“Entrepreneur or precarious worker? These are the terms of a cognitive dissonance that turns everyone’s life into a shaky project in perennial start-up phase. Silvio Lorusso guides us through the entreprecariat, a world where change is natural and healthy, whatever it may bring. A world populated by motivational posters, productivity tools, mobile offices and self-help techniques. A world in which a mix of entrepreneurial ideology and widespread precarity is what regulates professional social media, online marketplaces for self-employment and crowdfunding platforms for personal needs. The result? A life in permanent beta, with sometimes tragic implications.”

Italian edition
With a foreword by Geert Lovink and an afterword by Raffaele Alberto Ventura
Publisher Krisis Publishing, Brescia, 2018
ISBN 9788894402902, 8894402908
223 pages

English edition
Translated by Isobel Butters
Publisher Onomatopee, Eindhoven, 2019
Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 License
ISBN 9789493148161, 9493148165
257 pages

Interviews with author: Walter Marocchi (2019), Floor van Luijk (Metropolis M, 2020).
Reviews: Marco Petroni (Artribune, 2019), Tiziano Bonini (cheFare, 2019), Sandro Moiso (Carmilla, 2019), Giulio Gonella (Volume, 2020), Alessandro Ludovico (Neural, 2020).
Commentary: Nicola Bozzi (Digimag, 2017, EN).

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Entreprecariat – Siamo tutti imprenditori. Nessuno è al sicuro (Italian, 2018, 9 MB)
Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur Nobody Is Safe (English, trans. Isobel Butters, 2019, 7 MB, added on 2020-5-12)

McKenzie Wark: Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (2019)

“It’s not capitalism, it’s not neoliberalism—what if it’s something worse?

In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that information has empowered a new kind of ruling class. Through the ownership and control of information, this emergent class dominates not only labour but capital as traditionally understood as well. And it’s not just tech companies like Amazon and Google. Even Walmart and Nike can now dominate the entire production chain through the ownership of not much more than brands, patents, copyrights, and logistical systems.

While techno-utopian apologists still celebrate these innovations as an improvement on capitalism, for workers—and the planet—it’s worse. The new ruling class uses the powers of information to route around any obstacle labor and social movements put up. So how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyze this new world, but ways to change it. Drawing on the writings of a surprising range of classic and contemporary theorists, Wark offers an illuminating overview of the contemporary condition and the emerging class forces that control—and contest—it.”

Publisher Verso, London, 2019
ISBN 9781788735308, 1788735307
202 pages

Book launch (with Natasha Lennard, video, 90 min).
Interviews with author: Verso Books (video, 2019, 16 min), Red May TV (with Alexander Zevin, Jasper Bernes and Wendy Liu, video, 2020, 110 min), Guy Mannes-Abbot (Tank, 2019).

Reviews: Garrett Pierman (Marx & Philosophy, 2020), Ben Tripp (Hyperallergic, 2020), Madeleine Collier (Afterimage, 2020), Colin Drumm (Cosmonaut, 2019), Mark Steven (Sydney Review of Books, 2020), Steve Hanson (Manchester Review of Books, 2020), Antonio Navarro (Teknokultura, 2020, ES).

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