Stuart Hall: Conversations, Projects and Legacies (2017)

This book “examines the career of the cultural studies pioneer, interrogating his influence and revealing lesser-known facets of his work. This collection of essays and photographs evaluates the legacies of his particular brand of cultural studies and demonstrates how other scholars and activists have utilised his thinking in their own research.

Throughout these pages, Hall’s colleagues and long-term collaborators assess his theoretical and methodological standpoints, his commitment to the development of a flexible form of revisionist Marxism, and the contributions of his specific mode of analysis to public debates on Thatcherism, neoliberalism and multiculturalism. North American activist Angela Davis argues that the model of politics, ideology, and race initially developed by Hall and his colleagues in Birmingham continues to resonate when applied to America’s racialized policing. Further essays focus on Hall’s contributions to contemporary political debate as well as questions of race, ethnicity, identity, migrancy and diaspora. Others discuss Hall’s continuing involvement in issues of representation and aesthetics in the visual arts, particularly photography and film.

With contributions from Britain, Europe, East Asia, and North and Latin America, Stuart Hall: Conversations, Projects and Legacies provides a comprehensive look at how, under Hall’s intellectual leadership, British cultural studies transformed itself from a form of ‘local’ knowledge to the international field of study we know today.”

Contributors: John Akomfrah, Avtar Brah, Charlotte Brunsdon, Iain Chambers, Kuan-Hsing Chen, John Clarke, James Curran, Angela Davis, David Edgar, Lawrence Grossberg, Catherine Hall, Dick Hebdige, Tony Jefferson, Robert Lumley, Mahasiddhi (Roy Peters), Doreen Massey, Angela McRobbie, Caspar Melville, Frank Mort, Michael Rustin, Bill Schwarz, Mark Sealy, Liv Sovik, Lola Young.

Edited by Julian Henriques and David Morley with Vana Goblot
Publisher Goldsmiths Press, London, 2017
ISBN 9781906897475, 1906897476
322 pages

Reviews: Ashleigh McFeeters (LSE blogs, 2018), Karen Wilkes (Media Theory, 2019).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (33 MB, updated on 2021-4-13)
PDF (12 MB, accepted manuscript)

McKenzie Wark: Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-first Century (2020)

“A survey of the key thinkers and ideas that are rebuilding the world in the shadow of the Anthropocene

As we face the compounded crises of late capitalism, environmental catastrophe and technological transformation, who are the thinkers and the ideas who will allow us to understand the world we live in? McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: media ecologies, post-colonial ethnographies, and the design of technology, and introduces us to the thinking of seventeen major writers who, combined, contribute to the common task of knowing the world. Each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others.

The authors include: Sianne Ngai, Kodwo Eshun, Lisa Nakamura, Hito Steyerl, Yves Citton, Randy Martin, Jackie Wang, Wang Hui, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Achille Mbembe, Eyal Weizman, Cory Doctorow, Benjamin Bratton, Tiziana Terranova, Keller Easterling, Jussi Parikka, Deborah Danowich and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.

Wark argues that we are too often told that expertise is obtained by specialisation. Sensoria connects the themes and arguments across intellectual silos. The book is a vital and timely introduction to the future both as a warning but also as a roadmap for how we might find our way out of the current crisis.”

Publisher Verso Books, London, July 2020
ISBN 9781788735063, 1788735064
296 pages

Reviews: J.J. Charlesworth (ArtReview, 2020), Lindsay Lerman (Entropy, 2020), Travis Diehl (LA Review of Books, 2020), Jessica Caroline and Emily Colucci (Filthy Dreams, 2020).

Publisher
WorldCat

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Chris Robé: Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Videotape Guerrillas, and Digital Ninjas (2017)

“Breaking the Spell offers the first full-length study that charts the historical trajectory of anarchist-inflected video activism from the late 1960s to the present. Two predominant trends emerge from this social movement-based video activism: 1) anarchist-inflected processes increasingly structure its production, distribution, and exhibition practices; and 2) video does not simply represent collective actions and events, but also serves as a form of activist practice in and of itself from the moment of recording to its later distribution and exhibition. Video plays an increasingly important role among activists in the growing global resistance against neoliberal capitalism. As various radical theorists have pointed out, subjectivity itself becomes a key terrain of struggle as capitalism increasingly structures and mines it through social media sites, cell phone technology, and new “flexible” work and living patterns. As a result, alternative media production becomes a central location where new collective forms of subjectivity can be created to challenge aspects of neoliberalism.

Chris Robé’s book fills in historical gaps by bringing to light unexplored video activist groups like the Cascadia Forest Defenders, eco-video activists from Eugene, Oregon; Mobile Voices, Latino day laborers harnessing cell phone technology to combat racism and police harassment in Los Angeles; and Outta Your Backpack Media, indigenous youth from the Southwest who use video to celebrate their culture and fight against marginalization. This groundbreaking study also deepens our understanding of more well-researched movements like AIDS video activism, Paper Tiger Television, and Indymedia by situating them within a longer history and wider context of radical video activism.”

Publisher PM Press, Oakland, CA, 2017
ISBN 9781629632339, 1629632333
x+469 pages

Interview with author: The New Architects (video, 2017, 43 min).
Reviews: Beth Geglia (Interface, 2017), Franklin Lopez (Fifth Estate, 2017), Patricia R. Zimmerman (Jump Cut, 2018), Allan Atliff (Anarchist Studies, 2017).

Author
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (16 MB)
Academia.edu (author)