Radical Cultural Studies – serie

This book follows the stories of forcefully displaced women and raises the question of whether we can still use the figuration of the nomadic subject in feminist theories and politics. This question is examined in the light of the ongoing global crises of mobility and severe border practices. In recounting their stories migrant and refugee women appear in the world as ‘who they are’ — unique and unrepeatable human beings —and not as ‘what they are’ —objectified ‘refugees’, ‘victims’ or ‘stateless subjects’. Women’s stories leave traces of their will to rewrite their exclusion from oppressive regimes, defend their choice of civil and patriarchal disobedience, grasp their passage, claim their right to have rights and affirm their determination for new beginnings. What emerges from the encounter between theoretical abstractions and women’s lived experiences is the need to decolonize feminist theories and make cartographies of mobility assemblages, wherein nomadism is a component of entangled relations and not a category or a figuration of a subject position.These stories that have now been collected, transcribed and analysed; they have created a rich archive of uprooted women’s experiences and have brought forward a wide range of new ideas that will be presented and discussed in the book:Decolonizing feminist theoryMobility assemblages and geographies of nomadism The art of listening to fragmented narratives and the labour of translationCrossing borders and inhabiting borderlandsRadical solitude and radical hopeFeminist genealogies of labour under conditions of forced displacementThe force of political narratives through the figure of Antigone?Education for hope Imagining the non-nomad 4 narrated stories will also be presented in full interwoven in the theoretical discussions of the book, thus opening up a dialogic space between theoretical reflections and diffractions, and narratives of lived experiences.

This book follows the stories of forcefully displaced women and raises the question of whether we can still use the figuration of the nomadic subject in feminist theories and politics. This question is examined in the light of the ongoing global crises of mobility and severe border practices. In recounting their stories migrant and refugee women appear in the world as ‘who they are’ — unique and unrepeatable human beings —and not as ‘what they are’ —objectified ‘refugees’, ‘victims’ or ‘stateless subjects’. Women’s stories leave traces of their will to rewrite their exclusion from oppressive regimes, defend their choice of civil and patriarchal disobedience, grasp their passage, claim their right to have rights and affirm their determination for new beginnings. What emerges from the encounter between theoretical abstractions and women’s lived experiences is the need to decolonize feminist theories and make cartographies of mobility assemblages, wherein nomadism is a component of entangled relations and not a category or a figuration of a subject position.These stories that have now been collected, transcribed and analysed; they have created a rich archive of uprooted women’s experiences and have brought forward a wide range of new ideas that will be presented and discussed in the book:Decolonizing feminist theoryMobility assemblages and geographies of nomadism The art of listening to fragmented narratives and the labour of translationCrossing borders and inhabiting borderlandsRadical solitude and radical hopeFeminist genealogies of labour under conditions of forced displacementThe force of political narratives through the figure of Antigone?Education for hope Imagining the non-nomad 4 narrated stories will also be presented in full interwoven in the theoretical discussions of the book, thus opening up a dialogic space between theoretical reflections and diffractions, and narratives of lived experiences.

Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture explores the recent rise in different types of men using digital media to sexualise their bodies. It argues that the male body has become a key site in contemporary culture where neoliberalism’s hegemony has been both secured and contested since 2008. It does this by looking at four different case studies: the celebrity male nude leak; the rise of young men sharing images of their muscular bodies on social media; RuPaul's Drag Race body transformational tutorial, and the rise of chemsex. It finds that on the one hand digital media has enabled men to transform their bodies into tools of value-creation in economic contexts where the historical means they have relied on to create value have diminished.On the other it has also allowed them to use their bodies to form intimate collective bonds during a moment when competitive individualism continued to be the privileged mode of being in the world. It therefore offers a unique contribution not only to the field of digital cultural studies but also to the growing cultural studies literature attempting to map the historical contradictions of the austerity moment.

Since the early 2000s there has been an increase in artists who are walking as an essential part of their artistic practice. This book identifies the unique attributes of walking to develop a definition for walking as an artistic medium. Drawing on historical sources, such as the walks of the Romantic poets, Dadaists and Letterist/Situationist Internationals, it presents a practice based approach to walking focused on the radical memory of the medium. The book covers three contemporary organisations working to develop the artistic medium of walking—London’s Walking Artists Network, Scotland’s Walking Institute and New York City’s Walk Exchange—and looks at how these different organisation’s strategies contribute to the development of the artistic medium of walking. The book is framed by five walking exercises, and invites the reader to create a memory palace for the medium of walking as a practical exploration of artistic walking practices.

This book provides an insight into the everyday lives and experiences of people who live with dogs as companions; and glimpses aspects of the lives of the dogs who share their homes. It is framed sociologically and as such, considers the various forms of power relations which shape the lives of those kept as pets and their human owners. In recounting stories of companion humans and dogs, the co-constituted quality of life is clear. However, while dogs – as agential beings with needs, desires and a point of view – are able to shape outcomes and change aspects of their lived experience, the world they inhabit is profoundly geared to human inhabitants; and the most privileged ones at that. The book revisits the notion of pet keeping as the interplay between domination and affection arguing that these do not exist as a continuum, but a mesh of complex relations played out in the use of homespace, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the in the public world of park and the street. Those living with dog companions, as well as the dogs themselves, find their lives are muddied, both literally and figuratively; boundaries are tested and recast and the complications of inter-species cohabitation negotiated by all parties. Through an innovative theoretical contribution, Cudworth conceptualizes human relations with companion dogs in terms of complex social relations that involve both systemic forms of domination as well as nonhuman agency in shaping social relations and social forms.

The spatial turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences has produced a considerable body of work which re-assesses space beyond the fixed Cartesian co-ordinates of Modernity and the nation state. In the process, space has been revealed as a productively contested concept with methodological implications across and between disciplines. The resulting understandings of space as fluid, changeable and responsive to the situation of bodies, both human and non-human has prepared the ground for radical concepts and uses of space with implications for how we conceive of contemporary lived reality.Rather than conceiving of bodies as constantly rendered docile within the spaces of the post-industrial nation state, Radical Space reveals how activists and artists have deployed these theoretical tools to examine and contest spatial practice.. Bringing together contributions from academics across the humanities and social sciences together with creative artists this dynamically multidisciplinary collection demonstrates this radicalization of space through explorations of environmental camps, new explorations of psychogeography, creative interventions in city space and mapping the extra-terrestrial onto the mundane spaces of everyday existence.

The spatial turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences has produced a considerable body of work which re-assesses space beyond the fixed Cartesian co-ordinates of Modernity and the nation state. In the process, space has been revealed as a productively contested concept with methodological implications across and between disciplines. The resulting understandings of space as fluid, changeable and responsive to the situation of bodies, both human and non-human has prepared the ground for radical concepts and uses of space with implications for how we conceive of contemporary lived reality.Rather than conceiving of bodies as constantly rendered docile within the spaces of the post-industrial nation state, Radical Space reveals how activists and artists have deployed these theoretical tools to examine and contest spatial practice.. Bringing together contributions from academics across the humanities and social sciences together with creative artists this dynamically multidisciplinary collection demonstrates this radicalization of space through explorations of environmental camps, new explorations of psychogeography, creative interventions in city space and mapping the extra-terrestrial onto the mundane spaces of everyday existence.

Austerity as Public Mood explores how politicians and the media mobilise nostalgic and socially conservative ideas of work and community in order to justify cuts to public services and create divisions between the deserving and undeserving. It examines the powerful appeal of these concepts as part of a wider public mood marked by guilt, nostalgia and resentment – particularly around the inequalities produced by global capitalism and changes to the nature of work. In doing so, the book engages with urgent questions about the contemporary political climate. Focusing on the UK, it challenges accounts of neoliberalism which frame it as primarily an individualising force and localist definitions of community as mitigating its damaging effects. Finally, it explores how resistance to austerity can challenge these tendencies by offering a politics of solidarity and hope, and a forum for experimentation with alternative forms of collectivity.

Austerity as Public Mood explores how politicians and the media mobilise nostalgic and socially conservative ideas of work and community in order to justify cuts to public services and create divisions between the deserving and undeserving. It examines the powerful appeal of these concepts as part of a wider public mood marked by guilt, nostalgia and resentment – particularly around the inequalities produced by global capitalism and changes to the nature of work. In doing so, the book engages with urgent questions about the contemporary political climate. Focusing on the UK, it challenges accounts of neoliberalism which frame it as primarily an individualising force and localist definitions of community as mitigating its damaging effects. Finally, it explores how resistance to austerity can challenge these tendencies by offering a politics of solidarity and hope, and a forum for experimentation with alternative forms of collectivity.

Paris, along with New York, was one of the main centres of the fashion industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But although New York based garment workers were mobilized early in the twentieth century, Paris was the stage of vibrant revolutions and uprisings throughout the nineteenth century. As a consequence, French women workers were radicalized much earlier, creating a unique and unprecedented moment in both labour and feminist history.Seamstresses were central figures in the socio-political and cultural events of nineteenth and early twentieth century France but their stories and political writings have remained marginalized and obscured. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished documents from the industrial revolution, ‘Sewing, Fighting and Writing’ is a foucauldian genealogy of the Parisian seamstress. Looking at the assemblage of radical practices in work, politics and culture, it explores the constitution of the self of the seamstress in the era of early industrialization and revolutionary events and considers her contribution to the socio-political and cultural formations in modernity.

From Tolkien to Star Trek, from Game of Thrones to Battlestar Galactica, and from The Walking Dead to Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist concept albums, transmedia world-building offers us complex and immersive environments beyond capitalism. This book examines the ways in which these popular storyworlds offer tools for anticapitalist theory and practice. Building on Hardt and Negri’s theory of global capitalism, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics shows how transmedia world-building has the potential of offering more than a momentary escape from capitalist realism in the age of media convergence and participatory culture. The book features eight fantastic storyworlds that offer vivid illustrations of global capitalism’s contradictory logic. Approaching transmedia world-building both as a cultural form and as a political economy, it demonstrates the limitations inherent in fandom and fan culture, which is increasingly absorbed as a form of immaterial labor. But at the same time, the book also explores the productive ways in which fantastic storyworlds contain a radical energy that can give us new ways of thinking about politics, popular culture, and anticapitalism.

From Tolkien to Star Trek, from Game of Thrones to Battlestar Galactica, and from The Walking Dead to Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist concept albums, transmedia world-building offers us complex and immersive environments beyond capitalism. This book examines the ways in which these popular storyworlds offer tools for anticapitalist theory and practice. Building on Hardt and Negri’s theory of global capitalism, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics shows how transmedia world-building has the potential of offering more than a momentary escape from capitalist realism in the age of media convergence and participatory culture. The book features eight fantastic storyworlds that offer vivid illustrations of global capitalism’s contradictory logic. Approaching transmedia world-building both as a cultural form and as a political economy, it demonstrates the limitations inherent in fandom and fan culture, which is increasingly absorbed as a form of immaterial labor. But at the same time, the book also explores the productive ways in which fantastic storyworlds contain a radical energy that can give us new ways of thinking about politics, popular culture, and anticapitalism.

Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, Depth brings together many of the most influential voices in the scholarly and critical debate about post-postmodernism and twenty-first century aesthetics, arts and culture. By relating cutting-edge analyses of contemporary literature, the visual arts and film and television to recent social, technological and economic developments, the volume provides both a map and an itinerary of today’s metamodern cultural landscape. As its organising principle, the book takes Fredric Jameson’s canonical arguments about the waning of historicity, affect and depth in the postmodern culture of western capitalist societies in the twentieth century, and re-evaluates and reconceptualises these notions in a twenty-first century context. In doing so, it shows that the contemporary moment should be regarded as a transitional period from the postmodern and into the metamodern cultural moment.

Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, Depth brings together many of the most influential voices in the scholarly and critical debate about post-postmodernism and twenty-first century aesthetics, arts and culture. By relating cutting-edge analyses of contemporary literature, the visual arts and film and television to recent social, technological and economic developments, the volume provides both a map and an itinerary of today’s metamodern cultural landscape. As its organising principle, the book takes Fredric Jameson’s canonical arguments about the waning of historicity, affect and depth in the postmodern culture of western capitalist societies in the twentieth century, and re-evaluates and reconceptualises these notions in a twenty-first century context. In doing so, it shows that the contemporary moment should be regarded as a transitional period from the postmodern and into the metamodern cultural moment.

What is the meaning of the Balkans in the early 21st century? Former Yugoslav countries seek a self-flattering alliance with ‘the West’ via EU membership, while the Union’s citizens increasingly declare to be ‘Eurosceptic’. At the same time, economic turmoil in countries like Greece confronts massive incoming waves of refugees, for whom Europe’s south-eastern borders are the nearest shelter. In this time of crisis, the Balkans return on the agenda as a parable of Europe’s haunting questions about its future.EU, Europe Unfinished brings together established and emerging media and cultural scholars to explore colliding visions of space and identity within a declining continent. Whereas Europe imagines the Balkans to be the source of its nearest trouble, the region envisions Europe as a refuge from ongoing post-socialist transition. The book adopts a variety of critical perspectives – from media and policy analysis to anthropology, art history and autobiography – to investigate where Europe is headed with the Balkans in its skein, 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

What is the meaning of the Balkans in the early 21st century? Former Yugoslav countries seek a self-flattering alliance with ‘the West’ via EU membership, while the Union’s citizens increasingly declare to be ‘Eurosceptic’. At the same time, economic turmoil in countries like Greece confronts massive incoming waves of refugees, for whom Europe’s south-eastern borders are the nearest shelter. In this time of crisis, the Balkans return on the agenda as a parable of Europe’s haunting questions about its future.EU, Europe Unfinished brings together established and emerging media and cultural scholars to explore colliding visions of space and identity within a declining continent. Whereas Europe imagines the Balkans to be the source of its nearest trouble, the region envisions Europe as a refuge from ongoing post-socialist transition. The book adopts a variety of critical perspectives – from media and policy analysis to anthropology, art history and autobiography – to investigate where Europe is headed with the Balkans in its skein, 25 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities is a ground-breaking work that revaluates the cultural and political understandings of the world today from the perspective of the south. Largely located in the Mediterranean, and in understandings of a ‘southern question’ that extends beyond local and national confines, the arguments and perspectives proposed seek to explore the historical formation and political configurations of a multiple modernity. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary lines of thought developed within cultural and postcolonial studies, the work develops a concept of heritage beyond the concerns and obsessions of the Anglo-American world. It offers a counter-hegemony construction of the figure of the migrant and ‘other’ as a disruptive force in the construction of the idea of the West. It proposes a rethinking of the geo-political economies of knowledge and power, lived and viewed from elsewhere. This accessibility written book should be of interest to anyone interested in the construction of modernity and the future of postcolonial studies.

Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities is a ground-breaking work that revaluates the cultural and political understandings of the world today from the perspective of the south. Largely located in the Mediterranean, and in understandings of a ‘southern question’ that extends beyond local and national confines, the arguments and perspectives proposed seek to explore the historical formation and political configurations of a multiple modernity. Drawing upon the interdisciplinary lines of thought developed within cultural and postcolonial studies, the work develops a concept of heritage beyond the concerns and obsessions of the Anglo-American world. It offers a counter-hegemony construction of the figure of the migrant and ‘other’ as a disruptive force in the construction of the idea of the West. It proposes a rethinking of the geo-political economies of knowledge and power, lived and viewed from elsewhere. This accessibility written book should be of interest to anyone interested in the construction of modernity and the future of postcolonial studies.

Affect and Social Media is an edited collection of twenty bite sized articles by leading scholars from across disciplinary boundaries. It is comprised of four distinct but related sections which are interspersed with artistic illustrations, depicting the affectivities that flow through social media. The term ‘affect’ denotes a rather slippery concept that is not as easily caught as for example ‘emotion’ or ‘feeling’. Quite often it denotes a more than or an excess to that which is felt in the human body or indexed through cultural grids of meaning. It can exist in ways which defy expectations, conventions, and representations. It is often understood as that which is vital to the emergence of the new and hence socio-cultural revolution. As life shifts ever more on-line, we find ourselves caught up in the affective flows of computer mediated practices into an ever expanding and indeterminate horizon. This compilation of articles that were initially presented at an international conference in East London, were selected on the basis of their ability to depict and conceptualise these radical movements of sociality.

Affect and Social Media is an edited collection of twenty bite sized articles by leading scholars from across disciplinary boundaries. It is comprised of four distinct but related sections which are interspersed with artistic illustrations, depicting the affectivities that flow through social media. The term ‘affect’ denotes a rather slippery concept that is not as easily caught as for example ‘emotion’ or ‘feeling’. Quite often it denotes a more than or an excess to that which is felt in the human body or indexed through cultural grids of meaning. It can exist in ways which defy expectations, conventions, and representations. It is often understood as that which is vital to the emergence of the new and hence socio-cultural revolution. As life shifts ever more on-line, we find ourselves caught up in the affective flows of computer mediated practices into an ever expanding and indeterminate horizon. This compilation of articles that were initially presented at an international conference in East London, were selected on the basis of their ability to depict and conceptualise these radical movements of sociality.

Work That Body: Male Bodies in Digital Culture explores the recent rise in different types of men using digital media to sexualise their bodies. It argues that the male body has become a key site in contemporary culture where neoliberalism’s hegemony has been both secured and contested since 2008. It does this by looking at four different case studies: the celebrity male nude leak; the rise of young men sharing images of their muscular bodies on social media; RuPaul's Drag Race body transformational tutorial, and the rise of chemsex. It finds that on the one hand digital media has enabled men to transform their bodies into tools of value-creation in economic contexts where the historical means they have relied on to create value have diminished.On the other it has also allowed them to use their bodies to form intimate collective bonds during a moment when competitive individualism continued to be the privileged mode of being in the world. It therefore offers a unique contribution not only to the field of digital cultural studies but also to the growing cultural studies literature attempting to map the historical contradictions of the austerity moment.

Although a large body of work has emerged which addresses neoliberal representations of the family in other cultural forms (such as parenting advice programmes) little has been written specifically on the family and contemporary literature. This book examines the growing body of autobiographical and fictional writing on family and parenting issues in Anglo-American culture from the late 1990s to the present day.The book looks closely at six distinct genres which have arisen during this time frame: the misery memoir, the mum’s lit popular novel, the maternal confessional, ‘dads’ lit, the dysfunctional domestic novel and the family noir. Writing the Modern Family will examine the way these burgeoning areas of British and American writing respond to a neoliberal public discourse in which a ‘parenting deficit’ rather than economic and structural disadvantage, is responsible for increasing inequality in child welfare and achievement. In evaluating these forms and their relationship to neoliberal culture, the book will also consider the complex interrelationship between these genres.

Gender, Sexuality, and Space Culture explores how traditional ideologies of gender and sexuality have influenced the culture of space travel. The time since humans first began exploring outer space has been marked by both great technological development and great social upheaval. Yet while the rapid technological advancement of the mid- to late-twentieth century made human spaceflight a reality, the field has shown some resistance to cultural change over the same period. Ideas about the body in space and the future of humanity are at the core of the development of human spaceflight. This book examines how these have been constructed as specifically a male body and a heterosexual future. These presumptive norms are not unusual, but this book argues that the unique attributes of outer space can be productively used in advancing theories of culture beyond the extra-terrestrial

Gender, Sexuality, and Space Culture explores how traditional ideologies of gender and sexuality have influenced the culture of space travel. The time since humans first began exploring outer space has been marked by both great technological development and great social upheaval. Yet while the rapid technological advancement of the mid- to late-twentieth century made human spaceflight a reality, the field has shown some resistance to cultural change over the same period. Ideas about the body in space and the future of humanity are at the core of the development of human spaceflight. This book examines how these have been constructed as specifically a male body and a heterosexual future. These presumptive norms are not unusual, but this book argues that the unique attributes of outer space can be productively used in advancing theories of culture beyond the extra-terrestrial

Since the early 2000s there has been an increase in artists who are walking as an essential part of their artistic practice. This book identifies the unique attributes of walking to develop a definition for walking as an artistic medium. Drawing on historical sources, such as the walks of the Romantic poets, Dadaists and Letterist/Situationist Internationals, it presents a practice based approach to walking focused on the radical memory of the medium. The book covers three contemporary organisations working to develop the artistic medium of walking—London’s Walking Artists Network, Scotland’s Walking Institute and New York City’s Walk Exchange—and looks at how these different organisation’s strategies contribute to the development of the artistic medium of walking. The book is framed by five walking exercises, and invites the reader to create a memory palace for the medium of walking as a practical exploration of artistic walking practices.