WHO’S ALLOWED TO PROTEST? is the essential guide for understanding why some political voices are amplified, others are silenced, and how the fight over “who’s too elite” to dissent will determine our democratic fates.Why do charges of “privilege” haunt every new protest wave? In this electrifying blend of short history and manifesto, Columbia University professor Bruce Robbins picks apart the insult that demonstrators are merely elite status-seeker...

Exploring literary representations of mass violence, Bruce Robbins traces the emergence of a cosmopolitan recognition of atrocity.Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, what we think of now as atrocities have not always invited indignation or been seen to violate moral norms. Venturing from the Bible to Zadie Smith, Robbins explores the literature of suffering, to show how, over time, abhorrence of mass violence takes shape. With it comes the emer...

An accessible introduction to cultural theory and an original polemic about the purpose of criticism.What is criticism for? Over the past few decades, impassioned disagreements over that question in the academy have burst into the news media. These conflicts have renewed the culture wars over the legacy of the 1960s, becoming entangled in national politics and leading to a new set of questions about critics and the power they do or don't wield.Re-e...

Is global culture merely a pale and sinister reflection of capitalist globalization? Bruce Robbins responds to this and other questions in Feeling Global, a crucial document on nationalism, culturalism, and the role of intellectuals in the age of globalization.Building on his previous work, Robbins here takes up the question of the status of international human rights. Robbins' conception of internationalism is driven not only by the imperatives of global human righ...

From iPhones and clothing to jewelry and food, the products those of us in the developed world consume and enjoy exist only through the labor and suffering of countless others. In his new book Bruce Robbins examines the implications of this dynamic for humanitarianism and social justice. He locates the figure of the "beneficiary" in the history of humanitarian thought, which asks the prosperous to help the poor without requiring them to recognize their causal role in the creation of the ab...

For two decades Bruce Robbins has been a theorist of and participant in the movement for a "new cosmopolitanism," an appreciation of the varieties of multiple belonging that emerge as peoples and cultures interact. In Perpetual War he takes stock of this movement, rethinking his own commitment and reflecting on the responsibilities of American intellectuals today. In this era of seemingly endless U.S. warfare, Robbins contends that the declining economic and political hegemony of ...

We think we know what upward mobility stories are about--virtuous striving justly rewarded, or unprincipled social climbing regrettably unpunished. Either way, these stories seem obviously concerned with the self-making of self-reliant individuals rather than with any collective interest. In Upward Mobility and the Common Good, Bruce Robbins completely overturns these assumptions to expose a hidden tradition of erotic social interdependence at the heart of the literary canon....

An indispensable collection that re-examines what it means to belong in the world."Where are you from?" The word cosmopolitan was first used as a way of evading exactly this question, when Diogenes the Cynic declared himself a "kosmo-polites," or citizen of the world. Cosmopolitanism displays two impulses—on the one hand, a detachment from one's place of origin, while on the other, an assertion of membership in some larger, more compelling collective.Cosmopo...

Culture is inextricable from politics. This includes the politics of who we are, as teachers, intellectuals, writers, cultural workers, and students, and what we want to bring to and take from the site of instruction. It also includes the politics of who we want to be, as citizens, professionals, and active contributors to our communities and to the world in general, and what we can be, realistically, in the particular contexts in which we live.Teaching Politically address...

This volume, the first sustained critical work on the French political philosopher Étienne Balibar, collects essays by sixteen prominent philosophers, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, and literary critics who each identify, define, and explore a central concept in Balibar’s thought. The result is a hybrid lexicon-engagement that makes clear the depth and importance of Balibar’s contribution to the most urgent topics in contemporary thought.The book shows the continuin...

Quels rôles exercent les partis politiques aujourd’hui dans l’exercice de la démocratie au Canada ? Comment leurs stratégies et leurs bases électorales ont-elles évolué au fil des décennies ? Et surtout, vers où se dirige notre système partisan à l’ère des bouleversements technologiques et des discours populistes ?Depuis la première édition de Canadian Parties in Transition en 1989, les partis politiques du pays n’ont cessé de se transformer. Cette première traduction fran...

A classic tale of eccentric adventure from the New York Times bestselling author of Still Life with Woodpecker“This is one of those special novels—a piece of working magic, warm, funny, and sane.”—Thomas Pynchon“Even Cowgirls Get the Blues comes as a magical gift, a brilliant affirmation of private visions and private wishes and their power to transform life and death.”—The Nation...