Finalist, 2022 Big Other Book Award for NonfictionNever before has it been more important for Left thinking to champion expansive visions for societal transformation. Yet influential currents of critical theory have lost sight of this political imperative. Provincial notions of places, periods, and subjects obstruct our capacity to invent new alignments and envision a world we wish to see. Political imagination is misread as optimism. Utopianism is conflated with i...

France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of public debate. The French Imperial Nation-State focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics—colonial humanism led by administrative reformers in West Africa and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites.Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character ...

Freedom Time reconsiders decolonization from the perspectives of Aimé Césaire (Martinique) and Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) who, beginning in 1945, promoted self-determination without state sovereignty. As politicians, public intellectuals, and poets they struggled to transform imperial France into a democratic federation, with former colonies as autonomous members of a transcontinental polity. In so doing, they revitalized past but unrealized political projects and anticipated...

Within contemporary theory, the concepts of translation and universality have frequently been associated with different and even opposed philosophical and political projects: watchwords of either domination or liberation, the erasure of difference or the defense of difference. The universalizing drives of capitalism, colonialism, and other systems of oppression have precipitated widespread suspicion of any appeal to universality. This has led some, in turn, to champion the very notion of u...

The achievements of the democratic constitutional order have long been associated with the sovereign nation-state. Civic nationalist assumptions hold that social solidarity and social plurality are compatible, offering a path to guarantees of individual rights, social justice, and tolerance for minority voices. Yet today, challenges to the liberal-democratic sovereign nation-state are proliferating on all levels, from multinational corporations and international institutions to populist na...

The achievements of the democratic constitutional order have long been associated with the sovereign nation-state. Civic nationalist assumptions hold that social solidarity and social plurality are compatible, offering a path to guarantees of individual rights, social justice, and tolerance for minority voices. Yet today, challenges to the liberal-democratic sovereign nation-state are proliferating on all levels, from multinational corporations and international institutions to populist na...

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...

This volume invokes the “postcolonial contemporary” in order to recognize and reflect upon the emphatically postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture, as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the volume seeks to cut across this false alternative, and to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity.Many of the most influential frameworks of postcolonial t...

John Lyman Book PrizeFrom whaling museums to National Geographic television specials to "tiki bars," the high seas have enchanted modern Americans as an adventurous frontier. And as contemporary explorers have discovered a new wilderness in the world's oceans, their depictions of the depths have influenced how we view these largely uncharted realms.America's Ocean Wilderness is a cultural history of America's exploration of the ocean and the first ...

What was it like to be a die-hard Newcastle fan stuck in the void between the club’s Wembley glory days of the 1950s and its dazzling entertainers of the 90s?After humiliating relegation from the old First Division in 1978, it soon became clear to fans there was no plan to bounce straight back. The Magpies were trapped in the wilderness. It would take more than mediocrity, though, to deter the fledgling fans born in the right place at the wrong time.This gr...

Wild Seas, Wilder Cities is a ‘wild-seeded’ collection of short stories, poems, memoirs and environmental articles from 49 unique contributors, all concerned with showing the positive side of our relationship with the earth.Thanks to funding from Portsmouth Creates, this audiobook features 50 different voices from across the Portsmouth community and beyond. Our readers range from teenagers to those in their nineties, including experienced actors, writers and volunteers from the pub...

The nature writing of Gary Ferguson arises out of intimate experience. He trekked 500 miles through Yellowstone to write Walking Down the Wild and spent a season in the field at a wilderness therapy program for Shouting at the Sky. He journeyed 250 miles on foot for Hawks Rest and followed through the seasons the first fourteen wolves released into Yellowstone National Park for The Yellowstone Wolves. But nothing could prepare him for the experience he details in his new book.The C...