Literature offers a powerful lens through which to examine the complexities of human experience. From explorations of identity and trauma to philosophical investigations of our relationship with the natural world, books have the power to challenge our perspectives and deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. This article delves into a diverse selection of literary works that tackle these themes with sensitivity and insight.
Race, Identity, and Politics in the Golden Age of Hollywood
In "Maximus Wyld", creators Loo Hui Phang and Hugues Micol spin a glittering fable, onscreen and behind the scenes, of race, gender, and politics in the United States, through the life story of this fictional and forgotten figure, a mixed-race actor of African, Latino, Asian, and Native American descent. Cary Grant, Paul Robeson, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Lena Horne, Rita Hayworth, Bill Robinson, and more parade through this star-studded procession.
Reconciling Homosexuality and Religion
Each chapter of Fatima Daas’ debut novel, "The Last One: A Novel", begins with “My name is Fatima Daas.” Through an eponymous character, the author recounts the struggles of a young woman’s attempt to reconcile her homosexuality with her religion. The youngest daughter of Algerian-Muslim parents, “Fatima Daas” is seen as “different” and repeatedly encounters forms of bias for her physical features, her family origins, and her sexuality. She rejects the feminine norms expected of her at the expense of her relationship with her parents, refusing to live up to the family’s “baby girl” status.
The Ignored Importance of the Clitoris
In her new book, "Plaisir effacé", distinguished French thinker Catherine Malabou once again engages her characteristic deconstructive approach at the interface of psychoanalysis and philosophy. She focuses on the clitoris as a body part whose importance has been ignored in artistic, cultural, and political depictions of sexuality and pleasure. Malabou aims to disarm this misguided tradition, dispelling once and for all the relics of a theory that represented the clitoris as negative, lacking, and the result of castration.
Trauma and Art in the Aftermath of Terror
Manigne’s second novel, "Quitter Madrid" is a fictional story set among real events and paintings. The novel gives voice to Alice, a French art conservator, as she is caught in the 2004 “11-M” train bombings in Madrid. Alice returns to the Prado to resume her restoration work on Francisco de Zurbarán’s painting Allegory of Charity after the attack. She struggles with the trauma of the bombing and its effect on her relationships with others and art. Her area of expertise, Zurbarán’s saints, and their pictorial representations of pain particularly trouble her.
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Sports and the Struggle for Racial Justice
"Corps politiques. Bodies Politic" investigates the central role that sports have played in the Black community’s struggles for racial justice since the late 19th century. Members of the Black middle and upper classes created ambitious physical education programs in Washington, D.C., then the largest African American city in the United States, after Reconstruction. Strong, beautiful bodies were considered decisive in achieving two prerequisites for social integration: building dignity within the Black community and countering racial prejudice more broadly.
The Diagnosis and Development of Fatigue
"Histoire de la fatigue" chronicles the diagnosis - medical, personal, and professional - of fatigue and its development from the Middle Ages to the present. What is fatigue? Is it a pathology that indicates the limitations of one’s psyche, a human condition to which we all fall prey from time to time? Or is it a fundamental incompatibility with the outside world? How did we value and accept fatigue based on the social rank of the sufferer, and how do we do so today? In what sense has the meaning of fatigue evolved alongside the great industrial and economic leaps of our time? How have we calibrated a balance between normality and abnormality?
Life in the Face of Death
Marie-Claire Bancquart's "Toute minute est première", was published after her death in February 2019, containing her final work as well as twenty unpublished poems from 2018. The text considers life in the face of death: how to progress through the culminating moments of life with an acute understanding that the days are numbered. Bancquart’s poems show an acute awareness of death while also a unique view of the beauty and freedom that life provides. Moreover, her poetic style accentuates the weighty implications of its written product.
The Dark Side of Parisian Suburbs
Composed of thirteen unpublished short stories, "Banlieues Parisiennes Noir" features several places on the outskirts of Paris. From the Fountainebleau forest and Neuilly-sur-Seine to the prison of Fleury-Mérogis, this newest installment of “Asphalte Noir” brings readers to the surrounding regions of Paris that stand out from the famous mystique and allure of the capital city. The work includes Guillaume Balsamo’s “Fin des travaux prévue : février 2027,” which, using humor, adds nuance to its morose subjects of drugs and murder. The dark side of politics is elucidated in “On a des yeux pour croire” by Insa Sané.
The Publication and Circulation of Slave Narratives
Bridging the gap between African American studies and book history, "Textes fugitifs" examines the publication, circulation, and reception of antebellum slave narratives. Aided by newly rediscovered archives in the United States and elsewhere, this book reconstructs the ways in which former slaves such as Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth accessed print materials in a world hostile to the publication and proliferation of abolitionist-let alone Black-authored-literature. Roy’s work presents a wealth of information and evidence that sheds light on the industry of slave narrative publication. He demonstrates that this economy was diverse and consisted of Black printing practices, more than just those of northern white abolitionists, who are typically attributed to have dominated the sector.
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Our Relationship to Nature
"Manières d’être vivant? On the Animal Trail" furthers the development of Morizot’s highly original philosophy. Rejecting an anthropocentric approach to the environment, the author calls on readers to return to the natural world as a means of creating a stronger relationship with non-human animals and their lives, behaviors, and motivations. To recognize and appreciate the knowledge that these creatures offer human beings, he implores us to dismantle what separates us from other species and evokes the false sense of superiority human beings feel in their relationship with animals and the natural world. Indeed, we all share the same home-planet Earth-and although our “ways of being alive” may look different, one is no better than the other.
The Harrowing Journey of Refugees
"THE MEDITERRANEAN WALL" is a starkly realistic and haunting contemporary novel in which three young women refugees from different parts of Africa and the Middle East are thrown together in their attempt to escape the ravages of war, famine and poverty to find a new home in Europe. Despite their disparate backgrounds, ethnicity, class, and religions, they create a bond in order to survive the harrowing trip by boat-a ramshackle fishing trawler-across the Mediterranean to freedom and an uncertain future.
Affluence, Freedom, and Ecological Instability
In this pioneering genealogy of Western philosophical thought, "AFFLUENCE AND FREEDOM" charts the development of the concepts of affluence and liberty, and considers them in conjunction with the past and present-day realities of climate change, biodiversity loss and ecological instability. Abundance and liberty were once the incentives offered by 19th century industrialists disseminating a social imaginary of ‘the good life’, but it is becoming apparent that they can no longer be sought in the same places. Can we reorient the idea of freedom towards a new ethos of sufficiency and global justice?
The Capability of the Written Word
In an imagined response to Hofmannstal’s 1901 “Lord Chandos Letter”, "LA REPONSE A LORD CHANDOS" mirrors the direct and “interminable” style of the original, as well as its language and citations, yet offers an opposing view of life in language. He counters the idea that silence lies outside or before language and rejects Chandos’s renunciation of literature. He makes a plea instead for literature as that which “puts language to silence” to make the cry of the soul heard. This detailed and compelling vision of the capability of the written word condenses Quignard’s poetics and offers a wellspring of themes to which he insistently returns in later works.
Feminism and Prison Abolition
Feminist struggles and struggles for the abolition of the penal system and prison are often presented as antagonistic. The purpose of "POUR ELLES TOUTES: FEMMES CONTRE LA PRISON" is to untie this knot by exploring the forms of protection that women can (or cannot) expect from the penal system and highlighting the ways in which prison affects women’s lives, whether they are incarcerated or have loved ones in prison. Drawing on examples from across Europe and North America, scholar and activist Gwenola Ricordeau presents a well-documented argument that feminism must take up prison abolition, and that anti-incarceration activism will likewise get nowhere without attending to the needs and struggles of women.
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The Environmental History of Los Angeles’ Beaches
Whereas the history of Los Angeles’ urban development usually centers on its infamous landscape of sprawling inland suburbs, "THE SAND RUSH: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES’ BEACHES" boldly shifts the focus to the city’s hidden edges-the Pacific coastline-and proposes a radical re-reading of the city’s growth and relationship to the environment. The Sand Rush not only uncovers how the Los Angeles beaches were constructed, but also how modernizing impulses conspired to exclude certain groups from the city’s largest public space. It also clarifies the role of coastal spaces in postwar metropolitan economies and the rise of a modern environmental consciousness.
The Ordinary Life of Mass Killers
According to writer-psychiatrist-anthropologist Rechtman, it is not ideologies that kill, but people in "LIVING IN DEATH: GENOCIDE AND ITS FUNCTIONARIES". This book descends into the ordinary life of people who execute hundreds every day, the same way others go to the office. Bringing philosophical sophistication to the ordinary, the book constitutes an anthology of mass killers.
The Neoliberal Imperative to Adapt
Stiegler’s book "« IL FAUT S’ADAPTER : SUR UN NOUVEL IMPERATIF POLITIQUE" reorients Foucault’s genealogy of neoliberalism by emphasizing the Darwinian (or Spenserian) rhetoric of adaptation as it arose in the Lippmann-Dewey debates. It forms a critique of the neoliberal imperative to “adapt,” and has served as a key text in resistance to reforms.
A World of Absolute Darkness
Brought together by fate, a trio of characters stumble through a world of absolute darkness, with no way to tell where they’re going, what lies ahead, or how much longer they might endure this fate in "BLACK VILLAGE". Their world seems to exist in the wake of ‘the disaster’, an apocalypse resulting from a war between capitalists and communists. To pass the time and give themselves some sense of continuity, they tell stories.
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A Genealogy of Authoritarian Liberalism
This original account sketches a genealogy of the opposition between market and state operations and institutions against a background of increasing societal unrest in "THE UNGOVERNABLE SOCIETY: A GENEALOGY OF AUTHORITARIAN LIBERALISM". Grégoire Chamayou develops an understanding of “authoritarian liberalism” through discourses and practices of “private governance”.
The Distinction Between Law and Rights
In this bold and original philosophical reflection on the distinction between Law and Rights, "AFTER LAW" interrogates the norm of legality across a wide range of contexts (Ancient Greek, Babylonian, Arab, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, and Hebraic) and offers insightful reflections on the concepts. De Stutter develops an argument which focuses on what happens ‘after the law’ as the hold of Western law on global conceptions of the norm is ebbing. This pleasant read stresses the vital necessity of the Law to protect the (human) “being” in both Western and Eastern cultures and praises it as a remedy against chaos and the dissolution of the being.
Transhuman Experiments in Silicon Valley
This ambitious novel follows Álvaro, a young Mexican teacher and hacker, on the run from an Army massacre of his students in "L’INVENTION DES CORPS". He crosses into the US illegally and falls into the hands of a Silicon Valley billionaire determined to cheat death by performing transhuman experiments.
The Feminine Gaze in Visual Culture
"A Film in Which I Play Everyone" unleashes said dogma to trot it through a “densely forested park” of wonder and woe. The gaze in A Film in Which I Play Everyone is unwaveringly feminine, and the speakers are keenly alert to what about themselves warrants watching. A feminine love of looking becomes a kind of feminist scopophilia, upending conventions of pleasure and desire, while obscuring the line between subject and object.
Exploring the Personal and Economic Realities
"The Gone Thing" by Monica McClure follows the contrapuntal lines that divide our personal and economic realities: labor vs. leisure, production vs. consumption, home and family vs. alienation. Rage, finely processed, mounts against a shallow, pill-induced tranquility. The modern economy is wound up with dehumanization, a lack of intimacy and authenticity.