Front Table 6/30/23

June 30th, 2023

On This Week's Front Table, embark on a journey through the exploration of experience, contemplate the future amidst climate crisis, and immerse yourself in the powerful voices of social movements. Alongside these, discover captivating perspectives on art, memoirs, taxonomy, and anthropology. Browse these captivating stories and more at semcoop.com.
The Varieties of Experience: William James after the Linguistic Turn
(Harvard University Press)
Alexis Dianda

How does one deploy experience without succumbing to a foundationalist epistemology or an account of the subject rooted in immediately given objects of consciousness? In the wake of the linguistic turn of the twentieth century, this is a question anyone thinking philosophically about experience must ask. Alexis Dianda answers through a reading of the pragmatic tradition, culminating in a defense of the role of experience in William James's thought. Dianda argues that by reconstructing James's philosophical project, we can locate a model of experience that not only avoids what Wilfrid Sellars called "the myth of the given" but also enriches pragmatism broadly. The Varieties of Experience provides a novel reconstruction of the relationship between psychology, moral thought, epistemology, and religion in James's work, demonstrating its usefulness in tackling issues such as the relevance of perception to knowledge and the possibility of moral change. Against the tide of neopragmatism, Dianda's intervention rethinks not only the value and role of experience but also the aims and resources of pragmatic philosophy today.


To 2040
(Copper Canyon Press)
Jorie Graham 

Jorie Graham's fifteenth poetry collection, To 2040, opens in question punctuated as fact: "Are we / extinct yet. Who owns / the map." In these visionary new poems, Graham is part historian, part cartographer as she plots an apocalyptic world where rain must be translated, silence sings louder than speech, and wired birds parrot recordings of their extinct ancestors. Graham shows us our potentially inevitable future soundtracked by sirens among industrial ruins, contemplating the loss of those who inhabited and named them. Here, we linger, climate crisis on hold, as Graham asks us to sit silently, to hear soil breathe. An urgent open letter to the future, with a habit of looking back, we leave the collection warned, infinitely wiser, and yet more attentively on edge. "Inhale. / Are you still there / the sun says to me."


Voices of a People's History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance
(Seven Stories Press) 
Anthony Arnove

Inspired by the original Voices of a People's History of the United States, the book features speeches, essays, poems, and calls to action from Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Indigenous struggles, immigrant rights activists, the environmental movement, disability justice organizers, and frontline workers during the global pandemic who spoke out against the life-threatening conditions of their labor. Gathering more than 100 texts from social movements and contributions from Angela Davis, Colin Kaepernick, Tarana Burke and more, Voices of a People's History of the United States in the 21st Century reminds us that history is made not only by the rich and powerful, but by ordinary people taking collective action.


The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti 
(Yale University Press)
Rafael Schacter 

Ten years after its original publication, The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti is recognized as the definitive guide to the most significant artists and styles of street art and graffiti around the world. This revised edition brings the content up to our present moment, expanding its geographic breadth to six continents to profile over 100 of today's most important street artists--Espo in New York, Merlot in Seattle, Os Gêmeos in São Paulo, Michael Pederson in Sydney, Essu in Tokyo, Lady K in Paris, Milu Correch in Buenos Aires, and Nardstar in Cape Town. Featuring more than 700 full-color photographs of raw, energetic, whimsical, and eye-catching art, the book is visually exciting as well as an essential survey of the urban art of our time.


Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir
(Pantheon Books)
Margo Jefferson
In Constructing a Nervous System, Jefferson shatters herself into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before. The result is a wildly innovative work of depth and stirring beauty. It is defined by fractures and dissonance, longing and ecstasy, and persistent searching. Jefferson interrogates her own self as well as the act of writing memoir, and probes the fissures at the center of American cultural life.


The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
(Princeton University Press)
Gunnar Broberg

Carl Linnaeus, known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals. The Man Who Organized Nature describes Linnaeus's childhood in a landscape of striking natural beauty and how this influenced his later work. Linnaeus himself classified thousands of species; the simple and immediately recognizable abbreviation "L" is used to mark classifications originally made by Linnaeus. This biography offers a vivid portrait of Linnaeus's life and work. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished sources--including diaries and personal correspondence--as well as new research, it presents revealing and original accounts of his family life, the political context in which he pursued his work, and his eccentric views on sexuality. Written in an engaging and accessible style, The Man Who Organized Nature provides new and fascinating insights into the life of one of history's most consequential and enigmatic scientists.


Stuck Moving: Or, How I Learned to Love (and Lament) Anthropology 
(University of California Press)
Peter Benson

This one-of-a-kind literary and conceptual experiment does anthropology differently—in all the wrong ways. No field trips. No other cultures. This is a personal journey within anthropology itself, and a kind of love story. A critical, candid, hilarious take on the culture of academia and, ultimately, contemporary society. Blending cultural studies, psychoanalysis, comedy, screenwriting, music lyrics, and poetry, Stuck Moving abandons anthropology’s rigid genre conventions, suffocating solemnity, and enduring colonial model of extractive knowledge production. By satirizing the discipline’s function as a cultural resource for global health and the neoliberal university, this book unsettles anthropology’s hopeful claims about its own role in social change.

 

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