Front Table Newsletter 12/23/24

On this week’s Front Table, reflect on the contradiction between “wokeness” and the benefits derived from inequality and dive into the literary history of trolling. Learn how political instability has fueled global capitalism and walk through meditations of the spiritual life of Thoreau. Explore the shifting borders of Ukraine through poetry, journey to Mycenae and follow a retired professors’ caffeine fueled journey to finish his life’s work. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com. 

We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
(Princeton University Press)
Musa Al-Gharbi

Society has never been more egalitarian--in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite--the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is "wokeness" and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.

Taking Back Control?
(Verso)
Wolfgang Streeck

The 'New World Order' proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combination of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalization gave rise to various kinds of political countermovements that rebelled against and ultimately stopped the upward transfer of state authority in its tracks.

This book analyses the ongoing tug-of-war between the forces of globalism and democracy, of centralization and decentralization, and unification and differentiation of states and state systems, and how they are tied to the advance of global capitalism and the prospects for its social and democratic regulation.

Trolling Before the Internet
(Bloomsbury Academic)
David Rudrum

Trolling is the most controversial genre of writing to have risen to prominence in the 21st century, with far-reaching consequences for its writers and readers alike. But it is too often regarded as a technological problem, confined to the internet. This book takes a very different approach: it regards trolling as a cultural problem with a long and venerable literary history.

Taking in the contrarianism of Lord Byron, the wit of Oscar Wilde, insult trading in Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift's disaster trolling, Martin Luther's dissemination of heresy through a public discussion forum, the grotesquely misogynistic abuse hurled in Archilochus's poetry, the taunting provocations of avant-garde manifestos, and not forgetting public humiliations in Beowulf, David Rudrum demonstrates that trolls' rhetorical shenanigans are neither new nor unvanquishable.

Thoreau's God
(University of Chicago Press)
Richard Higgins

Henry David Thoreau's spiritual life is a riddle. Thoreau's passionate critique of formal religion is matched only by his rapturous descriptions of encounters with the divine in nature. He fled the church only to pursue a deeper communion with a presence he felt at the heart of the universe. He called this illimitable presence many names, but he often called it God.

In Thoreau's God, Richard Higgins invites seekers--religious or otherwise--to walk with the great Transcendentalist through a series of meditations on his spiritual life. Thoreau offers us no creed, but his writings encourage reflection on how to live, what to notice, and what to love. Though his quest was deeply personal, Thoreau devoted his life to communicating his experience of an infinite, wild, life-giving God. By recovering this vital thread in Thoreau's life and work, Thoreau's God opens the door to a new understanding of an original voice in American religion that speaks to spiritual seekers today.

Set Change
(New York Review of Books)
Yuri Andrukhovych

Set Change draws on the poetry Andrukhovych wrote in the eighties and nineties, before he turned his attention to prose. The collection shows him beginning on a quest to represent and do justice to Ukraine's long history of violence. He explores the overlapping and shifting borders of Eastern Europe, while also venturing into realms of fantasy and myth. Again and again, he returns to the idea of the city as a space of carnivalesque disguise and discovery. Drawing on the rich resources of Ukranian literature, from the amplitude of the baroque to the austerely powerful configurations of the lost modernist generation, Andrukhovych's poems are ironic and elegiac, witty and allusive, lyrical, experimental, and political. 

The Voyage Home
(Doubleday Books)
Pat Barker

The Voyage Home follows the young Ritsa and the unpredictable Cassandra on their perilous return journey to Mycenae. Cassandra has acquired the powers of prophecy from the kiss of Apollo, but the very same god has taken away the people's belief in her abilities. Though she warns of the carnage that awaits the Greek warrior king Agamemnon--who numbs himself with alcohol on the storm-plagued trip home--her shipmates disregard her.

While Cassandra's prophecies fall on deaf ears, Ritsa instead remains focused on surviving once they make land. When a mysterious young girl begins to shadow them, and Agamemnon's cruelty takes a new turn, Ritsa must find a safe place for Cassandra, whose mood alternates between cruelty and frenzy. But it's the ongoing ire between Queen Clytemnestra and Agamemnon that could prove fatal for everyone.

Lesser Ruins
(Coffee House Press)
Mark Haber

Bereft after the death of his ailing wife, a retired professor has resumed his life's work--a book that will stand as a towering cathedral to Michel de Montaigne, reframing the inventor of the essay for the modern age. The challenge is the litany of intrusions that bar his way--from memories of his past to the nattering of smartphones to his son's relentless desire to make an electronic dance album.

As he sifts through the contents of his desk, his thoughts pulsing and receding in a haze of caffeine, ghosts and grievances spill out across the page. From the community college where he toiled in vain to an artists' colony in the Berkshires, from the endless pleasures of coffee to the finer points of Holocaust art, the professor's memories churn with sculptors, poets, painters, and inventors, all obsessed with escaping both mediocrity and themselves.