New Books in Critical Theory

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that
progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including
the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by
declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond
not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges
posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next (Princeton
University Press, 2026), written by Paul Johnson and coauthors, drawing
on the findings of the six-year IFS Deaton Review, connects these
conditions to inequality—inequality not just of income and wealth but of
health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a
detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an
in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed
and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains
the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and
examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It
argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008–2009
has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes
stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and
dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and
educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic
stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing
concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in
social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in
dangerous differences between regions and in political power across
groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers
a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot—and how we
can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Paul Johnson
is provost of the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and former
director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). He is the author of
the Sunday Times bestseller Follow the Money.

Morteza Hajizadeh
is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
18th
and 19th Century British Literature.
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Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of militarized control in Kashmir following the Indian government’s August 5, 2019, decision to de-operationalize Jammu and Kashmir’s nominal autonomy. The core of our reflection centered on how one theorizes through such an intense archive. The book avoids abstract distance, relying instead on a rigorous post-2019 archive built from ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in interdisciplinary feminist studies. It demonstrates that theorizing is not a passive intellectual exercise, instead, it is an active, grounded practice of mapping power where it is felt most directly. Through intersectional analyses of space, home, time, and storytelling, the text reveals how militarized control operates via spatial, embodied, affective, temporal, and discursive capture. Reflecting on this book serves as a vital reminder that critical theorizing must remain tethered to the grounded realities of resistance.
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Repercussions of communism are still felt throughout Central and
Eastern Europe. In fact, specters of communism remain vivid enough to
inspire a wide range of contemporary cultural production, from video
games to museum exhibits. This volume demonstrates how the region
remains in a state of transitioning away from communism, not having
secured a fully post-communist identity.

Replaying Communism: Trauma and Nostalgia in European Cultural Production (Central European University Press, 2025) adopts an
interdisciplinary approach to extend debates on the lasting impact of
the communist era across Central and Eastern Europe with chapters
thematically threaded through concepts including curation, immersion,
interaction, humor and authenticity. A 'trauma/nostalgia paradigm'
emerges as the tissue connecting the plurality of post-communist efforts
employed to address the region's contested pasts. Twelve original
essays by contributors from both 'inside' and 'outside' the region
detail how twenty-first-century cultural productions reengage the
communist past. The impact of this past is seen as fundamental to
understanding and shaping Central and Eastern European identities.
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The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a dangerous right-wing conspiracy theory.

“Cultural Marxism” is one of the far right’s favorite buzzwords. But
despite its currency, the meaning and origins of the term are rarely
investigated. This book uncovers the bizarre story of the cult leaders,
right-wing intellectuals, and White House officials who believe a
coterie of left-wing scholars and students is plotting to undermine
Western civilization. Drawing on years of archival research and using
the tools of critical theory, A.J.A. Woods reveals how a group of German
thinkers known as the Frankfurt School was recast as the sinister
orchestrators of a global conspiracy. Instead of simply debunking this
conspiracy theory, Woods offers a sharp analysis and critique of the
political movements that have declared war on all that passes for
Cultural Marxism in the US, the UK, and Brazil.

Only when we understand the practices and weaknesses of those
reactionaries committed to fighting this illusory threat—a conflict
causing real-world damage—can we effectively resist. This is an
essential book for anyone seeking to understand the ideological currents
shaping politics in the twenty-first century.

A.J.A. Woods is an intellectual historian who lives in Brighton,
England. In 2022, Woods received a PhD from the Centre for the Study of
Theory and Criticism at Western University, Canada. Their writings on
conspiracy theories and reactionary politics have been translated into
four languages and appeared in Open Democracy, Patterns of Prejudice,
and Marx & Philosophy Review of Books.

Morteza Hajizadeh
is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New
Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory;
Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies;
18th
and 19th Century British Literature.
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This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the
dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print
culture, as both a media structure and a psychic one.

The serial
is everywhere. Commonly identified by the segmented release structure of
an ongoing narrative—from installments of Victorian novels to TV
episodes to comic books—seriality names the spread of installment-based
storytelling across a range of media. However, Ryan Engley argues that
seriality is not only a narrative structure but also a psychic
structure. Seriality—in its dependence on gaps, delay, and
constraint—names the fundamental trauma of contemporary life: that there
exists an intrinsic relation between self and other, a relation that is
often difficult to see and difficult to bear.

Through formal
readings of media texts alongside Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis,
the dialectical method of G.W.F. Hegel, and Jean-Paul Sartre's
existentialism, Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life (Bloomsbury, 2026) shifts
the focus of seriality studies. In so doing, Engley presents a rebuttal
to the common refrain that our lives, like contemporary media, have
become endlessly fragmented. Rather, Engley finds, we have become
radically—serially—connected.

Ryan Engley
is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College, USA, where
he teaches and researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and
media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena.

Helena Vissing,
PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California
and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She
can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).
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