Books in the Thought in the Act series

Nathan Snaza proposes a new theory of literature and literacy in which he outlines how literacy operates at the interface of humans, nonhuman animals, and objects and has been used as a means to define the human in ways that marginalize others.

Originally published in French in 1997 and appearing here in English for the first time, David Lapoujade's William James: Empiricism and Pragmatism is both an accessible and rigorous introduction to and a pioneering rereading of James's thought.

Michael J. Shapiro formulates a new politics of aesthetics by analyzing the experience of the sublime as rendered by a number of artistic and cultural texts that deal with race, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and industrialism, showing how the sublime's disruptive effects provides the opportunity for a new oppositional politics.

Drawing on the radical black tradition, process philosophy, and Felix Guattari's schizoanalysis, Erin Manning explores the links between neurotypicality, whiteness, and black life.

Jonathan Beller traces the history of the commodification of information and the financialization of everyday life, showing how contemporary capitalism is based in algorithms and the quantification of value that intensify social inequality.

Toni Pape examines contemporary television that often presents a conflict-laden conclusion first before relaying the events that led up to that inevitable ending, showing how this narrative structure attunes audiences to the fear-based political doctrine of preemption-a logic that justifies preemptive action to nullify a perceived future threat.

Martin Savransky draws on the pragmatic pluralism of William James and the ontological turn in anthropology to propose a "pluralistic realism"-an understanding of ontology in which at any given time the world is both one and many, ongoing and unfinished.

Drawing on close readings of 1960s American art, Jason A. Hoelscher offers an information theory of art and an aesthetic theory of information in which he shows how art operates as information wherein art's meaning cannot be determined.

This collection of twenty-four essential essays written by Brian Massumi over the past thirty years is both a primer for those new to his work and a supplemental resource for those already engaged with his thought.

Writing at a cultural moment in which data has never been more ubiquitous or less convincing, David Cecchetto theorizes sound, communication, and data by analyzing them in the contexts of computation, wearable technologies, and digital artwork.