Thomas Nail has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Theory of the Image.
The Figure of the Migrant
Summary
This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes - from global tourism to undocumented labor - have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time.
Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.
The book is published by Stanford University Press.
©2015 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (P)2018 Redwood Audiobooks
Marx in Motion
Summary
Karl Marx is the most historically foundational and systematic critic of capitalism to date, and the years since the 2008 financial crisis have witnessed a rebirth of his popular appeal. In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to the father of modern socialism for answers. As this book argues, every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends, one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity, but a creative one. As our historical conditions change, so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing. This book is a return to the writings of Karl Marx, including his underappreciated dissertation, through the lens of the pressing philosophical and political problems of our time: ecological crisis, gender inequality, colonialism, and global mobility. However, the aim of this book is not to make Marxism relevant by "applying" it to contemporary issues. Instead, Marx in Motion, the first new materialist interpretation of Marx's work, treats Capital as if it were already a response to the present.
©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor
Theory of the Border
Summary
Despite - and perhaps because of - increasing global mobility, there are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the 21st century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.
Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology", that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.
The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
"An ambitious, rich and suggestive work that has much to offer political theories of migration." (LSE Review of Books)
"This book is genuinely new and profound...a model of the best that philosophy can do." (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
©2016 Oxford University Press (P)2018 Redwood Audiobooks
Theory of the Image
Summary
We live in an age of the mobile image. The world today is absolutely saturated with images of all kinds circulating around the world at an incredible rate. The movement of the image has never been more extraordinary than it is today. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has enormous consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well. Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new theory and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The original and materialist approach is what defines Theory of the Image and what allows it to offer the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition. In this audiobook, Thomas Nail further develops his larger philosophy of movement into a comprehensive "kinesthetic" of the moving image from prehistory to the present. The audiobook concludes with a vivid analysis of the contemporary digital image and its hybridity, ultimately outlining new territory for research and exploration across aesthetics, art history, cultural theory, and media studies. The book is published by Oxford University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
©2019 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Redwood Audiobooks