by Ferenc Laczó
Here come five recommendations from RevDem Ideas of books we covered in 2024 and which we think deserve to be widely read and discussed.
Erica Benner, Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power. London: Allen Lane, 2024.
We need a more down-to-earth understanding of democracy, Erica Benner proposes in her inspiring new book. An understanding that recognizes just how crucial acknowledging others’ fear of losing their share of power can be to democracy, an understanding which does not lose sight either of the constant battle within democracy between principles of universal liberty, equality, and power-sharing, on the one hand, and what Benner aptly calls ‘the boys’ club logic,’ on the other. Adventures in Democracy is that rare intervention which enables its readers to reflect more deeply on what our mainstream understanding of democracy lacks – or gets downright wrong.
Judith Butler, Who’s Afraid of Gender. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024.
Famed gender theorist Judith Butler has written a book for a popular audience that explains in clear and convincing language why we should think about the material and the social as intertwined; shows what makes the growing anti-gender ideology movement inadvertently confessional; and illuminates how their author thinks about radical democracy. It is an all too timely political treatise by one of the most original and influential thinkers of our age, which Judith Butler was kind enough to discuss here at the Review of Democracy.
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins (ed.), Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2024.
What are the intellectual stakes of the fascism debate that has been unfolding in the US for nearly a decade and might only become fiercer in the coming years? Why has this debate become so relevant politically and what are its political functions? Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins – who has just edited a valuable collection that helps its readers gain an overview of this multifaceted and often rather acrimonious debate and who takes what might be called the ‘deflationary view’ on the fascism thesis – explains how the fascism debate relates to discourses around democratic decline and to the ongoing history wars, and shows what a more global perspective on US American debates can bring. Listen to our conversation about the volume here.
Catherine Baker, Bogdan Iacob, Anikó Imre, and James Mark (eds.), Off White. Central and Eastern Europe and the Global History of Race. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024.
East European actors play disproportionately large roles in global rightist networks these days whereas critical studies of race and racism within the region have only begun to enter mainstream scholarly and public discussions. This collection on the major implications of East Europeans’ global in-betweenness and the ambiguity of their whiteness tackles urgent questions about the history of nation building, patterns of white supremacy, and contemporary claims to belong to Europe and the West. It is also a self-reflexive attempt to mediate between scholarly traditions and, more broadly, between political cultures that are becoming increasingly interconnected. Listen to our conversation with two of the editors here.
Martin Conway and Camilo Erlichman (eds.), Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
How to approach the question of social justice historically? Martin Conway and Camilo Erlichman’s rich new volume shows how aspirations to create a just society can be placed at the confluence of key developments in the twentieth century. Their volume demonstrates how the study of those aspirations can open a special vantage point to reinterpret the interactions between rulers and the ruled. The volume also raises a disquieting question: is social justice still understood primarily by its absence, or has it lost its status as a crucial, unfulfilled aspiration? Listen to the two editors discuss the volume here.
