Book review: Africa’s last colonial currency: the CFA franc story by Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla

In Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story, Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla explore how the CFA franc, created in 1945, has functioned as a form of French monetary imperialism. Demolishing the shallow rhetoric surrounding the CFA system, the authors are excellent guides to its political, diplomatic and technical history, finds Scott Timcke, offering a book that will be particularly of interest to economic historians, postcolonial theorists and political scientists. Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story. Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla (translated by Thomas Fazi). Pluto Press. 2020

Book review: Radical war: data, attention and control in the twenty-first century by Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins

In Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century, Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins explore how digital technologies, datafication and related media practices have transformed war today. This timely book invites readers to reconsider the changing relationship between media and conflict that has given rise to ‘radical war’, writes Scott Timcke. Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century. Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins. Hurst Publishers. 2022

An Appraisal of Robert Brandom's Making it Explicit

This paper attends to the moral thought of Robert Brandom as it appears in his 1994 magnum opus Making It Explicit. Insofar that it is necessarily to outline Brandom’s thought the presentation will refer to the conception of deontic commitments as providing a basis for inference and entitlements for the purposes of meaning making. Accepting these remarks as sound enough, the paper directs attention at the role of inference in moral-decision making. Finally, it offers an appraisal of Brandom’s moral thought system

Book review: making the Black Jacobins: C.L.R. James and the drama of history by Rachel Douglas

In Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History, Rachel Douglas examines the formation of James’s groundbreaking work on the Haitian Revolution, exploring its genesis, transformations and afterlives through its different texts, stagings and editions. Positioning The Black Jacobins as a ‘palimpsestually multilayered text-network’ formed through processes of rewriting and revision, this book is a welcome addition to scholarship on James and offers a thoughtful approach to the relationship between Marxist theory and historical analysis, writes Scott Timcke

Book review: making the black jacobins: making the Black Jacobins: C.L.R. James and the drama of history by Rachel Douglas

IIn Making The Black Jacobins: C. L. R. James and the Drama of History, Rachel Douglas examines the formation of James’s groundbreaking work on the Haitian Revolution, exploring its genesis, transformations and afterlives through its different texts, stagings and editions. Positioning The Black Jacobins as a ‘palimpsestually multilayered text-network’ formed through processes of rewriting and revision, this book is a welcome addition to scholarship on James and offers a thoughtful approach to the relationship between Marxist theory and historical analysis, writes Scott Timcke

What the Capitol insurrection and #GME tell us about the growth of anti-system politics

The past month has seen an armed insurrection at the US Capitol partly organised via the social app Parler, and an attack on hedge funds by individual traders fuelled by the discussion forum website Reddit. Scott Timcke writes that both these events were expressions of anti-system politics – the rejection of how politics and the economy are run in rich countries like the US

Capital, State, Empire

The United States presents the greatest source of global geo-political violence and instability. Guided by the radical political economy tradition, this book offers an analysis of the USA’s historical impulse to weaponize communication technologies. Scott Timcke explores the foundations of this impulse, then demonstrates how the militarization of digital society creates structural injustices and social inequalities. He analyses how new digital communication technologies support and fund indirect and informal means that ensures American paramountcy, in turn sustaining enduring conditions for worldwide capital accumulation. Identifying selected features of contemporary American society, Capital, State, Empire undertakes a materialist critique of this digital society and assesses the impact of The New American Way of War, understood here as an outcome of a capitalist state’s military budgets priorities under imperial strategy

Book review: The digital economy by Tim Jordan

In The Digital Economy, Tim Jordan offers a new examination of the workings of the digital economy. Showing the value of practice theory and teaching-led research, this book is a welcome addition to the literature that will be useful to scholars undertaking future research into the remaking of property regimes, writes Scott Timcke. The Digital Economy. Tim Jordan. Polity. 2020

Book review: Anti-system politics: the crisis of market liberalism in rich democracies by Jonathan Hopkin

In Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies, Jonathan Hopkin studies the political counter-movements that have arisen on the Left and the Right since the 2008 financial crisis, positioning these as forms of ‘anti-system politics’ that are a response to the failures of neoliberal orthodoxy. Scott Timcke finds this book one of the most compelling reads of 2020, deserving of serious engagement and discussion by anyone interested in politics, philosophy and economics

Book review: Radical war: data, attention and control in the twenty-first century by Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins

In Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century, Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins explore how digital technologies, datafication and related media practices have transformed war today. This timely book invites readers to reconsider the changing relationship between media and conflict that has given rise to ‘radical war’, writes Scott Timcke. Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century. Matthew Ford and Andrew Hoskins. Hurst Publishers. 2022