Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague — Marc Perelman
Perelman’s book takes a subversive look at sport and global sporting events such as the Olympics to reveal their darker side. He argues that sport has become an instrument of political control and a vehicle for capitalist monoculture. This timely polemic offers refreshing reading to those looking for an antidote to this summer’s Olympian frenzy.
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism — Stephen Graham
This authoritative study examines the rapid and dangerous spread and normalization of surveillance and state policing in western cities and warzones alike under the guise of national security. As such it provides an unsettling and provocative insight into the global backdrop of the rising costs and militarization of London’s Olympic Games security operation.
A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys through Urban Britain— Owen Hatherley
Hatherley’s critical tour of Britain’s urban centres incorporates the latest and most high profile attempt at regeneration offering a carefully considered indictment of the architectural and social failures of Stratford’s Olympic sites.
A talk by Nina Power at last year's Liverpool Bienniale, which takes Hervé Juvin's The Coming of the Body as the starting point for a discussion about the changing meaning of the body, and how it relates to work in the 21st century.
Visit the Liverpool Bienniale on Vimeo to see this talk and others including Chantal Mouffe, Simon Critchley and Alfredo Jaar.
Steven Poole finds much of interest in Hervé Juvin's The Coming of the Body:
Secular westerners no longer believe in God, so they believe in their own bodies instead. Such at least is the message of Juvin's stylish and bracing autopsy of postmodern corporalism, from the health'n'fitness and lifestyle-drug industries to the "production" of children, and the general ideal of life as risk-free and ruled by pleasure.