Wisecrack X Verso Books Reading List

Book strip #1

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  On Ideology

  by Louis Althusser

  Translated by Ben Brewster

  The publication of For Marx and Reading Capital established Louis Althusser as one of the most influential figures in the Western Marxist tradition. On Ideology charts Althusser’s critique of the t...
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  On Karl Marx

  by Ernst Bloch

  This study of Marx serves not only as an excellent introduction to that most influential of "worldly philosophers" but is also a significant resume of the central issues of Bloch's own profound and...
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  Ethics

  by Alain Badiou

  Translated by Peter Hallward

  Ethical questions dominate current political and academic agendas. While government think-tanks ponder the dilemmas of bio-ethics, medical ethics and professional ethics, respect for human rights...
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  Comments on the Society of the Spectacle

  by Guy Debord

  Translated by Malcolm Imrie

  First published in 1967, Guy Debord’s stinging revolutionary critique ofcontemporary society, The Society of the Spectacle has since acquired acult status. Credited by many as being the inspiration...
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  Between Existentialism and Marxism

  by Jean-Paul Sartre

  Translated by John Matthews

  This book presents a full decade of Sartre’s work, from the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960, the basic philosophical turning-point in his postwar development, to the incep...
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  A Companion To Marx's Capital

  by David Harvey

  In recent years, we have witnessed a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectur...
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  The Sublime Object of Ideology

  by Slavoj Žižek

  Slavoj Žižek, the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books, acclaimed as the “Elvis of cultural theory”, and today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of ph...
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  The Adventure of French Philosophy

  by Alain Badiou

  Edited by Bruno Bosteels

  The Adventure of French Philosophy is essential reading for anyone interested in what Badiou calls the “French moment” in contemporary thought.Badiou explores the exceptionally rich and varied worl...
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  Ideology

  by Terry Eagleton

  Ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact, and so little understood as a concept, as it is today. In this now classic work, originally written for both students and for those alr...
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  Archaeologies of the Future

  by Fredric Jameson

  In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful? Archaeologies of the...
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  Precarious Life

  by Judith Butler

  In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper un...
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  Minima Moralia

  by Theodor Adorno

  Translated by Edmund F.N. Jephcott

  Written between 1944 and 1947, Minima Moralia is a collection of rich, lucid aphorisms and essays about life in modern capitalist society. Adorno casts his penetrating eye across society in mid-cen...
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  Late Fascism

  by Alberto Toscano

  The rich archive of twentieth-century debates on fascism can steer a path through an increasingly authoritarian present. Developing anti-fascist theory is an urgent and vital task. From the ‘Great ...
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  Psychopolitics

  by Byung-Chul Han

  Translated by Erik Butler

  Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower...