A year or so ago
I devoted an entire
post to the need to ration the production of non-fiction books. When I’m
browsing in a bookshop and come across an interesting title, I ask three
questions –
1. Can the
author clearly demonstrate (eg in
the introduction or opening chapter) that the book is the result of long thought and not just an inclination
to jump on the latest bandwagon?
Put bluntly why, despite these other previous
efforts, does the author still feel
compelled to inflict another book on us??? This is so important that I
would ideally like an entire chapter on this – particularly if it’s on a
subject which attracts a lot of interest.....
And I don't mean a long "bibliography" viz reading list which I see as little more than a sign of "penis envy" My favourite writers have an endnote they call "SOURCES" which identify the books which the author has found particularly useful in her/his writing. We begin to get a sense of the author’s likes and dislikes - and perhaps even of their prose style
3. Is it written in an “inviting” style? Last
year I held
up Yanis Varoufakis’ writing style as an exemplar - for the sheer
originality of his prose – showing a mind at work which is constantly active……rejecting dead phrases, clichés and jargon…
using narrative and stories to carry us along…..thinking constantly about how
to keep the readers’ interest alive…
There’s also a couple of other features I look for –
- a “potted version” of each chapter.
Most think-tank reports have executive summaries. I don’t know why more authors
don’t adopt the same approach for their chapters (eg this book on Defending Democracy).
- para headings, tables….and
graphics. Readers
can absorb only so much continuous text. And if the subject matter is
difficult, it helps if, at least every couple of pages, there is a heading
which gives a sense of the argument…
If the book
survives these tests and is brought home, the post then goes on to give some
hints about what we might call “active reading” – eg identifying some key
questions to use in the book’s interrogation; scribbling comments; and writing
these up to have a record of the book…
The basic
message is reinforced in the conclusion with advice to publishers and authors when
they write their “blurbs” -
- tell us what’s distinctive about your book;
ie why you feel you need to add to what is already a huge literature on the
subject
- “position” your book – ie tell
us what you consider the key texts in the field (and why) and how your book
relates to them. At best you can offer
a typology of the different schools of thought on the issue
- convince us that you have not
only read the “relevant literature” but that
you have done so with a reasonably open mind; At best, offer an annotated list of key reading -
with your preferences. This will give us a sense of your stance and
fairness
A new book has
just come out to which I can’t apply the tests – because it’s not yet in the physical
bookstores – only on Amazon. It’s Capitalism
on Edge - How fighting precarity can achieve radical change without crisis or
utopia (2020) by Albena Azmanova who was a Bulgarian dissident in the
1980s and now teaches at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of
International Studies, where she chairs the postgraduate program in
international political economy.
She obtained
her PhD at the New School
for Social Research in New York and her recent work “aims at bringing the
critique of political economy back into critical
social theory, with publications tracing the metamorphoses of neoliberal
capitalism”. As it happens I posted about a fascinating book about the Frankfurt school
of critical social theory whose German refugees had helped found that famous New
York School in the 1930s.
I can’t hold “Capitalism
on Edge” in my hands and skim – as I would in a bookshop – but I do have cyber
sources which allow me to apply most of the required tests….The sources are -
- 60 or so pages of Amazon excerpts which
include not only the intro and a tantalising few pages from the opening few
chapters and Conclusion - but also the notes and the entire bibliography (16
pages)
- a very thorough
11 page review
Having looked
at all of these quite closely (well, not the last two!!) my initial judgement
is that the book fares reasonably well on the tests…
- it recognises
that a non-academic audience does require a clarity which is not expected by an
academic audience
- reference to
other books is woven into the text itself, not just relegated to the end of the
book
- it makes an
effort (in chapter 2) to explain what’s distinctive about the book
- it could have
made more of an effort with tables, graphics and summaries
- and, every
now and then, the academic jargon shows up. What, for example, are to be make
of “What
places them in an agonistic dialogue of a meaningful disagreement about
injustice?” or “structural
antinomies that translate into historical patterns of social injustice within
the trajectories of relational, systemic and structural domination????”
On
balance, I would be tempted to buy it – but for the price - 25 pounds….Just for the
paperback version!! That’s more than double the normal price.
But what, I can hear some of you say, about the
content…the
drift of the argument???
It’s all very
well for you to sound off about the style, the presentation, whether there is an
annotated bibliography or enough tables and graphics…….even the price. But we want
to know how well argued it is……. whether it gives us an angle we hadn’t thought
of??…..
And to that
question, I’m not so sure….I liked the challenge she raises to the grip ”inequality”
has taken recently on our language - which she argues should be seen not as a
symptom of capitalism’s crisis but rather of its unfailing good health! Why,
she asks, do people seem more distressed by the rich than by the poor? That’s an interesting question…..
One of her basic
theses is that “neoliberalism” has been replaced by what she calls “precarity
capitalism”. I’ve never been happy with the word neoliberalism – but I need
some persuasion that the new millennium saw a fundamental change in what I’ve
called the
Beast that drives the world. At one stage she suggests three reasons for
this - the nature of discontent; the agent of change; the mechanism for change
Her conclusion talks
of “socially irresponsible rule” and “discerns 2 main contradictions generated
by contemporary capitalism’s basic drive for competitive production of profit” –
what she calls “surplus employability” (AI Robots etc) and “acute job
dependency” (the state’s inability to supply jobs) respectively.
At this point my
eyes began to glaze over…….
But I’ve read less
than a quarter of the book. This very thorough
and sympathetic reviewer has read the entire book and given us 11 pages to
think about
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