book review – literature

NATURE: Latour wants to problematize how several features of the Christian tradition have stood in opposition to man's relationship with nature. Religious thinking usually has an indifference towards the natural world. And it is not unusual that the most militant climate skeptics often also have a positive and religious expectation of the end of the world – where the saved will be saved and the sinners lost.

HEALTH: From patient associations and wheelchair train blockades to queer protests and artistic projects, this book shows how people in Britain have resisted the power of diagnosis.

PSYCHOLOGY If we sapiens are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? The problem of the human species is, according to Harari, a network problem. For him, populism ultimately appears much more dangerous than a global liberal elite.

KI: Some books take up familiar themes, but manage to put them into a context that makes the pieces fall more into place. Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus is one such book. For him, human political development rests on our ability to form and maintain networks.

MEDIA: Saad Mohseni's book is an important and well-written account of what an active entrepreneur achieved together with and thanks to a diverse and courageous group of journalists.

POEM: Politically, Olav Nygard seems to have been in line with his friends, the cultural leaders Arne and Hulda Garborg, who complained about materialism and capitalism.

BODY: Paul B. Preciado engages in a critique of the binary in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The two-track, binary gender division is presented as a form of colonization of the bodies, which enables more clarifications about dependence, exploitation and reproductive demands.

PORTRAIT: The entrepreneur Uffe Elbæk had almost lost his courage after a number of years in parliamentary politics. After conversations with various inspirers, he is once again ready to believe that tomorrow can be better for all of us

AFRICA: Mahamat Déby's autobiography is written completely in line with politician autobiographies we are used to from Norway. But the book also says something about how political power struggles are fought in Chad.

PHILOSOPHY:Here follows an assessment of three new books about the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. From a debate in a castle via a critique of modern Western society to a call for more dynamic and 'wild' thinking. Tensions in the past, present and future.

PHILOSOPHY: Giorgio Agamben is over eighty years old, but still very productive. In this newly translated essay, we recognize thoughts from the main work Homo Sacer (1998), but instead of discussing biopower and the naked life, he here deals with the voice. A big plus then is that translator Gisle Selnes has written a complementary foreword that contextualises Agamben's thoughts then and now.

ESSAY: According to Erich Fromm, the new freedom and individual independence must be paid for with insecurity, isolation and alienation. A society in rapid transition can pack in tough demands for adaptation to the market, 'change skills', mobility, the necessity of constantly starting over as having more freedom and choices. MODERN TIMES here puts the newly published classic in context with other books on the subject of freedom.

HISTORY: The researchers have claimed that evolution made men competitive and dominant, but the book Why Men? brings ample evidence showing the ideological, racist and sexist origins of this claim.

PHILOSOPHY: We would like to believe that things are connected, that our theories about the world can be reconciled, that mess and confusion are something we can overcome. In Seeing Double, the philosopher Raymond Geuss argues that it is a philosophical prejudice.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: They did not aim at achieving political power at all, but at reforming society from below. One had to create a new and more ethical society by bringing the individual citizen closer to an Islamic way of thinking – including piety, self-denial and cooperation in social affairs. Hamas is a direct ideological offshoot.

RUSSIA: Jan-E. Askerøi has visited Ukraine and seen what consequences a boycott of Russia has had on Ukrainian industry.