Podcast for Social Research, Episode 93: Political Humiliation, Collective Struggle: A Conversation with Roxanne Euben

Episode 94 of the Podcast for Social Research is a live recording of an event held at BISR Central to mark the publication of political theorist Roxanne Euben’s Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics (Princeton University Press). The text examining visual, verbal, and embodied rhetorics of humiliation across a wide variety of Arabic sources alongside related, especially American examples, showing how humiliation is understood as the “imposition of impotence by those with undeserved power.” Euben joins BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Suzanne Schneider for a wide-ranging conversation about the place of humiliation in contemporary politics. Together, the three ask: What sort of political projects does the experience of humiliation authorize? How does humiliation rhetoric encode and constitute gendered political subjects? And how might such rhetoric galvanize collective political struggle?

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The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini. If you like what you’ve heard, consider supporting the podcast by becoming a BISR member or subscribing to Brooklyn Institute’s Patreon page, where you can enjoy access to all past and future episodes of this podcast, as well as (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Practical Criticism, and other BISR podcast productions.