Polity Press

She holds degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure, the Sorbonne, and a DPhil from Oxford.

She is the author of the forthcoming Artless with Polity Press, and writes for The Critic and the Catholic Herald.

Lola believes we are living in a post-cultural state, and in this conversation, Lola and I think out loud about the boycott crisis, why you can win every election in the West and still lose a civilization if the whole of culture is against you, why the left treats culture as a weapon and the right treats it as a hobby, the collapse of the managerial elite, and whether the recovery of civilization requires the recovery of faith.

This episode is supported by Aquinas Tuition, bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched and not managed.

And, you know, like a press like Alenka's Disavowal and Mladen Dalar's Room.

Oh, Polity.

Polity.

Yeah, Polity.

These little books.

They've asked me to do a book in that series, but I haven't yet kind of alighted upon what topic I want to address in that specific format.

And then to produce, in addition to his philosophical works, various books and other interventions that are designed very deliberately on his part for appreciation by a wider non-specialist audience.

And it's not that I've done this – sought to do this on my own.

James, always great to be here.

This time around we're talking about your latest book, Self-Sabotage: How We Try Not to Flourish, uh, published by Polity, who were kind enough to send me a review copy.

This is a book about Freud's death drive, uh, which you reframe as self-sabotage.

So I always do this, and you, you often don't have an answer, so I'm gonna do it again.

... why, why did you write this? What, what...

Is there a story behind it?

Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess this, this one I wrote because Polity asked me to.

[laughs] Uh-

lot of bookshops that you can access on the internet.

It's also on the Polity website, which we'll post it out to you in Australia.

Thank you so

much, Emily, for coming on the pod and hope to talk to you again sometime soon.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

James' new book by Polity Press, The Ownership Society, How Bourgeois Values Can Save Britain.

Also, Max Jigganathan.

Thank you, Max, for being on the show again.