Transitions
On Culture, Crisis, and the Human
Will be published approx. on 1. July 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-1-915743-99-2 (ISBN)
Description
Part dialogue, part diagnosis, Transitions turns to the humanities to understand how we arrived at our present moment and what might carry us forward.
The legacies of Britain's colonial past continue to shape the cultural landscape. The advent of AI has unsettled what it means to be human in the face of ruthless profiteering. In the aftermath of Thatcherism, ordinary people are surrounded by images of vast material wealth while having access to less and less - whether that be housing, public services, or cultural institutions.
In Transitions: On Culture, Crisis, and the Human, writers and friends Jay Bernard and Sita Balani consider these questions, taking the UK as a microcosm of the world. Guided by Stuart Hall's notion of 'conjuncture', they draw on literature, social theory, and lived experience to offer an urgent account of our fractured present. From the personal and local through to the global, their dialogue is inflected by a commitment to the humanities, narrative, and universal horizons, in a political culture determined to devalue them.
The legacies of Britain's colonial past continue to shape the cultural landscape. The advent of AI has unsettled what it means to be human in the face of ruthless profiteering. In the aftermath of Thatcherism, ordinary people are surrounded by images of vast material wealth while having access to less and less - whether that be housing, public services, or cultural institutions.
In Transitions: On Culture, Crisis, and the Human, writers and friends Jay Bernard and Sita Balani consider these questions, taking the UK as a microcosm of the world. Guided by Stuart Hall's notion of 'conjuncture', they draw on literature, social theory, and lived experience to offer an urgent account of our fractured present. From the personal and local through to the global, their dialogue is inflected by a commitment to the humanities, narrative, and universal horizons, in a political culture determined to devalue them.
More details
Persons
Sita Balani is the author of Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race (2023) and co-author of Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State (2021). She is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Queen Mary, University of London. She has published in Art Review, Five Dials, Protean, Public Books, The White Review, and Vice. She is the host of podcast miniseries, 'Structure of Feeling: Writing How We Live Now'.
Jay Bernard (FRSL) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in sound, poetry, and social history. Jay won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2020, and is a DAAD literature fellow and an alumnus of the Institute of Ideas and Imagination, Paris. Their previous books include Surge (2019) and Complicity (2022).
Jay Bernard (FRSL) is an interdisciplinary writer and artist from London whose work is rooted in sound, poetry, and social history. Jay won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2020, and is a DAAD literature fellow and an alumnus of the Institute of Ideas and Imagination, Paris. Their previous books include Surge (2019) and Complicity (2022).