A major intervention into contemporary discussions about the resources of political hope, this volume insists upon the continuing indispensability and, indeed, radicalness of humanism as both a critical philosophy and a moral-political template. Each of the individual chapters - on socialist humanism, political philosophy, postcolonialism, and queer theory - is noteworthy for the ways in which it conjoins scholarly rigour with passionate political commitment. Humanism is approached here not merely as a field of thought and action with long historico-philosophical roots, and requiring contemporary renewal, but as a social optic foundational to any project that aims at human freedom. -- Neil Lazarus, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick
David Alderson is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Manchester. He has written widely about the relations between gender, sexuality and neoliberalism, and is the author most recently of Sex, Needs, and Queer Culture: From Liberation to the Postgay (Zed Books, 2016). Robert Spencer is Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures and Cultures at the University of Manchester. He writes and teaches in the areas of modernism, cultural theory and postcolonial writing.