Psychedelic Reason: A Reading List2024 Postdoctoral FellowYayu Zheng

As one of the conveners of the 2025 Asymmetry Distinguished Lecture Series at The Courtauld: Psychedelic Reason, our Postdoctoral Fellow Yayu Zheng has shared a selection of books that resonate with the theme of the series and have informed its conception. All featured books are available in our Library. We welcome you to book a visit and explore our shelves.

‘Taken together, these books invite us to think about how the visceral power of the psyche might help us break from the exhaustion of capitalism and imagine ways of unsettling the norms shaping both personal lives and social structures.’

— Yayu Zheng

Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures, Mark Fisher
Published by Repeater Books, 2021

The late cultural critic and theorist Mark Fisher revitalises the idea of psychedelic reason, envisioning a new kind of logic to free us from the relentless rush of contemporary life. He offers a critical lens through which to consider how intersecting the psychedelic and the rational could help us confront unfreedom, pursue emancipation, and imagine alternatives such as a post-capitalist, post-work world.

A Postcapitalist Politics, J. K. Gibson-Graham
Published by University of Minnesota Press, 2006

J. K. Gibson-Graham brings a sense of hope, discussing alternatives to the global capitalist order that are of practical possibilities and outlining strategies for building diverse, community-based economies.

Valences of the Dialectic, Fredric Jameson
Published by Verso, 2009

Fredric Jameson brings under discussion a ‘spatial’ dialectic meaningful for the time of commodification and globalisation.

A Grammar of the Multitude, Paolo Virno
Published by MIT Press, 2001

Paolo Virno revisits the notion of the multitude, seeing plural experiences as key to analysing current issues.

Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power, Byung-Chul Han
Published by Verso, 2014

Byung-Chul Han offers a more personal connection point: In a society dominated by neoliberalism and tech giants, can psyche give us productive forces? If so, what are they?

The Longest Night: Three Generations of Chinese Trotskyists in Defeat, Jail, Exile, and Diaspora,
Gregor Benton and Yang Yang
Published by Brill, 2024

Gregor Benton and Yang Yang’s new publication provides an empirical perspective, tracing varying experiences of Chinese Trotskyists in exile, informing us historical examples of pursuing alternative visions.