Exciting news: Polaris Koi has just signed a publishing contract with Oxford University Press New York for his first monograph, Against Willpower: Self-Control, Agency, and Society.
The book argues that self-control difficulties are not individual failures. They are a societal problem: culture, policy, and language shape access to the strategies and behaviors that self-control is made of.
Drawing on the social model of dis/ability, Against Willpower develops a new theory of self-control, and applies this theory across a range of topics, including executive dysfunction and neurodiversity, intergenerational poverty, and criminology.
Against Willpower will be part of the Oxford Studies in Disability, Ethics, and Society series, edited by Rosemarie Garland-Thompson and Joel Reynolds.
We will organise a book workshop where experts gather to discuss the manuscript in London in April, 2026* – stay tuned for more news!
*This was originally intended to be organized during Polaris’ Fulbright fellowship at UPenn, but owing to new border regulations at the US, the visit cannot be carried out for the time being.
Polaris Koi 