Podcasts about zone books

Hello Interactors,I was in Santa Barbara recently having dinner on a friend's deck when a rocket's contrail streaked the sky. “Another one from Vandenberg,” he said. “Wait a couple minutes — you'll hear it.” And we did. “They've gotten really annoying,” he added. He's not wrong. In early 2024, SpaceX launched seven times more tonnage into space than the rest of the world combined, much of it from Vandenberg Space Force Base (renamed from Air Force Base in 2021). They've already been approved to fly 12,000 Starlink satellites, with filings for 30,000 more.This isn't just future space junk — it's infrastructure. And it's not just in orbit. What Musk is doing in the sky is tied to what he's building on the ground. Not in Vandenberg, where regulation still exists, but in Starbase, Texas, where the law doesn't resist — it assists. There, Musk is testing how much sovereignty one man can claim under the banner of “innovation” — and how little we'll do to stop him.TOWNS TO THRUST AND THRONEMusk isn't just defying gravity — he's defying law. In South Texas, a place called Starbase has taken shape along the Gulf Coast, hugging the edge of SpaceX's rocket launch site. What looks like a town is really something else: a launchpad not just for spacecraft, but for a new form of privatized sovereignty.VIDEO: Time compresses at the edge of Starbase: a slow-built frontier where launch infrastructure rises faster than oversight. Source: Google EarthThis isn't unprecedented. The United States has a long lineage of company towns — places where corporations controlled land, housing, labor, and local government. Pullman, Illinois is the most famous. But while labor historians and economic geographers have documented their economic and social impact, few have examined them as legal structures of power.That's the gap legal scholar Brian Highsmith identifies in Governing the Company Town. That omission matters — because these places aren't just undemocratic. They often function as quasi-sovereign legal shells, designed to serve capital, not people.Incorporation is the trick. In Texas, any area with at least 201 residents can petition to become a general-law municipality. That's exactly what Musk has done. In a recent vote (212 to 6) residents approved the creation of an official town — Starbase. Most of those residents are SpaceX employees living on company-owned land…with a Tesla in the driveway. The result is a legally recognized town, politically constructed. SpaceX controls the housing, the workforce, and now, the electorate. Even the mayor is a SpaceX affiliate. With zoning powers and taxing authority, Musk now holds tools usually reserved for public governments — and he's using them to build for rockets, not residents…unless they're employees.VIDEO: Starbase expands frame by frame, not just as a company town, but as a legal experiment — where land, labor, and law are reassembled to serve orbit over ordinance. Source: Google EarthQuinn Slobodian, a historian of neoliberalism and global capitalism, shows how powerful companies and individuals increasingly use legal tools to redesign borders and jurisdictions to their advantage. In his book, Cracked Up Capitalism, he shows how jurisdiction becomes the secret weapon of the capitalist state around the world. I wrote about a techno-optimist fantasy state on the island of Roatán, part of the Bay Islands in Honduras a couple years ago. It isn't new. Disney used the same playbook in 1967 with Florida's Reedy Creek District — deeding slivers of land to employees to meet incorporation rules, then governing without real opposition. Highsmith draws a straight line to Musk: both use municipal law not to serve the public, but to avoid it. In Texas, beach access is often blocked near Starbase — even when rockets aren't launching. A proposed bill would make ignoring an evacuation order a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by jail.Even if Starbase never fully resembles a traditional town, that's beside the point. What Musk is really revealing isn't some urban design oasis but how municipal frameworks can still be weaponized for private control. Through zoning laws, incorporation statutes, and infrastructure deals, corporations can shape legal entities that resemble cities but function more like logistical regimes.And yet, this tactic draws little sustained scrutiny. As Highsmith reminds us, legal scholarship has largely ignored how municipal tools are deployed to consolidate corporate power. That silence matters — because what looks like a sleepy launch site in Texas may be something much larger: a new form of rule disguised as infrastructure.ABOVE THE LAW, BELOW THE LANDElon Musk isn't just shaping towns — he's engineering systems. His tunnels, satellites, and rockets stretch across and beyond traditional borders. These aren't just feats of engineering. They're tools of control designed to bypass civic oversight and relocate governance into private hands. He doesn't need to overthrow the state to escape regulation. He simply builds around it…and in the case of Texas, with it.Architect and theorist Keller Easterling, whose work examines how infrastructure quietly shapes political life, argues that these systems are not just supports for power — they are power. Infrastructure itself is a kind of operating system for shaping the city, states, countries…and now space.Starlink, SpaceX's satellite constellation, provides internet access to users around the world. In Ukraine, it became a vital communications network after Russian attacks on local infrastructure. Musk enabled access — then later restricted it. He made decisions with real geopolitical consequences. No president. No Congress. Just a private executive shaping war from orbit.And it's not just Ukraine. Starlink is now active in dozens of countries, often without formal agreements from national regulators. It bypasses local telecom laws, surveillance rules, and data protections. For authoritarian regimes, that makes it dangerous. But for democracies, it raises a deeper question: who governs the sky?Right now, the answer is: no one. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 assumes that nation-states, not corporations, are the primary actors in orbit. But Starlink functions in a legal grey zone, using low Earth orbit as a loophole in international law…aided and abetted by the U.S. defense department.VIDEO: Thousands of Starlink satellites, visualized in low Earth orbit, encircle the planet like a privatized exosphere—reshaping global communication while raising questions of governance, visibility, and control. Source: StarlinkThe result is a telecom empire without borders. Musk commands a growing share of orbital infrastructure but answers to no global regulator. The International Telecommunication Union can coordinate satellite spectrum, but it can't enforce ethical or geopolitical standards. Musk alone decides whether Starlink aids governments, rebels, or armies. As Quinn Slobodian might put it, this is exception-making on a planetary scale.Now let's go underground. The Boring Company digs high-speed tunnels beneath cities like Las Vegas, sidestepping standard planning processes. These projects often exclude transit agencies and ignore public engagement. They're built for select users, not the public at large. Local governments, eager for tech-driven investment, offer permits and partnerships — even if it means circumventing democratic procedures.Taken together — Starlink above, Boring Company below, Tesla charging networks on the ground — Musk's empire moves through multiple layers of infrastructure, each reshaping civic life without formal accountability. His systems carry people, data, and energy — but not through the public channels meant to regulate them. They're not overseen by voters. They're not authorized by democratic mandate. Yet they profoundly shape how people move, communicate, and live.Geographer Deborah Cowen, whose research focuses on the global logistics industry, argues that infrastructure like ports, fiber-optic cables, and pipelines have become tools of geopolitical strategy. Logistics as a form of war by other means. Brian Highsmith argues this is a form of “functional fragmentation” — breaking governance into layers and loopholes that allow corporations to sidestep collective control. These aren't mere workarounds. They signal a deeper shift in how power is organized — not just across space, but through it.This kind of sovereignty is easy to miss because it doesn't always resemble government. But when a private actor controls transit systems, communication networks, and even military connectivity — across borders, beneath cities, and in orbit — we're not just dealing with infrastructure. We're dealing with rule.And, just like with company towns, the legal scholarship is struggling to catch up. These layered, mobile, and non-territorial regimes challenge our categories of law and space alike. What these fantastical projects inspire is often awe. But what they should require is law.AMNESIA AIDS THE AMBITIOUSElon Musk may dazzle with dreams full-blown, but the roots of his power are not his own. The United States has a long tradition of private actors ruling like governments — with public blessing. These aren't outliers. They're part of a national pattern, deeply embedded in our legal geography: public authority outsourced to private ambition.The details vary, but the logic repeats. Whether it's early colonial charters, speculative land empires, company towns, or special districts carved for tech campuses, American history is full of projects where law becomes a scaffold for private sovereignty. Rather than recount every episode, let's just say from John Winthrop to George Washington to Walt Disney to Elon Musk, America has always made room for men who rule through charters, not elections.Yet despite the frequency of these arrangements, the scholarship has been oddly selective.According to Highsmith, legal academia has largely ignored the institutional architecture that makes company towns possible in the first place: incorporation laws, zoning frameworks, municipal codes, and districting rules. These aren't neutral bureaucratic instruments. They're jurisdictional design tools, capable of reshaping sovereignty at the micro-scale. And when used strategically, they can be wielded by corporations to create functional states-within-a-state — governing without elections, taxing without consent, and shaping public life through private vision.From a critical geography perspective, the problem is just as stark. Scholars have long studied the uneven production of space — how capital reshapes landscapes to serve accumulation. But here, space isn't just produced — it's governed. And it's governed through techniques of legal enclosure, where a patch of land becomes a jurisdictional exception, and a logistics hub or tech campus becomes a mini-regime.Starbase, Snailbrook, Reedy Creek, and even Google's Sidewalk Labs are not just spatial projects — they're sovereign experiments in spatial governance, where control is layered through contracts, tax breaks, and municipal proxies.But these arrangements don't arise in a vacuum. Cities often aren't choosing between public and private control — they're choosing between austerity and access to cash. In the United States, local governments are revenue-starved by design. Most lack control over income taxes or resource royalties, and depend heavily on sales taxes, property taxes, and development fees. This creates a perverse incentive: to treat corporations not as entities to regulate, but as lifelines to recruit and appease.Desperate for jobs and investment, cities offer zoning concessions, infrastructure deals, and tax abatements, even when they come with little democratic oversight or long-term guarantees. Corporate actors understand this imbalance — and exploit it. The result is a form of urban hostage-taking, where governance is bartered piecemeal in exchange for the promise of economic survival.A more democratized fiscal structure — one that empowers cities through equitable revenue-sharing, progressive taxation, or greater control over land value capture — might reduce this dependency. It would make it possible for municipalities to plan with their citizens instead of negotiating against them. It would weaken the grip of corporate actors who leverage scarcity into sovereignty. But until then, as long as cities are backed into a fiscal corner, we shouldn't be surprised when they sell off their power — one plot or parking lot at a time.Highsmith argues that these structures demand scrutiny — not just for their economic impact, but for their democratic consequences. These aren't just quirks of local law. They are the fault lines of American federalism — where localism becomes a loophole, and fragmentation becomes a formula for private rule.And yet, these systems persist with minimal legal friction and even less public awareness. Because they don't always look like sovereignty. Sometimes they look like a housing deal. A fast-tracked zoning change. A development district with deferred taxes. A campus with private shuttles and subsidized utilities. They don't announce themselves as secessions — but they function that way.We've been trained to see these projects as innovation, not governance. As entrepreneurship, not policy. But when a company owns the homes, builds the roads, controls the data, and sets the rules, it's not just offering services — it's exercising control. As political theorist Wendy Brown has argued, neoliberalism reshapes civic life around the image of the entrepreneur, replacing democratic participation with market performance.That shift plays out everywhere: universities run like corporations, cities managed like startups. Musk isn't the exception — he's the clearest expression of a culture that mistakes private ambition for public good. Musk once tweeted, “If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks.” In a New York Times article, Jill Lepore quoted Banks as saying his science fiction books were about “'hippy commies with hyper-weapons and a deep distrust of both Marketolatry and Greedism.' He also expressed astonishment that anyone could read his books as promoting free-market libertarianism, asking, ‘Which bit of not having private property and the absence of money in the Culture novels have these people missed?'”The issue isn't just that we've allowed these takeovers — it's that we've ignored the tools enabling them: incorporation, annexation, zoning, and special districts. As Brian Highsmith notes, this quiet shift in power might not have surprised one of our constitution authors, James Madison, but it would have troubled him. In Federalist No. 10, Madison warned not of monarchs, but of factions — small, organized interests capturing government for their own ends. His solution was restraint through scaling oppositional voices. “The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed...and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.”— James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787)Today, the structure meant to restrain factions has become their playbook. These actors don't run for office — they arrive with charters, contracts, and capital. They govern not in the name of the people, but of “efficiency” and “innovation.” And they don't need to control a nation when a zoning board will do.Unchecked, we risk mistaking corporate control for civic order — and repeating a pattern we've barely begun to name.We were told, sold, and promised a universe of shared governance — political, spatial, even orbital. But Madison didn't trust promises. He trusted structure. He feared what happens when small governments fall to powerful interests — when law becomes a lever for private gain. That fear now lives in legal districts, rocket towns, and infrastructure built to rule. Thousands of satellites orbit the Earth, not launched by publics, but by one man with tools once reserved for states. What was once called infrastructure now governs. What was once geography now obeys.Our maps may still show roads and rails and pipes and ports — but not the fictions beneath them, or the factions they support.References:Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism's stealth revolution. Zone Books.Cowen, D. (2014). The deadly life of logistics: Mapping violence in global trade. University of Minnesota Press.Easterling, K. (2014). Extrastatecraft: The power of infrastructure space. Verso Books.Highsmith, B. (2022). Governing the company town: How employers use local government to seize political power. Yale Law Journal.Madison, J. (1787). Federalist No. 10. In A. Hamilton, J. Madison, & J. Jay, The Federalist Papers. Bantam Books (2003 edition).Slobodian, Q. (2023). Crack-Up Capitalism: Market radicals and the dream of a world without democracy. Metropolitan Books. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Hello Interactors,This week, the European Space Agency launched a satellite to "weigh" Earth's 1.5 trillion trees. It will give scientists deeper insight into forests and their role in the climate — far beyond surface readings. Pretty cool. And it's coming from Europe.Meanwhile, I learned that the U.S. Secretary of Defense — under Trump — had a makeup room installed in the Pentagon to look better on TV. Also pretty cool, I guess. And very American.The contrast was hard to miss. Even with better data, the U.S. shows little appetite for using geographic insight to actually address climate change. Information is growing. Willpower, not so much.So it was oddly clarifying to read a passage Christopher Hobson posted on Imperfect Notes from a book titled America by a French author — a travelogue of softs. Last week I offered new lenses through which to see the world, I figured I'd try this French pair on — to see America, and the world it effects, as he did.PAPER, POWER, AND PROJECTIONI still have a folded paper map of Seattle in the door of my car. It's a remnant of a time when physical maps reflected the reality before us. You unfolded a map and it innocently offered the physical world on a page. The rest was left to you — including knowing how to fold it up again.But even then, not all maps were neutral or necessarily innocent. Sure, they crowned capitals and trimmed borders, but they could also leave things out or would make certain claims. From empire to colony, from mission to market, maps often arrived not to reflect place, but to declare control of it. Still, we trusted it…even if was an illusion.I learned how to interrogate maps in my undergraduate history of cartography class — taught by the legendary cartographer Waldo Tobler. But even with that knowledge, when I was then taught how to make maps, that interrogation was more absent. I confidently believed I was mediating truth. The lines and symbols I used pointed to substance; they signaled a thing. I traced rivers from existing base maps with a pen on vellum and trusted they existed in the world as sure as the ink on the page. I cut out shading for a choropleth map and believed it told a stable story about population, vegetation, or economics. That trust was embodied in representation — the idea that a sign meant something enduring. That we could believe what maps told us.This is the world of semiotics — the study of how signs create meaning. American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce offered a sturdy model: a sign (like a map line) refers to an object (the river), and its meaning emerges in interpretation. Meaning, in this view, is relational — but grounded. A stop sign, a national anthem, a border — they meant something because they pointed beyond themselves, to a world we shared.But there are cracks in this seemingly sturdy model.These cracks pose this question: why do we trust signs in the first place? That trust — in maps, in categories, in data — didn't emerge from neutrality. It was built atop agendas.Take the first U.S. census in 1790. It didn't just count — it defined. Categories like “free white persons,” “all other free persons,” and “slaves” weren't neutral. They were political tools, shaping who mattered and by how much. People became variables. Representation became abstraction.Or Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish botanist who built the taxonomies we still use: genus, species, kingdom. His system claimed objectivity but was shaped by distance and empire. Linnaeus never left Sweden. He named what he hadn't seen, classified people he'd never met — sorting humans into racial types based on colonial stereotypes. These weren't observations. They were projections based on stereotypes gathered from travelers, missionaries, and imperial officials.Naming replaced knowing. Life was turned into labels. Biology became filing. And once abstracted, it all became governable, measurable, comparable, and, ultimately, manageable.Maps followed suit.What once lived as a symbolic invitation — a drawing of place — became a system of location. I was studying geography at a time (and place) when Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GIScience was transforming cartography. Maps weren't just about visual representations; they were spatial databases. Rows, columns, attributes, and calculations took the place of lines and shapes on map. Drawing what we saw turned to abstracting what could then be computed so that it could then be visualized, yes, but also managed.Chris Perkins, writing on the philosophy of mapping, argued that digital cartographies didn't just depict the world — they constituted it. The map was no longer a surface to interpret, but a script to execute. As critical geographers Sam Hind and Alex Gekker argue, the modern “mapping impulse” isn't about understanding space — it's about optimizing behavior through it; in a world of GPS and vehicle automation, the map no longer describes the territory, it becomes it. Laura Roberts, writing on film and geography, showed how maps had fused with cinematic logic — where places aren't shown, but performed. Place and navigation became narrative. New York in cinema isn't a place — it's a performance of ambition, alienation, or energy. Geography as mise-en-scène.In other words, the map's loss of innocence wasn't just technical. It was ontological — a shift in the very nature of what maps are and what kind of reality they claim to represent. Geography itself had entered the domain of simulation — not representing space but staging it. You can simulate traveling anywhere in the world, all staged on Google maps. Last summer my son stepped off the train in Edinburgh, Scotland for the first time in his life but knew exactly where he was. He'd learned it driving on simulated streets in a simulated car on XBox. He walked us straight to our lodging.These shifts in reality over centuries weren't necessarily mistakes. They unfolded, emerged, or evolved through the rational tools of modernity — and for a time, they worked. For many, anyway. Especially for those in power, seeking power, or benefitting from it. They enabled trade, governance, development, and especially warfare. But with every shift came this question: at what cost?FROM SIGNS TO SPECTACLEAs early as the early 1900s, Max Weber warned of a world disenchanted by bureaucracy — a society where rationalization would trap the human spirit in what he called an iron cage. By mid-century, thinkers pushed this further.Michel Foucault revealed how systems of knowledge — from medicine to criminal justice — were entangled with systems of power. To classify was to control. To represent was to discipline. Roland Barthes dissected the semiotics of everyday life — showing how ads, recipes, clothing, even professional wrestling were soaked in signs pretending to be natural.Guy Debord, in the 1967 The Society of the Spectacle, argued that late capitalism had fully replaced lived experience with imagery. “The spectacle,” he wrote, “is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”Then came Jean Baudrillard — a French sociologist, media theorist, and provocateur — who pushed the critique of representation to its limit. In the 1980s, where others saw distortion, he saw substitution: signs that no longer referred to anything real. Most vividly, in his surreal, gleaming 1986 travelogue America, he described the U.S. not as a place, but as a performance — a projection without depth, still somehow running.Where Foucault showed that knowledge was power, and Debord showed that images replaced life, Baudrillard argued that signs had broken free altogether. A map might once distort or simplify — but it still referred to something real. By the late 20th century, he argued, signs no longer pointed to anything. They pointed only to each other.You didn't just visit Disneyland. You visited the idea of America — manufactured, rehearsed, rendered. You didn't just use money. You used confidence by handing over a credit card — a symbol of wealth that is lighter and moves faster than any gold.In some ways, he was updating a much older insight by another Frenchman. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s, he wasn't just studying law or government — he was studying performance. He saw how Americans staged democracy, how rituals of voting and speech created the image of a free society even as inequality and exclusion thrived beneath it. Tocqueville wasn't cynical. He simply understood that America believed in its own image — and that belief gave it a kind of sovereign feedback loop.Baudrillard called this condition simulation — when representation becomes self-contained. When the distinction between real and fake no longer matters because everything is performance. Not deception — orchestration.He mapped four stages of this logic:* Faithful representation – A sign reflects a basic reality. A map mirrors the terrain.* Perversion of reality – The sign begins to distort. Think colonial maps as logos or exclusionary zoning.* Pretending to represent – The sign no longer refers to anything but performs as if it does. Disneyland isn't America — it's the fantasy of America. (ironically, a car-free America)* Pure simulation – The sign has no origin or anchor. It floats. Zillow heatmaps, Uber surge zones — maps that don't reflect the world, but determine how you move through it.We don't follow maps as they were once known anymore. We follow interfaces.And not just in apps. Cities themselves are in various stages of simulation. New York still sells itself as a global center. But in a distributed globalized and digitized economy, there is no center — only the perversion of an old reality. Paris subsidizes quaint storefronts not to nourish citizens, but to preserve the perceived image of Paris. Paris pretending to be Paris. Every city has its own marketing campaign. They don't manage infrastructure — they manage perception. The skyline is a product shot. The streetscape is marketing collateral and neighborhoods are optimized for search.Even money plays this game.The U.S. dollar wasn't always king. That title once belonged to the British pound — backed by empire, gold, and industry. After World War II, the dollar took over, pegged to gold under the Bretton Woods convention — a symbol of American postwar power stability…and perversion. It was forged in an opulent, exclusive, hotel in the mountains of New Hampshire. But designed in the style of Spanish Renaissance Revival, it was pretending to be in Spain. Then in 1971, Nixon snapped the dollar's gold tether. The ‘Nixon Shock' allowed the dollar to float — its value now based not on metal, but on trust. It became less a store of value than a vessel of belief. A belief that is being challenged today in ways that recall the instability and fragmentation of the pre-WWII era.And this dollar lives in servers, not Industrial Age iron vaults. It circulates as code, not coin. It underwrites markets, wars, and global finance through momentum alone. And when the pandemic hit, there was no digging into reserves.The Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet with keystrokes — injecting trillions into the economy through bond purchases, emergency loans, and direct payments. But at the same time, Trump 1.0 showed printing presses rolling, stacks of fresh bills bundled and boxed — a spectacle of liquidity. It was monetary policy as theater. A simulation of control, staged in spreadsheets by the Fed and photo ops by the Executive Branch. Not to reflect value, but to project it. To keep liquidity flowing and to keep the belief intact.This is what Baudrillard meant by simulation. The sign doesn't lie — nor does it tell the truth. It just works — as long as we accept it.MOOD OVER MEANINGReality is getting harder to discern. We believe it to be solid — that it imposes friction. A law has consequences. A price reflects value. A city has limits. These things made sense because they resist us. Because they are real.But maybe that was just the story we told. Maybe it was always more mirage than mirror.Now, the signs don't just point to reality — they also replace it. We live in a world where the image outpaces the institution. Where the copy is smoother than the original. Where AI does the typing. Where meaning doesn't emerge — it arrives prepackaged and pre-viral. It's a kind of seductive deception. It's hyperreality where performance supersedes substance. Presence and posture become authority structured in style.Politics is not immune to this — it's become the main attraction.Trump's first 100 days didn't aim to stabilize or legislate but to signal. Deportation as UFC cage match — staged, brutal, and televised. Tariff wars as a way of branding power — chaos with a catchphrase. Climate retreat cast as perverse theater. Gender redefined and confined by executive memo. Birthright citizenship challenged while sedition pardoned. Even the Gulf of Mexico got renamed. These aren't policies, they're productions.Power isn't passing through law. It's passing through the affect of spectacle and a feed refresh.Baudrillard once wrote that America doesn't govern — it narrates. Trump doesn't manage policy, he manages mood. Like an actor. When America's Secretary of Defense, a former TV personality, has a makeup studio installed inside the Pentagon it's not satire. It's just the simulation, doing what it does best: shining under the lights.But this logic runs deeper than any single figure.Culture no longer unfolds. It reloads. We don't listen to the full album — we lift 10 seconds for TikTok. Music is made for algorithms. Fashion is filtered before it's worn. Selfhood is a brand channel. Identity is something to monetize, signal, or defend — often all at once.The economy floats too. Meme stocks. NFTs. Speculative tokens. These aren't based in value — they're based in velocity. Attention becomes the currency.What matters isn't what's true, but what trends. In hyperreality, reference gives way to rhythm. The point isn't to be accurate. The point is to circulate. We're not being lied to.We're being engaged. And this isn't a bug, it's a feature.Which through a Baudrillard lens is why America — the simulation — persists.He saw it early. Describing strip malls, highways, slogans, themed diners he saw an America that wasn't deep. That was its genius he saw. It was light, fast paced, and projected. Like the movies it so famously exports. It didn't need justification — it just needed repetition.And it's still repeating.Las Vegas is the cathedral of the logic of simulation — a city that no longer bothers pretending. But it's not alone. Every city performs, every nation tries to brand itself. Every policy rollout is scored like a product launch. Reality isn't navigated — it's streamed.And yet since his writing, the mood has shifted. The performance continues, but the music underneath it has changed. The techno-optimism of Baudrillard's ‘80s an ‘90s have curdled. What once felt expansive now feels recursive and worn. It's like a show running long after the audience has gone home. The rager has ended, but Spotify is still loudly streaming through the speakers.“The Kids' Guide to the Internet” (1997), produced by Diamond Entertainment and starring the unnervingly wholesome Jamison family. It captures a moment of pure techno-optimism — when the Internet was new, clean, and family-approved. It's not just a tutorial; it's a time capsule of belief, staged before the dream turned into something else. Before the feed began to feed on us.Trumpism thrives on this terrain. And yet the world is changing around it. Climate shocks, mass displacement, spiraling inequality — the polycrisis has a body count. Countries once anchored to American leadership are squinting hard now, trying to see if there's anything left behind the screen. Adjusting the antenna in hopes of getting a clearer signal. From Latin America to Southeast Asia to Europe, the question grows louder: Can you trust a power that no longer refers to anything outside itself?Maybe Baudrillard and Tocqueville are right — America doesn't point to a deeper truth. It points to itself. Again and again and again. It is the loop. And even now, knowing this, we can't quite stop watching. There's a reason we keep refreshing. Keep scrolling. Keep reacting. The performance persists — not necessarily because we believe in it, but because it's the only script still running.And whether we're horrified or entertained, complicit or exhausted, engaged or ghosted, hired or fired, immigrated or deported, one thing remains strangely true: we keep feeding it. That's the strange power of simulation in an attention economy. It doesn't need conviction. It doesn't need conscience. It just needs attention — enough to keep the momentum alive. The simulation doesn't care if the real breaks down. It just keeps rendering — soft, seamless, and impossible to look away from. Like a dream you didn't choose but can't wake up from.REFERENCESBarthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (A. Lavers, Trans.). Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1957)Baudrillard, J. (1986). America (C. Turner, Trans.). Verso.Debord, G. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Zone Books. (Original work published 1967)Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (A. Sheridan, Trans.). Vintage Books.Hind, S., & Gekker, A. (2019). On autopilot: Towards a flat ontology of vehicular navigation. In C. Lukinbeal et al. (Eds.), Media's Mapping Impulse. Franz Steiner Verlag.Linnaeus, C. (1735). Systema Naturae (1st ed.). Lugduni Batavorum.Perkins, C. (2009). Philosophy and mapping. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier.Raaphorst, K., Duchhart, I., & van der Knaap, W. (2017). The semiotics of landscape design communication. Landscape Research.Roberts, L. (2008). Cinematic cartography: Movies, maps and the consumption of place. In R. Koeck & L. Roberts (Eds.), Cities in Film: Architecture, Urban Space and the Moving Image. University of Liverpool.Tocqueville, A. de. (2003). Democracy in America (G. Lawrence, Trans., H. Mansfield & D. Winthrop, Eds.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1835)Weber, M. (1958). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Charles Scribner's Sons. (Original work published 1905) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Author Quinn Slobodian returns to “This Is Hell!” to talk about his new book, “Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right”, published by Zone Books. Check out Quinn's book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9781890951917?srsltid=AfmBOopa361sL5mow9Y4zSXDsHQXyvTQBZ0YZASHJvW-UyhbliOMShxt Keep TiH! free and completely listener supported by subscribing to our weekly bonus Patreon podcast or visiting thisishell.com/pages/support

In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contemporary art: if art is what artists and museums and collectors call art, poetry is what poets and professors and publishers say is poetry. Ruby argues that this indefinable thing humans have been doing well nigh forever is better understood as a medium than a form. Poetry is a way of storing and transmitting information, a mechanism of entertainment and authority, and a speech act that attends to changes of state. In the episode, Ryan references Eric Havelock, author of The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986), who described the Homeric poems as the encyclopedia of Bronze age Greece. He also cites Marcel Detienne's book The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd, Zone Books, 1996) who describes poetry as a form of “magico-religious speech.” Ryan Ruby is a writer, most recently of the book length poem Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024). It got reviewed in The New York Times. He has also written a novel, titled The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017), and book reviews and essays for all the fancy places: The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review, etc. He is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called Ringbahn for Farrar Straus, and Giroux. The image for this episode is a still from an animation of a supercomputer simulation of a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole, created at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image courtesy of the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account. This image is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contemporary art: if art is what artists and museums and collectors call art, poetry is what poets and professors and publishers say is poetry. Ruby argues that this indefinable thing humans have been doing well nigh forever is better understood as a medium than a form. Poetry is a way of storing and transmitting information, a mechanism of entertainment and authority, and a speech act that attends to changes of state. In the episode, Ryan references Eric Havelock, author of The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986), who described the Homeric poems as the encyclopedia of Bronze age Greece. He also cites Marcel Detienne's book The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd, Zone Books, 1996) who describes poetry as a form of “magico-religious speech.” Ryan Ruby is a writer, most recently of the book length poem Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024). It got reviewed in The New York Times. He has also written a novel, titled The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017), and book reviews and essays for all the fancy places: The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review, etc. He is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called Ringbahn for Farrar Straus, and Giroux. The image for this episode is a still from an animation of a supercomputer simulation of a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole, created at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image courtesy of the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account. This image is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contemporary art: if art is what artists and museums and collectors call art, poetry is what poets and professors and publishers say is poetry. Ruby argues that this indefinable thing humans have been doing well nigh forever is better understood as a medium than a form. Poetry is a way of storing and transmitting information, a mechanism of entertainment and authority, and a speech act that attends to changes of state. In the episode, Ryan references Eric Havelock, author of The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986), who described the Homeric poems as the encyclopedia of Bronze age Greece. He also cites Marcel Detienne's book The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd, Zone Books, 1996) who describes poetry as a form of “magico-religious speech.” Ryan Ruby is a writer, most recently of the book length poem Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024). It got reviewed in The New York Times. He has also written a novel, titled The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017), and book reviews and essays for all the fancy places: The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review, etc. He is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called Ringbahn for Farrar Straus, and Giroux. The image for this episode is a still from an animation of a supercomputer simulation of a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole, created at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image courtesy of the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account. This image is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. In Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books, 2024) Dr. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Dr. Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/finance

John & Heidi share funny stories of people doing weird things... plus John chats with a guest. We visit with Anne Serling and Marc Scott Zicree - Twilight Zone Books Learn more about our radio program, podcast & blog at www.JohnAndHeidiShow.com

Ever picked up a book from a genre you typically avoid, only to be surprised by how much you enjoyed it? In this episode, we're talking about the unexpected gems that broke through our genre barriers. From heart-pounding thrillers that hooked a romance lover to whimsical fantasies that captivated a nonfiction aficionado, we'll explore the reads that shattered our preconceived notions. Tune in for our hot takes, surprising favorites, and why we think stepping out of your reading comfort zone can be worth the risk! Follow us on Instagram @webookedit

durée : 00:38:24 - France Culture va plus loin (l'Invité(e) des Matins) - par : Guillaume Erner, Isabelle de Gaulmyn - 13 millions de français, des salariés, des cadres, des ouvriers, mais aussi des retraités ont voté pour le parti de Marine le Pen aux dernières législatives. Qu'est-ce qui motive ce vote ? Quelles attentes le RN parvient-il à combler et comment ? - réalisation : Félicie Faugère - invités : Michel Feher Philosophe, co-fondateur de la maison d'édition new-yorkaise "Zone Books".; Luc Rouban Directeur de recherche au CNRS / CEVIPOF (Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po), auteur de "La vraie victoire du RN" aux Presses de Sciences Po (2022).

durée : 00:53:16 - Le Grand Face-à-face - par : Thomas Snégaroff - L'invité du « Grand Face-à-Face » sera Michel Feher, philosophe, éditeur et auteur de “Producteurs et parasites. L'imaginaire si désirable du Rassemblement national” (La Découverte). - invités : Michel FEHER - Michel Feher : Philosophe, co-fondateur de la maison d'édition new-yorkaise "Zone Books". - réalisé par : Marie MéRIER

durée : 00:53:16 - Le Grand Face-à-face - par : Thomas Snégaroff - L'invité du « Grand Face-à-Face » sera Michel Feher, philosophe, éditeur et auteur de “Producteurs et parasites. L'imaginaire si désirable du Rassemblement national” (La Découverte). - invités : Michel FEHER - Michel Feher : Philosophe, co-fondateur de la maison d'édition new-yorkaise "Zone Books". - réalisé par : Marie MéRIER

Over the past fifteen years in Mexico, more than 450,000 people have been murdered and 110,000 more have been disappeared. In Sovereignty and Extortion: A New State Form in Mexico (Duke UP, 2024), Claudio Lomnitz examines the Mexican state in relation to this extreme violence, uncovering a reality that challenges the familiar narratives of “a war on drugs” or a “failed state.” Tracing how neoliberal reforms, free trade agreements, and a burgeoning drug economy have shaped Mexico's sociopolitical landscape, Lomnitz shows that the current crisis does not represent a tear in the social fabric. Rather, it reveals a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and the economy in which traditional systems of policing, governance, and the rule of law have eroded. Lomnitz finds that power is now concentrated in the presidency and enforced through militarization, which has left the state estranged from itself and incapable of administering justice or regaining control over violence. Through this critical examination, Lomnitz offers a new theory of the state, its forms of sovereignty, and its shifting relation to capital and militarization. In this episode, host Richard Grijalva and Claudio Lomnitz discuss the long gestation of what became Sovereignty and Extortion, the challenges of writing for a broader public discussion, the affordances and responsibilities of a writer in a public-facing institution like El Colegio Nacional, the central ideas and arguments animating Sovereignty and Extortion, and the prospects facing president-elect Claudia Shienbaum Pardo's tenure in confronting the issues Lomnitz raised in these lectures. They also discuss the kind of traction that this work has produced in Mexico and the possibilities for collective, collaborative work that the topic warrants.   Claudio W. Lomnitz is Campbell Family Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is the author of several books in English and Spanish, including Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in Mexican National Space (Univ. of California Press, 1992), Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2001), Death and the Idea of Mexico (Zone Books, 2014), and Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation (Other Press, 2021). In 2021, he was named a member of El Colegio Nacional in Mexico City. Sovereignty and Extortion gathers the cycle of inaugural lectures he delivered at the Colegio, which was published in Spanish in 2022 by Ediciones Era as El tejido social rasgado. Richard A. Grijalva is a scholar of Mexican and Mexican American Studies based in Austin, TX. From 2022-2024 he was an ACLS Emerging Voices Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Vi må onanere mer! Dr. Brochmann er klar i sin oppfordring, og vil no-fapperne til livs.Dagens gjest er zoolog Petter Bøckman og klinisk sexolog Nanna Klingenberg.Kilder:● Thomas Laqueur. Solitary Sex – The Cultural History of Masturbation. Zone Books, 2004.● Eric Berkowitz. Sex and Punishment: 4000 Years of Judging Desire. The Westbourne Press, 2012.● Rachel Maines. The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.● Træen et al. “Sexual Activity and Sexual Satisfaction Among Older Adults in Four European Countries.” Arch Sex Behav, 2019.● Dæhlen, Marte. «Forskere sporer onani 40 millioner år tilbake.» Forskning.no.● Madenholm, Terry. “The Rules of Masturbation in Ancient Greece». Haaretz, 2023.● Sheehan. “Victorian clitoridectomy: Isaac Baker Brown and his harmless operative procedure.” Med Anthropol Newsl, 1981.● Fleming. “Clitoridectomy - the disastrous downfall of Isaac Baker Brown,” J Obstet Gynaecol Br Emp, 1960.● Rider et al. “Ejaculation frequency and risk of prostate cancer.” Eur Urol., 2016.

Su aceptación para la Historia del Arte es complicada: la arquitectura de museos y salas no está concebida para la experiencia de escucha. Comprende instalación sonora, escultura interactiva, poesía experimental, fonografía, y sobre todo, la prevalencia de la escucha y el sonido sobre el hecho artístico._____Has escuchadoDedicatorias. Infinito Infinity (19/5/2013-10/11/2014) / José Iges. María de Alvear World Edition (2016)El ojo del silencio / José Antonio Sarmiento. [Grabación de la acción e instalación sonora para 100 radio transistores]. Centro de Creación Experimental (2000)Guitar Drag / Christian Marclay. [Banda sonora del vídeo Guitar Drag, 2000. Grabado en San Antonio, Texas, el 18 de noviembre de 1999]. Neon (2006)Irregularity / Homogeneity: Emerging from the Perturbation / Minoru Sato. [Instalación sonora]. Senufo Editions (2012)Magnetic Flights (2007) / Christina Kubisch. [Instalación sonora]. Important Records (2021)Motores / Isidoro Valcárcel Medina. [Obra sonora]. Ediciones sonoras experimentales; Radio Fontana Mix (1973)Small Music. Musik für einen fast leeren Raum / Music for an almost Empty Space (Edition VIII) / Rolf Julius. [Instalación sonora]. Autoedición (1998)_____Selección bibliográficaADEN, Maike (ed.), Disonata: arte en sonido hasta 1980. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2020ÁLVAREZ-FERNÁNDEZ, Miguel, “Panorama del arte sonoro y la música experimental en la península ibérica”. En: Experimentaclub Limbo: proyecto iberoamericano de intercambio artístico y cooperación cultural. Editado por Jorge Haro y Javier Piñango. Experimentaclub LIMbO (2010), pp. 54-64—, “Sonido, musicología, archivo: tres genealogías (hacia un catálogo de arte sonoro)”. Boletín DM, año 16 (2012), pp. 62-69*ARIZA, Javier, Las imágenes del sonido: una lectura plurisensorial en el arte del siglo XX. Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2003*ASHER, Michael, Writings 1973-1983 on Works 1969-1979. Editado por Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design; The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1983*BARBER, Llorenç y Monserrat Palacios, La mosca tras la oreja. De la música experimental al arte sonoro en España. Fundación Autor, 2009*COSTA, José Manuel (ed.), ARTe SONoro. La Casa Encendida, 2010*CUYÁS, José Díaz, Carmen Pardo y Esteban Pujals (eds.), Encuentros de Pamplona 1972: fin de fiesta del arte experimental. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2009*DE LA MOTTE-HABER, Helga, Matthias Osterwold y Georg Weckwerth (eds.), Sonambiente Berlin 2006. Kehrer Verlag, 2006DEWEY, Fred et al. Brandon Labelle: Overheard and Interrupted. Les Presses du Réel, 2016*ESPEJO, José Luis (ed.), Escucha, por favor: 13 textos sobre sonido para el arte reciente. Exit Publicaciones, 2019*ESPEJO, José Luis y Óscar Martín (eds.), Ursonate: revista de arte sonoro y culturas aurales (2011-)*ETIENNE, Yvan, Bertrand Gauguet y Matthieu Saladin (eds.), “De l'espace sonore = From Sound Space”. TACET: Sound in the Arts, n.º 3 (2014)FONTÁN DEL JUNCO, Manuel, José Iges y José Luis Maire (eds.), Escuchar con los ojos. Arte sonoro en España, 1961-2016. Fundación Juan March, 2016*GARCÍA FERNÁNDEZ, Isaac Diego, Conversaciones en Nueva York: sobre arte sonoro, música experimental e identidad latina. EdictOràlia, 2020*GRANT, Jane, John Matthias y David Prior (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art. Oxford University Press, 2021*HEGARTY, Paul, Noise/Music: A History. Continuum, 2007*—, Rumour and Radiation: Sound in Video Art. Bloomsbury, 2015*IGES, José et al., MASE. Historia y presencia del Arte Sonoro en España. Bandaàparte Editores, 2015*—, “Dimensión sonora de la escritura”. Arte y Parte, n.º 117 (2015), pp. 8-27*—, Conferencias sobre arte sonoro. Árdora Ediciones, 2017*JIMÉNEZ CARMONA, Susana y Carmen Pardo, “Aperturas y derivas del arte sonoro”. Laocoonte: revista de estética y teoría de las artes, n.º 8 (2021), pp. 49-56JOSEPH, Branden W., Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts After John Cage. Zone Books, 2008*JOY, Jérôme y Peter Sinclair, Locus Sonus: 10 ans d'expérimentations en art sonore. Le Mot et le Reste, 2015*KAHN, Douglas, Noise Water Meat. A History of Sound in the Arts. The MIT Press, 1999*KELLY, Caleb (ed.), Sound. Documents of Contemporary Art. The MIT Press, 2011*KIM-COHEN, Seth, In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. Continuum, 2009*KOTZ, Liz, Words to Be Looked At. Language in 1960s Art. The MIT Press, 2007*LABELLE, Brandon, Background Noise. Perspectives on Sound Art. Bloomsbury, 2006*—, “Short Circuit: Sound Art and The Museum”. Journal BOL, n.º 6 (2007), pp. 155-175—, Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life. Continuum, 2010*LABELLE, Brandon y Christof Migone (eds.), Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language. Errant Bodies Press, 2001*LICHT, Alan, Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories. Rizzoli International Publications, 2007*MADERUELO, Javier, “The Book of i's, de José Luis Castillejo”. Arte y Parte, n.º 108 (2013), pp. 98-115*MAIRE, José Luis, “Documentar el sonido: consideraciones sobre la documentación musical, la música experimental y el arte sonoro”. Boletín DM, año 16 (2012), pp. 73-84*—, “Espacio resonante e instalación sonora: Robert Morris, Michael Asher, Bill Viola, Terry Fox”. Arte y Parte, n.º 117 (2015), pp. 64-85*MOLINA ALARCÓN, Miguel, “El arte sonoro”. Itamar: revista de investigación musical: territorios para el arte, n.º 1 (2008), pp. 213-234*MUNÁRRIZ, Jaime (ed.), Encuentros sonoros: música experimental y arte sonoro. Facultad de Bellas Artes, UCM, 2021*NEUHAUS, Max, Max Neuhaus. Sound Works. Cantz Verlag, 1994*PARDO, Carmen, “Avatares de la ciudad musical”. Quodlibet: Revista de Especialización Musical, n.º 68 (2018), pp. 64-78*ROCHA ITURBIDE, Manuel, “La curaduría, el arte sonoro y la intermedia en México”. Itamar: revista de investigación musical: territorios del arte, n.º 5 (2019), pp. 162-186*SALADIN, Matthieu (ed.), “Sounds of Utopia = Sonorités de l'utopie”. TACET: Sound in the arts, n.º 4 (2015)*SARMIENTO, José Antonio, La música del vinilo. Centro de Creación Experimental de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2010*SEIFFARTH, Carsten, Carsten Stabenow y Golo Föllmer (eds.). Sound Exchange: Experimentelle Musikkulturen in Mittelosteuropa = Experimental Music Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe. Pfau, 2012SOLOMOS, Makis, Exploring the Ecologies of Music and Sound: Environmental, Mental and Social Ecologies in Music, Sound Art and Artivisms. Routledge, 2023*TOOP, David, Inflamed Invisible: Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 1976-2018. Goldsmiths Press, 2019*VOEGELIN, Salomé, Listening to Noise and Silence. Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. Continuum, 2010*WANG, Jing, Half Sound, Half Philosophy: Aesthetics...

Är det en mänsklig rättighet att leka, också som vuxen? Leken kan befria oss, och spela en viktig roll för demokratiers utveckling. Även sexuella lekar som ageplay det menar Marie Hållander. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna.Jag minns leken i fabriken. Pappa arbetade på en fabrik som mekaniker. Jag och mina syskon fick följa med dit ibland på kvällarna, då pappa lagade någon av maskinerna. Jag minns hur vi åkte runt med sparkcyklarna medan pappa arbetade. Fabriksgolvet var ett rutnät. En labyrint. Det var mörkt och dovt. Vinklar. Vrår. Vi körde fort. Fortare. Fortast. Tävlade i de mörka gångarna. Skrämde varandra. Jagade.Olja. Stål. Damm. Betong. Och så sparkcyklarna. Runt. Runt. Vi ville aldrig gå hem.Att leka är en viktig del av att vara barn. Barnkonventionen erkänner ”barnets rätt till vila och fritid, till lek och rekreation anpassad till barnets ålder”. Någon liknande formulering hittar man inte för vuxna människor. Exempelvis återfinns inte ordet lek i Deklarationen för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Tillspetsat kan man säga att lek inte är en rättighet. Och varför skulle den vara det, kan man fråga.Leken har sitt eget sätt att vara i världen. Det är ett fenomen som tillhör barnen, men inte uteslutande. Det här argumenterade den tyske filosofen och pedagogen Eugen Fink för redan på 50-talet. I maskinens tid, menade han, blir lekens roll mer påtaglig eftersom leken har betydelse för människans existens: människan är bara hel när hon leker. Även om vi inte leker längre, har alla, eller i alla fall de flesta av oss, minnen av att leka, och i olika grad återkommer vi till leken genom livet. Att leka är något annat än att sova, äta, arbeta, älska, lära sig, men går att kombinera med flera av dessa grundläggande saker i livet. Man kan leka och älska. Man kan leka och äta. Man kan leka och ge omsorg. Och inte minst kan leken spela en roll i sexuella sammanhang.Att agera eller känna sig som ett barn, eller ungdom, kan vara en del av en särskild sorts sexuell lek. Det kallas ageplay och är ett fenomen inom BDSM där vuxna leker med åldersskillnader och litenhet. I genusvetaren Elin Bengtssons avhandling Perversa tidsligheter från 2023 intervjuas ageplay-utövare som utgår ifrån barnets perspektiv och har en ”Daddy” eller ”Mommy” som bestämmer saker åt dem. Som ger dem omsorg och tar hand om dem. Men också utnyttjar dem. Sexuellt.De intervjuade berättar i avhandlingen om hur leken skapar öppningar för dem, ger glädje och formar identiteter. Men de berättar också om motsatsen – om skammen kring ageplay och det som upplevs som smutsigt och fördärvligt. En av dem, Joar, förknippar vuxenhet med att inte uppleva saker, med att saker och ting inte är särskilt märkvärdiga. Barnets eller tonåringens uppspelthet blir en kontrast till detta. Genom att leka den oerfarna får Joar det som är välbekant att framstå som exceptionellt eller exalterande. Att få vara ”grabben” är att ”ta tillvara på impulser, vad man känner för eller har lust till, där kanske vanliga konventioner om hur manlighet är sätter stopp”. Den hypermaskulina, parodierade grabbrollen blir ett sätt att utmana manligheten, beskriver Joar, något som också påverkar hur han tar sig an vuxenlivet med större distans och mindre allvar.Ageplay har varit tabubelagt och kan nog i vissa kretsar vara kontroversiellt eftersom det har förknippats med sådant som pedofili och incest. Detta avfärdar Elin Bengtsson – det är vuxna som i samtycke leker och inte barn. Men hon visar också hur våra begär, drömmar och identiteter är mångbottnade, och hur just tanken på det förbjudna kan väcka lust. Det är kittlande att föreställa sig att bli utnyttjad. Det är befriande att ha någon som bestämmer över en. Till exempel berättar Hedda om hur leken att vara den oerfarna och utforskande innebär ett ”högre medvetande”.I samma andemening kan det vara berusande att ha ett maktövertag, att som ”Mommy” eller ”Daddy” bestämma över någon som måste följa ens ord och handling. Men den vuxna positionen framträder inte alls i Elin Bengtssons undersökning vilket framkallar en känsla av att jag snuvas på halva berättelsen.Även om leken är fri innehåller den alltid regler som bestäms av de som leker, menar Eugen Fink. Och inom BDSM råder samtycke där regler etableras i samförstånd snarare än utifrån konventionella normer. Elin Bengtsson lyfter fram att ageplay äger rum i hemmet, det vill säga att det är i vardagen, i det nära, intima, som leken utövas. En viktig poäng som jag tar med mig här är därför att lek inte är arbete. Det är ett fenomen där vi avbryter arbetet och istället gör det som är lustfyllt. Vi är i leken inte längre ”nyttiga medborgare” som producerar varor eller tjänster för att ställa mat på bordet och betala räkningar, eller sysslar med hemmets reproduktiva arbete, som omsorg eller städning.När min pappa arbetade i fabriken lekte han inte, det var vi barn som lekte när vi åkte runt med fabrikens sparkcyklar. Lekte du med oss, frågar jag pappa idag. Nej, svarar han, jag hade tillsyn av pannan, men visst åkte jag runt. Fabriken var ju stor, min cykel hade ju verktyg och allt annat. Jag åkte nog med er också.Genom leken vanhelgas saker och ting, menar filosofen Giorgio Agamben. Barn gör leksaker av sådant som tillhör andra sfärer och som vuxna är vana vid att se allvarligt på, så som ekonomi, krig eller juridik. ”Helt plötsligt blir en bil, ett skjutvapen eller ett juridiskt kontrakt en leksak.” skriver han. Det handlar inte om slarv eller vårdslöshet när barn, eller vuxna, ger pinnar, dockor, krukor och stolar nya användningsområden. Snarare finns det i lek en distans. Man går in i leken, man kan gå ur den, och saker och ting blir annorlunda. Leken innebär förnyelse och är, enligt Giorgio Agamben, barnens gåva till mänskligheten.Lek handlar alltså om förnyelse. Lek kan förändra inte bara föremål och idéer, utan också individer och samhällen, och därmed spela en roll för demokratiers utveckling. Det menar forskarna i antologin Play and Democracy. Genom lekfulla politiska aktioner, konst och kultur men också barnens lek i skolan kan normer, värderingar och politiska beslut ifrågasättas. Det finns en inneboende lekfullhet i demokratier enligt forskarna, eftersom leken omförhandlar saker och bygger upp motstånd mot dominerande föreställningar, manipulation och maktspel. Ett samhälle där det inte finns plats för lek är totalitärt.När pappa arbetade i fabriken så störde jag och mina syskon hans arbete. Jag hoppas att vi barn drog in pappa i leken, så att fabrikens produktion och tid avbröts och istället blev vår, gemensamma tid. I min lekfulla tanke var fabriken som pappa arbetade i inte längre en fabrik gjord för att producera saker, utan en plats för att köra fort mellan maskinerna. En plats långt mer spännande än ett nöjesfält. Vi ville aldrig gå hem. För i leken var vi fria och mer hela som människor.Marie Hållanderförfattare och lektor i pedagogikLitteraturGiorgio Agamben (2007) Profanation. Zone Books.Giorgio Agamben. (2005) Undantagstillståndet. Bokförlaget Faethon.Elin Bengtsson: Perversa tidsligheter. Ageplay och litenhet ur ett queertemporalt perspektiv. Ellerströms, 2022.Eugen Fink. (1974) The Ontology of Play, Philosophy Today vol 18, nr. 2.Eugen Fink, Ute Saine and Thomas Saine (1968) The Oasis of Happiness: Toward an Ontology of Play. Yale French Studies. No. 41, Game, Play, Literature, pp. 19-30. Yale University PressAlice Koubová, Petr Urban, Wendy Russell and Malcolm MacLean (2021) Play and Democracy. Philosopical Perspectives. Routledge.UNICEF, Barnkonventionen. https://unicef.se/barnkonventionen/las-texten?_gl=1*8ihfxp*_up*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAiAk9itBhASEiwA1my_6xCXBhShfi-akoOb0HksLsFU0vd4FDtkhBtR41zhDqCowoVPcUDYxhoCzLwQAvD_BwE

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/animal-studies

What is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks meaning far out into the animal world. At the same time he discerns limits to its scope and identifies innumerable life forms, including many animals and all other organisms, that make no meanings at all. Tomlinson's map of meaning starts from signs, the fundamental units of reference or aboutness. Where signs are at work they shape meaning-laden lifeways, offering possibilities for distinctive organism/niche interactions and sometimes leading to technology and culture. The emergence of meaning does not, however, monopolize complexity in the living world. Countless organisms generate awe-inspiring behavioral intricacies without meaning. The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning (Zone Books, 2023) offers a revaluation of both meaning and meaninglessness, uncovering a foundational difference in animal solutions to the hard problem of life.” Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University (nathan.smith@yale.edu). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

ABOUT BRUCE MAU:For press and event inquiries: info@massivechangenetwork.com   INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS:Bruce Mau - https://www.instagram.com/realbrucemau/#Aiyemobisi Williams - https://www.instagram.com/aiyemobisi/Massive Change Network -https://www.instagram.com/massivechangenetwork/  LINKEDIN ACCOUNTS:Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer Bruce Mau -https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-mau/Co-founder, Chief Insights Officer Aiyemobisi “Bisi” Willia -https://www.linkedin.com/in/bisiwilliams/   Company Page Massive Change Network -https://www.linkedin.com/company/massive-change-network/about/WEBSITES:Massive Change Network -https://www.massivechangenetwork.comHealth 2049 Podcast -https://www.health2049.comMAILING LIST:https://massivechangeworkshops.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=edecf2a3075fbcc167f6019ec&id=592db25fb8  BRUCE'S BIO:Bruce Mau is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy based in the Chicago area. Across more than thirty years of design innovation, Bruce has worked as a designer, innovator, educator, and author on a broad spectrum of projects in collaboration with the world's leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. To create value and positive impact across global ecosystems and economies, Mau evolved a unique toolkit of 24 massive change design principles — MC24 — that can be applied in any field or environment at every scale. The MC24 principles underpin all Bruce's work — from designing carpets to cities, books to new media, global brands to cultural institutions, and social movements to business transformation – and they are the subject of his book,“Mau: MC24, Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work.” Books are central to Bruce's purpose of achieving and inspiring understanding, clarity, and alignment around visions of a better future. He is the author of“Massive Change”;“Life Style”; and“Mau: MC24: Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work”;– all published by Phaidon Press. Bruce's“The Incomplete Manifesto for Growth,”a forty-three-point statement on sustaining a creative practice, has been translated into more than fifteen languages and has been shared widely on the Internet for nearly twenty-five years. Bruce is also co-author of several books, including the landmark architecture book“S, M, L, XL”with Rem Koolhaas;“Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World – The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science,”with Julio Ottino, dean of Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering;“The Third Teacher”with OWP/P Architects and VS Furniture; and“Spectacle”with David Rockwell.Bruce has collaborated with clients on the development and design of more than 200 books, including Art Gallery of Ontario, Claes Oldenburg, Douglas Gordon, Frank Gehry, Gagosian, Getty Research Institute, James Lahey, Mark Francis, and Zone Books. In these times of complex, interrelated challenges that are unlike any we've faced before, Bruce believes life-centered design offers a clear path towards identifying the full context of our problems and developing innovative, sustainable, and holistic solutions. Bruce's work and life story are the subject of the feature-length documentary, “MAU,” scheduled for North American theatrical release in May 2022.EP. 43 BRUCE MAU - SHOW INTROWhen I was a kid, my parents used to load my four brothers and I, along with our dog, into a station wagon, hook up a trailer and travel on summer vacation from Montreal to Winnipeg, effectively halfway across Canada, to visit my father's family. The trek would take us along the Trans Canada highway following a route around Lake Superior and passing through cites like Wawa, which had an enormous Canada goose statue, Dryden with the monumental statue of Max the Moose, and Sudbury Ontario with the Big nickel.The big nickel. It was enormous. This thing was a towering 30 feet tall and was said to be about 64 million times the size of the nickel you'd have in your pocket. In a time when penny candy stores were a big thing for a youngster in the late 60's, how much that nickel could buy at Ed's market, the candy store a walk from my parent's house, was beyond imagination. Sudbury was also one of the largest nickel mining areas on the planet. My memory of Sudbury at that time was that it was desolate. For miles around the nickel mines, Sudbury was gray. The landscape was just gray. There were no trees. There was no grass. It was the closest thing my young mind could have imagined when thinking about what the surface of the moon would have looked like. In those seemingly dead zones, it was stark and infertile.In 1971 and '72 NASA actually sent its astronauts to train there for the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, because it approximated what astronauts would encounter when they landed on the lunar surface.While I passed through as a tourist on vacation, there was another boy who lived there in the house at the end of a street beyond which there was only 200 miles of Boreal Forest. As an adult the boy who lived at the end of the street before the forest started would describe those years as ‘lawless' and like walking a Vaseline greased edge on which a misplaced step would send you careening into a chasm from which you would never climb out. Finding his way out of the Boreal Forest, it turns out, would also serve in later years as an apt metaphor for finding a way out of a childhood of adverse experiences to a career as one of the most successful designers of the last 50 years.  The house of the end of the street was not the end of the road for Bruce Mau. At a young age, he had other plans to not slip and fall into the chasm, but to find his way out of the forest. To follow a path with an entrepreneurial spirit, of exploration and discovery, continually scanning the world for opportunity. Mau believes that “you need to be taught the entrepreneurial mindset of being lost in the forest and discovering a methodology for finding your way out. You need a compass. You need a way of actually navigating any forest not just the one in front of you.” That, he says, is a very different mindset and design is actually built to do it. That's what designers do…”Looking back, Mau now deeply appreciates how those decisions that he made when he was twelve set that in motion and kind of created the space for him to do what he does and to be who he is.Despite his extraordinary success, he understands that, whatever the kind of problem and no matter how right he believes his solution is, it is it's meaningless if he can't inspire people to do it.He explains that “..I have to show them what that means. I have to show them the destination and I have to take them there in their imagination. I've got to say, ‘look I know we're here now but we're going to go over there. I'm telling you over there is awesome and here's what's going to happen…”I was first exposed to Bruce's creative thinking process through his landmark architectural book “S, M, L, XL”with the world renowned architect Rem Koolhaas. SML XL is not a book you read cover to cover. It is something that you live with, explore and reference over and over again. Bruce is a lover of books and has collaborated with clients on the development and design of more than 200 titles. He says “I consider myself a ‘biblio-naire.' I'm not a billionaire but I am a biblio-naire.”One of these books, that I have read cover to cover, is MC24  “Mau: MC24, Bruce Mau's 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work.” This volume is more a manifesto or a unique toolkit of 24 massive change design principles that can be applied in any field or environment at every scale. These 24 principles underpin all of Bruce's work — from designing carpets to cities, books to new media, global brands to cultural institutions, and social movements to business transformation.Today Bruce has navigated the slippery line of life a long way from his childhood years in the liminal space where the road ends and the forest begins. He is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy based in the Chicago area. Across more than thirty years of design innovation, Bruce has worked as a designer, innovator, educator, and author on a broad spectrum of projects with some of world's leading brands, organizations, universities, governments, entrepreneurs, renowned artists, and fellow optimists. Bruce's work and life story are the subject of the feature-length documentary, “MAU,” that was released to North American theatres in May 2022. It is a captivating  and candid look into Bruce Mau's life of ideas. I encourage all to see it. ************************************************************************************************************************************The next level experience design podcast is presented by VMSD magazine and Smartwork Media. It is hosted and executive produced by David Kepron. Our original music and audio production by Kano Sound. Make sure to tune in for more NXTLVL “dialogues on DATA: design architecture technology and the arts” wherever you find your favorite podcasts and make sure to visit vmsd.com and look for the tab for the NXTLVL Experience Design podcast there too. And remember you'll always find more information with links to content that we've discussed, contact information to our guests and more in the show notes for each episode.  ABOUT DAVID KEPRON:LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582bWebsites: https://www.davidkepron.com    (personal website)vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.comTwitter: DavidKepronPersonal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidkepron/NXTLVL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nxtlvl_experience_design/Bio:David Kepron is a multifaceted creative professional with a deep curiosity to understand ‘why', ‘what's now' and ‘what's next'. He brings together his background as an architect, artist, educator, author, podcast host and builder to the making of meaningful and empathically-focused, community-centric customer connections at brand experience places around the globe. David is a former VP - Global Design Strategies at Marriott International. While at Marriott, his focus was on the creation of compelling customer experiences within Marriott's “Premium Distinctive” segment which included: Westin, Renaissance, Le Meridien, Autograph Collection, Tribute Portfolio, Design Hotels and Gaylord hotels. In 2020 Kepron founded NXTLVL Experience Design, a strategy and design consultancy, where he combines his multidisciplinary approach to the creation of relevant brand engagements with his passion for social and cultural anthropology, neuroscience and emerging digital technologies. As a frequently requested international speaker at corporate events and international conferences focusing on CX, digital transformation, retail, hospitality, emerging technology, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising, hotel design and strategy as well as creativity and innovation. In his talks, David shares visionary ideas on how brand strategy, brain science and emerging technologies are changing guest expectations about relationships they want to have with brands and how companies can remain relevant in a digitally enabled marketplace. David currently shares his experience and insight on various industry boards including: VMSD magazine's Editorial Advisory Board, the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Sign Research Foundation's Program Committee as well as the Center For Retail Transformation at George Mason University.He has held teaching positions at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.), the Department of Architecture & Interior Design of Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (L.I.M.) in New York, the International Academy of Merchandising and Design in Montreal and he served as the Director of the Visual Merchandising Department at LaSalle International Fashion School (L.I.F.S.) in Singapore.  In 2014 Kepron published his first book titled: “Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores Will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World” and he is currently working on his second book to be published soon. David also writes a popular blog called “Brain Food” which is published monthly on vmsd.com.  

Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Jonathan Crary is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University and is a founding editor of Zone Books. His publications include Techniques of the Observer, Suspensions of Perception and 24/7. PRAISE: “At last a book about the urgency to find a way out from a system that has crossed a threshold of irreparability and toxicity. A book that is simultaneously desperate and refreshing.” – Franco “Bifo” Berardi “Following on 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, Jonathan Crary here confirms his position as our most ruthless critic of all that exists. With a hammer of critical theory, he smashes the golden calf around which our lives revolve: the very internet itself. His sentences come packed with urgent truths long felt but only now articulated with the force they deserve. His clear-sightedness is the gift of prophets.” – Andreas Malm SOCIAL: Twitter: @WakeIslandPod Instagram: @wakeislandpod David's Twitter: @raviddice --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wake-island/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wake-island/support

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age' is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism and its financialisation of social existence, mass impoverishment, ecocide, and military terror. Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (Verso, 2022) surveys the wrecking of a living world by the internet complex and its devastation of communities and their capacities for mutual support. This polemic by the author of 24/7 dismantles the presumption that social media could be an instrument of radical change and contends that the networks and platforms of transnational corporations are intrinsically incompatible with a habitable earth or with the human interdependence needed to build egalitarian post-capitalist forms of life. Dr. Jonathan Crary is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University in the Art history and Archeology Department. He is a prolific art and culture critic and is the co-founder (and co-editor) of Zone Books. Professor Crary has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Getty, Mellon, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2005, his teaching and mentoring were recognized with a Distinguished Columbia Faculty Award. Dr. Crary is also the author of Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (winner of the 2001 Lionel Trilling Book Award), and 24/7 (a finalist for the 2016 Terzani International Literary Prize). Cody Skahan (cskahan@ksu.edu) is an anthropologist by training, starting an MA program in Anthropology at the University of Iceland in August 2022 as a Leifur Eriksson Fellow. His work focuses on the intersections of queerness, environmentalisms, and tourism in Iceland. Cody has a blog here  where he sometimes writes about Games User Research and will totally, 100% in the future post the podcast and other projects he is working on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears? In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears? In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears? In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sound-studies

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears? In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space, and it remains the only human-made object to have left the solar system. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music from Earth (Zone Books, 2021) ask big questions: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears? In this conversation, we chat with the authors Daniel Chua, the Chair Professor of Music at the University of Hong Kong, and Alex Rehding, a Professor of Music at Harvard University, and focus on the primacy of repetition and difference in music. Additionally, we discuss the underlying assumptions and exceptions humans have about music and the unknown alien listeners to the Golden Record. We also highlight the goal to establish and make accessible an Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything to turn everyone, no matter what their planet of origin is, into a music theorist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Have you ever wondered why some issues are treated as private and personal, while others are self-evidently public concerns? Meanwhile, certain topics are discussed freely and openly, but only among niche subcultures: local interest groups, expert practitioners, hardcore enthusiasts, and even marginalized communities. How can we better understand these kinds of diverse audience groupings, which are so critical to the circulation of political text and talk? On today's re:blurb episode, we address these questions through a deep-dive into the rhetoric of publicity and counterpublicity. In so doing, we overview the landmark public sphere theories of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt, as well as later feminist, anti-racist, and queer theory contributions from scholars such as Nancy Fraser, Catherine Squires, Michael Warner, and Daniel Brouwer. Finally, we highlight the importance of Antonio Gramsci's notion of hegemony for unpacking our inherited ideas about “civil society.” To illustrate this point, we offer an analysis of a recent controversy involving Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, in which activists pursued her into a public restroom to protest her obstruction of immigration reform. Considering the incident and its broader reverberations in media discourses about privacy and civility, we argue that these ideas are contested because hegemony itself is contested. In a deeply unequal society like ours, publicity and counterpublicity are contingent upon groups' positions within hierarchies of power. An early draft of this episode was prepared as a submission for the 2021 Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute workshop on “The Trouble with Publics and Counterpublics.” That workshop unfortunately did not take place, due to the unexpected passing of workshop co-leader Dr. Daniel Brouwer. Dan Brouwer was a critical force in rhetorical studies, public sphere theory, and queer studies - a strong mentor, friend, and crucial voice across academic fields. It is in this spirit that we humbly dedicate this episode to the memory of Dr. Daniel Brouwer.Works and Concepts Cited in this EpisodeArendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press.Aronoff, K. (2021, 21 Sept.). Joe Manchin's vote isn't that mysterious. Look to the fossil fuel money. The New Republic. Retrieved from: https://newrepublic.com/article/163723/joe-manchin-vote-fossil-fuelAsen, R. (2000). Seeking the “counter” in counterpublics. Communication theory, 10(4), 424-446.Boguslaw, D. (2021, 26 Sept.). Kyrsten Sinema used the winery where she interned to fundraise with private equity. The Intercept. Retrieved from: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/26/kyrsten-sinema-private-equity-tax-loophole/Brouwer, D.C. (2001). ACT-ing UP in congressional hearings. In R. Asen and D.C. Brouwer (Eds.) Counterpublics and the State (pp. 87-110). SUNY Press.Cloud, D. L. (2018). Reality bites: Rhetoric and the circulation of truth claims in US political culture. The Ohio State University Press.Cloud, D.L. (2015). “Civility” as a threat to academic freedom. First Amendment Studies, 49(1), 13-17.Davenport, C. (2021, 19 Sept.). Joe Manchin will craft the U.S. climate plan. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/climate/manchin-climate-biden.htmlFraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social text, (25/26), 56-80.Gramsci, A. (2011). Prison Notebooks (Vol. 2) (J.A. Buttigieg, Trans.). Columbia University Press.Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT press. (Originally published in 1962).Hauser, G. A. (1999). Vernacular voices: The rhetoric of publics and public spheres. Univ of South Carolina Press.Klippenstein, K. (2021, 8 Oct.). Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is literally teaching a course on fundraising. The Intercept. Retrieved from: https://theintercept.com/2021/10/08/kyrsten-sinema-fundraising-course-asu/Luchetta, J. (2021, Oct. 4). Activists ambush Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in public bathroom over immigration, infrastructure. USA Today. Retrieved from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/04/sen-kyrsten-sinema-bathroom-arizona-immigration-infrastructure/5990516001/Squires, C. R. (2002). Rethinking the black public sphere: An alternative vocabulary for multiple public spheres. Communication theory, 12(4), 446-468.Treene, A. (2021, 7 Oct.). Scoop: Sanders' Sinema spat. Axios. Retrieved from: https://www.axios.com/sanders-sinema-spat-harrassment-a8c9f7a2-6579-4800-aa28-43a71fe2639b.htmlWalsh, K. N. (2021, 5 Oct.). Protesters following Kyrsten Sinema into the bathroom undermined their efforts. The Independent. Retrieved from: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/kyrsten-sinema-bathroom-protest-privacy-b1932844.htmlWarner, M. (2002). Publics and counterpublics. Zone Books.

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Turns out "objectivity" has a not-so clear-cut definition across time. In this podcast, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison to discuss their work, Objectivity (Zone Books, 2010). This work traces the historical and cultural developments of the word “objective” as it acquired different meanings and associated practices. Similarly, they consider the changing relationship of objectivity as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher, as the “scientific self.” This deep philosophical work, diving into the cultural and historical shifts of epistemology within the past few centuries, is told through atlas making and image generation. In this conversation, we discuss the evolving processes of research and atlas making and how they co-evolved with the fears, virtues, and ideals of the time of their emergence. Additionally, we talk about the role of the self and aesthetics in categorizing and publishing the collections of working objects in atlases. We end looking at the current trajectories of image production as they try to pragmatically predict what's to come.  Sarah Kearns (@annotated_sci) is an acquisition editor for an open scholarship publishing platform, a freelance science writer, and loves baking bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Get ready to feel flames. . . on the side of your face. . . because we're talking about Clue! Join us to learn more about gay men in the State Department, FBI phone taps, French maids, and more! Sources: Film Production Background: Adam Vary, "The Crazy Story of How 'Clue' Went From Forgotten Flop to Cult Film Triumph," Buzzfeed, Available at https://www.buzzfeed.com/adambvary/something-terrible-has-happened-here-the-crazy-story-of-how imdb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088930/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 Ironing Board Cupboards: https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/stowed-away-a-peek-into-closets-of-the-past_o Best Ironing Board Today https://www.bestironingboardtoday.com Slapping Hysterical Women: Patent history: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8671598B2/en Sheila Peace, Martin Maguire, Colette Nicolle, Russ Marshall, John Percival, Rachel Scicluna, Ruth Sims, Leonie Kellaher and Clare Lawton, "Transitions in kitchen living: past experiences and present use," The New Dynamics of Aging, Vol. 1 ed. Alan Walker (Bristol University Press, 2018). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt21216v3.18 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/slap-history-hysteria-treatment-films-ahed-tamim-israel-soldiers-women-groundhog-day-a8189896.html%3famp Cecilia Tasca, Mariangela Tapetti, Mauro Giovanni Carta, and Bianca Fadda, " Women and Hysteria in the History of Mental Health," Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health 8 (2012): 110-119. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.2174%2F1745017901208010110 TV Tropes: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GetAHoldOfYourselfMan Sobering slap: Mythbusters https://youtu.be/9mmJMIwsaDQ "The History of Hysteria" https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-quackery/history-hysteria https://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/06/hysteria-sex-toy-history-timeline/ https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/11/mel-gibson-slapped-his-girlfriend-to-bring-her-back-to-reality-is-that-a-good-idea.html Wiretapping: Athan G. Theoharis, "A History of FBI Wiretapping Authority," Abuse of Power: How Cold War Surveillance and Secrecy Policy Shaped the Response to 9/11 (Temple University Press: 2011). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bt7ht.6 David Cunningham, "Counterintelligence Activities and the FBI," There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (University of California Press, 2004). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pp0dx.6 William R. Casto, "Wiretapping," Advising the President: Attorney General Robert H. Jackson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (University of Kansas Press, 2018). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv80cd5b.6 Neal Katyal and Richard Caplan, "The Surprisingly Stronger Case for the Legality of the NSA Surveillance Program: The FDR Precedent," Stanford Law Review 60:4 (February 2008): 1023-1077. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40040407 Colin Agur, "Negotiated Order: The Fourth Amendment, Telephone Surveillance, and Social Interactions, 1878-1968," Information & Culture 48:4 (2013): 419-447. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43737371 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, "anachronism as myth and reality: 1945-1972" The FBI: A History (Yale University Press, 2007). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm6tv.12 Lavender Scare: Excerpt from the Congressional Record 96, 4 (1950). Available at https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/gays-in-govt.html David K Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Judith Adkins, "'These People Are Frightened to Death': Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare." Prologue Magazine 48, 2 (2016). Available at https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2016/summer/lavender.html Charles M. Douglas, Hoover's War on Gays: Exposing the FBI's 'Sex Deviates' Program. University Press of Kansas, 2015. French Maids: Lynn Hunt, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500-1800. Zone Books, 1996 Emily Apter, Feminizing the Fetish: Master Narratives/Servant Texts: Representing the Maid from Flaubert to Freud. Cornell University Press. Leonore Davidoff, "Class and Gender in Victorian England: The Diaries of Arthur J. Munby and Hannah Cullwick," Feminist Studies 5, 1 (1979).

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Timothy Hampton's Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2020) is a fascinating and meticulous study of Bob Dylan's songwriting craft. Hampton discusses how Dylan incorporated and then transcended the Greenwich Village folk music tradition, how he reinvented himself as a visionary poet in the mid sixties, how he learned from poets as diverse as Rimbaud, Brecht, and Petrarch, and how his late-career work draws on and extends the themes he's been pursuing for his whole life. Hampton's book is written in a clear and accessible style and should appeal to anyone interested in the technique of this master songwriter. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. His plays have been produced, developed, or presented at IRT, Pipeline Theatre Company, The Gingold Group, Dixon Place, Roundabout Theatre, Epic Theatre Company, Out Loud Theatre, Naked Theatre Company, Contemporary Theatre of Rhode Island, and The Trunk Space. He is currently working on a series of 50 plays about the 50 U.S. states. His website is AndyJBoyd.com, and he can be reached at andyjamesboyd@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Hildegard av Bingen var en av det medeltida Europas mest begåvade personer. Hon är känd som tonsättare och intellektuell, men hon skapade också ett eget språk. Magnus Florin fascineras av projektet. ESSÄ: Detta är en text där skribenten reflekterar över ett ämne eller ett verk. Åsikter som uttrycks är skribentens egna. Publicerad första gången den 5 mars mars 2019. Jag minns ett besök hos Willy Kyrklund, författaren, resenären och inte minst språkkännaren. Vi hade stämt träff en eftermiddag i hans hem utanför Uppsala och jag kom dit på utsatt tid, ringde på porten, men utan resultat. Dörren var öppen, jag steg in, det var tyst därinne, hade något hänt? Nej, det visade sig att han helt enkelt tog en tupplur och jag beslöt mig för att vänta. Lät blicken vandra längs bokhyllorna, såg Euripides dramatik i grekiskt original och flera persiska verk. På en trave böcker låg ett öppnat litet kuvert med ett brev, handskrivet i stora bokstäver. Man ska inte tjuvtitta, men min nyfikenhet beviljade undantag och jag läste. Avsändaren var en elvaårig pojke som hade sett Kyrklund berätta i tv att han som just elvaåring hade skapat ett alldeles eget språk med nya ord. Och nu undrade den brevskrivande pojken hur Willy hade gjort, för det ville pojken väldigt gärna göra, han också skapa ett eget språk. Ja, vad är det som är så lockande inte bara för elvaåringar i att uppfinna nya språk och nya ord? Ranzgia är ett ord som inte kan hittas i något vanligt lexikon. Ranzgia, det betyder tunga och är uppfunnet av Hildegard av Bingen, den tyska 1100-talsnunnan, berömd för så mycket. I musikvärlden är Hildegard den stora pionjären som skapare av vokalmusik, bortglömd i flera sekler men i våra dagar återupptäckt med ständigt nya uppföranden och inspelningar. För teologer och filosofer är hon den främsta intellektuella kvinnan i sin tid, den benediktinska abbedissan och klostergrundaren som brevväxlade med kejsare och påvar, ibland kallad Sibyllan från Rhenlandet. Konsthistorikerna uttolkar hennes religiösa visioner som hon fångade i praktfulla och färgrika målerier. Och både idéhistoriker och naturmedicinare har näsan i hennes skrifter om örter, mineraler, kosmos och läkekonst. Tidigt sågs hon som helgon i den katolska kyrkan och blev 2012 kanoniserad av påven, med fortsatt och stigande berömmelse som följd. Men mindre berömd, nästan helt obekant, har Hildegard varit som skapare av nya ord. Ranzgia var inte hennes enda ordskapelse. Här är några till ord: Zirinz finger. Scorintz hjärta. Foscal fot. Auziel Vatten. Jag skulle kunna fortsätta med uppräkningen ganska länge. För Hildegard skapade en helt egen språkvärld med över tusen ord, samlade och bevarade i två samtida handskrifter. Jag läser hennes nyord i en utgåva av den främsta kännaren av denna språkvärld, den amerikanska medeltidsforskaren Sarah Higley. Titeln på hennes bok är Hildegard av Bingens okända språk och det var just vad Hildegard själv kallade det hon skapat ett okänt språk, Lingua ignota på latin. Okänt i betydelsen att det var ett nytt språk, annorlunda än alla de kända. Vissa har antagit att Hildegard var i färd med att bygga ett eget gudstjänstspråk Men varför uppfann Hildegard ett eget språk? Egentligen är det inte ett helt språk, utan en mycket lång ordlista med substantiv i obestämd form som en inventarieförteckning över vad som finns på jorden. Och Hildegard väjer inte för det allra mest jordiska, även det som ansågs lågt, vulgärt och syndfullt: Suinz svett. Maluiza prostituerad. Menguiz avföring. Zirzer anus. Creuviz penis. Fragizlanz slida. Artonhundratalets filologer ville inte tänka att nunnan Hildegard hade befattat sig med sådana ord så de beslöt att hennes nya språk inte alls var hennes, utan gjort av någon annan. Men dagens forskare är överens om att Hildegard är upphovskvinnan. Och att hon såg som sin avsikt att noga förteckna allt jordiskt, just för att det är en del av skapelsen. I handskrifterna är varje ord försett med en översättning till två språk, latin och tyska, just som i ett lexikon. Fast i det här lexikonet finns de främmande orden ingen annanstans än inom lexikonet. Bara en enda gång låter Hildegard ett nyuppfunnet ord ta plats i den vanliga världen. Det sker i en av hennes sånger: O Orzchis Ecclesia. Ecclesia är lika med kyrka, men Orzchis det är ett påhittat ord som bara finns hos henne, med betydelsen väldig. Så O Orzchis Ecclesia betyder O väldiga kyrka. Vissa har antagit att Hildegard var i färd med att bygga ett eget gudstjänstspråk, till användning i klostret som hon ledde. Men användning och nytta är inte kärnan i hennes ordskapande. Hon försökte knappast bilda något alternativ till latinet som religiöst ceremonispråk. Inte heller något nytt universellt idealspråk, i stil med esperanto. Vad var då avsikten? Flera har menat att det var ett adamitiskt projekt att Hildegard avsåg att återskapa Adams tungomål, urspråket i Bibeln, det som den första människan uttalade när han på Guds maning gav namn till alla djuren. Ja, man kan säga att hon gör som Adam - men det verkligt fascinerande är att hon inte alls försöker återskapa, utan vill skapa något alldeles nytt. Hon en medeltida kvinna gör sig till en ny Adam, en ny ord- och världmakare. Med den djärva handlingen är Hildegard en magnifik kraft i 1100-talet som förändringens och förvandlingens sekel då människans vetande och kunnande manifesterade sig i de första universitetens framväxt och i mäktiga katedralbyggen utan motstycke. Hildegard visade att också språket kunde tänkas och skapas på nytt. På så vis har hon blivit en hyllad förebild bland våra dagars språkskapare och sådana skapare finns i en häpnadsväckande omfattning. Conlang är budordet, conlang som kortform för constructed languages konstruerade språk och på internet finns en intensiv trafik mellan hängivna språkskapare från hela världen: lingvister, matematiker, programmerare och filosofer. För dem är J.R.R. Tolkien den ofrånkomliga pionjären, lika mycket en språkskapare som berättelseskapare. Men Hildegard är 800 år före Tolkien. Hon är den verkliga pionjären. Och vill vi förstå vad hon var ute efter kan vi tänka på ett ord som ofta återkommer hos henne ordet grönska. Hon ville få språket och människan och världen att grönska med de nya orden, ge frisk sav till de jordiska språk som vissnat. bland alla sina över tusen uppfunna ord lät hon just ordet dotter vara tomt. Så blir hon en remarkabel kusin till alla ordvrängande trubadurer och poeter genom tiderna, metaforiker som språkmaterialister - och till alla historiens banditer och barnungar som pratat rövarspråk och fikonspråk. Kort sagt en kusin till alla som inte nöjer sig med det språk som redan finns. Ett ord saknas i hennes lexikon, ett av de allra enklaste - ordet dotter. Orden för mor och far finns med, liksom bror, syster och son. Men inte dotter.  Tankarna går till hur Hildegard som åttaårig flicka gavs bort av sina föräldrar till ett kloster. Hon blev ingens dotter. Och bland alla sina över tusen uppfunna ord lät hon just ordet dotter vara tomt. Jag tänker återigen på den där elvaåriga pojken och hans brev till Willy Kyrklund. Medan jag väntade på att Kyrklund skulle vakna från sin tupplur läste jag brevet igen. Med pojkens fråga hur man skapar ett eget språk med nya ord. Hur gör man? Jag tror att Willy Kyrklund kunde ha ett antal goda råd att ge. Men jag vet inte om pojken fick svar. Och jag själv hade inte tillfälle att fråga den gången, för Kyrklund fortsatte att sova och jag beslöt mig för att komma tillbaka en annan gång. Magnus Florin, författare och dramatiker Lästips Om Hildegard av Bingens uppfunna språk: Sarah L. Higley, Hildegard of Bingens unknown language: an edition, translation, and discussion, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2007. Om rövarspråk med mera: Daniel Heller-Roazen, Dark Tongues: The Art of Rogues and Riddlers, Zone Books, New York, 2013.

durée : 00:28:50 - Avoir raison avec... - par : Raphaël Bourgois - Pour ce premier épisode de la série consacrée à Judith Butler, Raphaël Bourgois revient sur les fondements qui ont permis à la philosophe américaine de bâtir ses concepts, notamment ceux articulés autour de la question du genre et qui ont marqué de leur empreinte indélébile les débats contemporains. - réalisation : Vanessa Nadjar - invités : Catherine Malabou philosophe, professeure de philosophie au « Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy » à l’Université de Kingston au Royaume-Uni; Michel Feher Philosophe, co-fondateur de la maison d’édition new-yorkaise "Zone Books".

Après le confinement, le Podcast Club de Nouvelle Écoutes continue ! Chaque jour, un.e membre de l’équipe met en avant son épisode préféré d’un podcast Nouvelles Écoutes. Aujourd'hui, il s'agit de la recommandation de Mélanie, directrice commerciale. « J'adore cet épisode parce qu'il est à la fois essentiel, poétique, puissant et très utile ! ll m'a fait autant sourire qu'il m'a inspirée ! J'avais l'impression que des amies me racontaient leur VRAI confinement. En plus, j'ai encore moi même du mal à parler masturbation avec mes ami·e·s, j'ai toujours peur de lancer le sujet et que personne ne partage son expérience (si vous m'entendez, ceci est donc officiellement un appel). »Masturbation et confinement ont l’air de faire bon ménage si l’on en croit l’explosion des ventes de sextoys partout sur la planète. Pour explorer sa sexualité, assouvir sa libido ou pour changer du porn basique, tous les moyens sont bons ! Et face à l’épidémie généralisée de patriarcat, Clémentine nous rappelle que la masturbation est notre meilleure alliée, confinement ou pas.Références entendues dans l’épisode : Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation, New York, Zone Books, 2003Womanizer est une marque de sextoysLa boutique Passage du DésirLa marque de sextoys LELOL’application de rencontres BumbleRose Dommu, “Cyber Sex Will See Us Through the Apocalypse”, à lire sur papermag.com Flo Perry, Petit manuel de sexe féministe, First, 2020 Clarence Edgard-Rosa, Connais-toi toi-même, La Musardine, 2019Le compte instagram Jouissance Club Jüne Plã, Jouissance Club, Marabout, 2020Sandra Song, “You Should All Be Practicing Masturbation Meditation”, à lire sur papermag.com L’article de Renée Greusard pour l’Obs “J’ai testé pour vous : regarder du porno coronavirus. C’est bizarre et émouvant”GoneWildAudio sur le site RedditLe podcast érotique Le Son du DésirVoxxx et Coxxx, les podcasts érotiques de Olympe de G. et Lélé O.L’application audio Dipsea Les recommandations cinéma de Slate Le vibromasseur RabbitSex and the City est une série de Darren Star Girls est une série de Lena DunhamYou’re the Worst est une série de Stephen FalkQuoi de Meuf est une émission de Nouvelles Écoutes. Cet épisode est conçu et présenté par Clémentine Gallot. Mixé par Charles De Cillia. Générique réalisé par Aurore Meyer Mahieu. Montage et coordination Ashley Tola.

Masturbation et confinement ont l’air de faire bon ménage si l’on en croit l’explosion des ventes de sextoys partout sur la planète. Pour explorer sa sexualité, assouvir sa libido ou pour changer du porn basique, tous les moyens sont bons ! Et face à l’épidémie généralisée de patriarcat, Clémentine nous rappelle que la masturbation est notre meilleure alliée, confinement ou pas.Références entendues dans l’épisode : Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation, New York, Zone Books, 2003Womanizer est une marque de sextoysLa boutique Passage du DésirLa marque de sextoys LELOL’application de rencontres BumbleRose Dommu, “Cyber Sex Will See Us Through the Apocalypse”, à lire sur papermag.com Flo Perry, Petit manuel de sexe féministe, First, 2020 Clarence Edgard-Rosa, Connais-toi toi-même, La Musardine, 2019Le compte instagram Jouissance Club Jüne Plã, Jouissance Club, Marabout, 2020Sandra Song, “You Should All Be Practicing Masturbation Meditation”, à lire sur papermag.com L’article de Renée Greusard pour l’Obs “J’ai testé pour vous : regarder du porno coronavirus. C’est bizarre et émouvant”GoneWildAudio sur le site RedditLe podcast érotique Le Son du DésirVoxxx et Coxxx, les podcasts érotiques de Olympe de G. et Lélé O.L’application audio Dipsea Les recommandations cinéma de Slate Le vibromasseur RabbitSex and the City est une série de Darren Star Girls est une série de Lena DunhamYou’re the Worst est une série de Stephen FalkQuoi de Meuf est une émission de Nouvelles Écoutes. Cet épisode est conçu et présenté par Clémentine Gallot. Mixé par Charles De Cillia. Générique réalisé par Aurore Meyer Mahieu. Montage et coordination Ashley Tola.

Idioticon Podcast. Series One. Oblique Effects. Emily and I discuss her work on critical finance, among other things. Emily Rosamond is a Canadian writer and artist based in London. She is Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she serves as Joint Programme Leader, BA Fine Art and History of Art, and Department Chair of Learning and Teaching. Her recent publications have appeared in Theory, Culture & Society, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, Paragrana, Finance and Society, and International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, among others. She is currently working on a two-person exhibition at SixtyEight Art Institute, Copenhagen, and a monograph on online reputation, forthcoming from Zone Books.

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Sahlins's 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV's reign in France. Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism. Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/animal-studies

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Sahlins’s 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017) is a captivating look at the role of animals in court and salon culture in the first decades of Louis XIV’s reign in France.  Focusing on the years in and around 1668, Sahlins shows how deeply the king, the court, and the anatomists, artists and writers around it thought with and through animals as Louis XIV redefined royal authority along the lines of absolutism.  Through brilliant analyses of the Royal Menagerie and artistic and scientific studies of domestic and exotic fauna, Sahlins demonstrates how absolutism constituted a radical shift in worldview, not only regarding human animals, but the natural world as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books, 2016), Ascher focuses on the arc and narratives found in Capital, using them to analyze risk, credit, and the financial market downfall of 2008. Ascher encourages the reader to explore how we might be able to understand what is going on today by looking back at Marx’s understanding of capitalism. The reader will come across familiar characters, like moneybags and vampires, and familiar concepts from Marx, like fetishism and co-dependence within the market. The nice thing about this book is that you do not need prior knowledge of Marx or financial markets, though those who have knowledge of either or both will still find great pleasure in this thought experiment. This book would be enjoyed by sociologists or political scientists in general, alongside those interested in financial markets. It would be especially useful in a theory course where students could make connections between Marx and Ascher’s narratives. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can follow and tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books, 2016), Ascher focuses on the arc and narratives found in Capital, using them to analyze risk, credit, and the financial market downfall of 2008. Ascher encourages the reader to explore how we might be able to understand what is going on today by looking back at Marx’s understanding of capitalism. The reader will come across familiar characters, like moneybags and vampires, and familiar concepts from Marx, like fetishism and co-dependence within the market. The nice thing about this book is that you do not need prior knowledge of Marx or financial markets, though those who have knowledge of either or both will still find great pleasure in this thought experiment. This book would be enjoyed by sociologists or political scientists in general, alongside those interested in financial markets. It would be especially useful in a theory course where students could make connections between Marx and Ascher’s narratives. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can follow and tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books, 2016), Ascher focuses on the arc and narratives found in Capital, using them to analyze risk, credit, and the financial market downfall of 2008. Ascher encourages the reader to explore how we might be able to understand what is going on today by looking back at Marx’s understanding of capitalism. The reader will come across familiar characters, like moneybags and vampires, and familiar concepts from Marx, like fetishism and co-dependence within the market. The nice thing about this book is that you do not need prior knowledge of Marx or financial markets, though those who have knowledge of either or both will still find great pleasure in this thought experiment. This book would be enjoyed by sociologists or political scientists in general, alongside those interested in financial markets. It would be especially useful in a theory course where students could make connections between Marx and Ascher’s narratives. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can follow and tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books, 2016), Ascher focuses on the arc and narratives found in Capital, using them to analyze risk, credit, and the financial market downfall of 2008. Ascher encourages the reader to explore how we might be able to understand what is going on today by looking back at Marx’s understanding of capitalism. The reader will come across familiar characters, like moneybags and vampires, and familiar concepts from Marx, like fetishism and co-dependence within the market. The nice thing about this book is that you do not need prior knowledge of Marx or financial markets, though those who have knowledge of either or both will still find great pleasure in this thought experiment. This book would be enjoyed by sociologists or political scientists in general, alongside those interested in financial markets. It would be especially useful in a theory course where students could make connections between Marx and Ascher’s narratives. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can follow and tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books, 2016), Ascher focuses on the arc and narratives found in Capital, using them to analyze risk, credit, and the financial market downfall of 2008. Ascher encourages the reader to explore how we might be able to understand what is going on today by looking back at Marx’s understanding of capitalism. The reader will come across familiar characters, like moneybags and vampires, and familiar concepts from Marx, like fetishism and co-dependence within the market. The nice thing about this book is that you do not need prior knowledge of Marx or financial markets, though those who have knowledge of either or both will still find great pleasure in this thought experiment. This book would be enjoyed by sociologists or political scientists in general, alongside those interested in financial markets. It would be especially useful in a theory course where students could make connections between Marx and Ascher’s narratives. Sarah E. Patterson is a postdoc at the University of Western Ontario. You can follow and tweet her at @spattersearch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John Crace digests Martin Amis's new novel The Zone of Interest down to 600 words, and wonders if he was wise to return to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China  (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative objects connect us, visually and physically, to the world around us. In many ways they think with us, and an experience of pleasure emerges from this mutual relationship. This was as true in late Ming and early-to-mid Qing China as it is today, and Jonathan Hay‘s careful study of decorative objects functions as a toolkit for experiencing the surfaces of decorative Ming-Qing objects and understanding the pleasures of a relationship with those surfaces. Part I introduces the context of production and consumption of Ming-Qing decorative objects and argues for the importance of sensuous surface to the experience of them. It also sets out a history of the transformations of urban taste in early modern China, and offers some methodological tools for helping us think about the relationships of objects, movement, and bodies that are inspired by the work of a range of authors including Brian Massumi. Part II is a rich, detailed guide to the surfacescape of decorative objects in Ming-Qing China. Part III moves from the surfaces of individual objects to the landscapes they collectively create, offering a language for understanding, experiencing, and describing the objectscapes of urban interiors. Together, these parts of the book cooperate to change not only how we understand and articulate the experiences and pleasures of early modern interiors, but also how to perceive and give voice to our own constructed environments with a re-energized sensory language. This is one of my very favorite recent books, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. At the end of the conversation, Hay mentioned two books that are worth checking out: * Muriel Combes (Tr., Thomas LaMarre), Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (MIT Press, 2012) * Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (Zone Books, 2010) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China  (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative objects connect us, visually and physically, to the world around us. In many ways they think with us, and an experience of pleasure emerges from this mutual relationship. This was as true in late Ming and early-to-mid Qing China as it is today, and Jonathan Hay‘s careful study of decorative objects functions as a toolkit for experiencing the surfaces of decorative Ming-Qing objects and understanding the pleasures of a relationship with those surfaces. Part I introduces the context of production and consumption of Ming-Qing decorative objects and argues for the importance of sensuous surface to the experience of them. It also sets out a history of the transformations of urban taste in early modern China, and offers some methodological tools for helping us think about the relationships of objects, movement, and bodies that are inspired by the work of a range of authors including Brian Massumi. Part II is a rich, detailed guide to the surfacescape of decorative objects in Ming-Qing China. Part III moves from the surfaces of individual objects to the landscapes they collectively create, offering a language for understanding, experiencing, and describing the objectscapes of urban interiors. Together, these parts of the book cooperate to change not only how we understand and articulate the experiences and pleasures of early modern interiors, but also how to perceive and give voice to our own constructed environments with a re-energized sensory language. This is one of my very favorite recent books, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. At the end of the conversation, Hay mentioned two books that are worth checking out: * Muriel Combes (Tr., Thomas LaMarre), Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (MIT Press, 2012) * Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (Zone Books, 2010) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China  (University of Hawai’i Press, 2010) is a study of domestically produced, portable decorative arts in early modern China. Decorative objects connect us, visually and physically, to the world around us. In many ways they think with us, and an experience of pleasure emerges from this mutual relationship. This was as true in late Ming and early-to-mid Qing China as it is today, and Jonathan Hay‘s careful study of decorative objects functions as a toolkit for experiencing the surfaces of decorative Ming-Qing objects and understanding the pleasures of a relationship with those surfaces. Part I introduces the context of production and consumption of Ming-Qing decorative objects and argues for the importance of sensuous surface to the experience of them. It also sets out a history of the transformations of urban taste in early modern China, and offers some methodological tools for helping us think about the relationships of objects, movement, and bodies that are inspired by the work of a range of authors including Brian Massumi. Part II is a rich, detailed guide to the surfacescape of decorative objects in Ming-Qing China. Part III moves from the surfaces of individual objects to the landscapes they collectively create, offering a language for understanding, experiencing, and describing the objectscapes of urban interiors. Together, these parts of the book cooperate to change not only how we understand and articulate the experiences and pleasures of early modern interiors, but also how to perceive and give voice to our own constructed environments with a re-energized sensory language. This is one of my very favorite recent books, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. At the end of the conversation, Hay mentioned two books that are worth checking out: * Muriel Combes (Tr., Thomas LaMarre), Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual (MIT Press, 2012) * Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (Zone Books, 2010) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine a world wherein the people who wrote history books were artists, the books occasionally read like poetry, and the stories in them ranged from Monty Python skits to the natural history of chameleons to the making of classic sniper films. Pick up Hanna Rose Shell‘s new book, and you can imagine (for a few hours, at least) that you’ve stepped into such a world. Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance is a history of the visual and material practices of strategic concealment between the first publication of the Origin of Species and the end of WWII. Shell has structured the book around three historically and conceptually linked stages in the history of camouflage: static, serial, and dynamic. Each stage comes to us full of fascinating characters, from Abbott Thayer with his painted potatoes to Len Lye with his filmic tattoos of dancing color. The text is a fabric of words and images, interweaving reproductions of the photos and stencils and taxidermied creatures of Shell’s historical actors with her own work as a visual artist. There are tattoos. There are feather paintings. There is an overcoat owned by William James and there are aerial reconnaissance photos. This is an electric and surprising world, and one that is well worth visiting in the pages of Shell’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine a world wherein the people who wrote history books were artists, the books occasionally read like poetry, and the stories in them ranged from Monty Python skits to the natural history of chameleons to the making of classic sniper films. Pick up Hanna Rose Shell‘s new book, and you can imagine (for a few hours, at least) that you’ve stepped into such a world. Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance is a history of the visual and material practices of strategic concealment between the first publication of the Origin of Species and the end of WWII. Shell has structured the book around three historically and conceptually linked stages in the history of camouflage: static, serial, and dynamic. Each stage comes to us full of fascinating characters, from Abbott Thayer with his painted potatoes to Len Lye with his filmic tattoos of dancing color. The text is a fabric of words and images, interweaving reproductions of the photos and stencils and taxidermied creatures of Shell’s historical actors with her own work as a visual artist. There are tattoos. There are feather paintings. There is an overcoat owned by William James and there are aerial reconnaissance photos. This is an electric and surprising world, and one that is well worth visiting in the pages of Shell’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine a world wherein the people who wrote history books were artists, the books occasionally read like poetry, and the stories in them ranged from Monty Python skits to the natural history of chameleons to the making of classic sniper films. Pick up Hanna Rose Shell‘s new book, and you... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine a world wherein the people who wrote history books were artists, the books occasionally read like poetry, and the stories in them ranged from Monty Python skits to the natural history of chameleons to the making of classic sniper films. Pick up Hanna Rose Shell‘s new book, and you can imagine (for a few hours, at least) that you’ve stepped into such a world. Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance is a history of the visual and material practices of strategic concealment between the first publication of the Origin of Species and the end of WWII. Shell has structured the book around three historically and conceptually linked stages in the history of camouflage: static, serial, and dynamic. Each stage comes to us full of fascinating characters, from Abbott Thayer with his painted potatoes to Len Lye with his filmic tattoos of dancing color. The text is a fabric of words and images, interweaving reproductions of the photos and stencils and taxidermied creatures of Shell’s historical actors with her own work as a visual artist. There are tattoos. There are feather paintings. There is an overcoat owned by William James and there are aerial reconnaissance photos. This is an electric and surprising world, and one that is well worth visiting in the pages of Shell’s book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hanna Rose Shell, a historian and media artist, is as Assistant Professor in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at MIT. This was a talk about camouflage framed by the question of “how not to be seen”–in film, on film, as film. In the first part, Shell introduced “how not to be seen” in terms of the aspiration for, and actualization of concealment in both filmic and natural ecologies through mixed-media practices that simultaneously incorporate and subvert the photographic media of reconnaissance. In the second part, Shell screened and discussed her film-in-progress, called Blind, about the phenomenology of camouflage. Blind as in blindness, and blind as in that actively constructed structure intended for the concealment of a hunter from her game. Shell’s book Hide and Seek: Camouflage and the Media of Reconnaissance will be published by Zone Books.