RiVAL Radio: Recent Episodes
RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) is a research and creativity workshop for the radical imagination active around the world and locally in Thunder Bay, Canada.
On 27 May 2026, Max Haiven sat down with Manuela Zechner at Housman's books in London to discuss the latter's newly published book The Plot is on Fire: Care Struggles after Progress, Plantation and Patriarchy.From the book's publicity:As myths of progress and modernisation collapse in the relentless polycrisis of our time, how do we strengthen other plots—in community, practice and struggle? How do we come together as movements for earthcare?This book weaves stories, proposals, and analyses around a key domain of living reproduction in crisis: agriculture. Looking at peasant, indigenous, and transecofeminist practices, it formulates another plot on how we want to sustain life collectively—beyond progress, plantation, and patriarchy.Recovering and repurposing old and new technologies, and breaking down the division between rural and urban, the ground is made fertile for growing other futures. Alongside writers like Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler, this work of radical political theory raises critical questions about technology and storytelling, as matters of care and community.For more information about the book, visit: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/the-plot-is-on-fire/For more information about Common Ecologies and the Earthcare Fieldcast, visit: https://commonecologies.net/
Audio of the June 13 Berlin launch of Julio Linares' book Decolonizing Money: The Promise of Abolishing the US Dollar, hosted by Miho Soong and Jabi. The book is now out as part of the VAGABONDS series from Pluto Press.https://www.plutobooks.com/product/decolonizing-money/DECOLONIZING MONEY: THE PROMISE OF ABOLISHING THE US DOLLARBy Julio LinaresTo change the world, we need a money revolution. Yet the debate over money has been dominated by two perspectives: those free-market capitalists who want money to rule everything, and those who want the state to harness money’s power. Decolonizing Money presents an anarchist theory of money which sets out strategies for collective liberation beyond state and capital.Drawing on anarchist, abolitionist and anti-colonial feminist traditions, Julio Linares makes the heretical argument for a grassroots democratic movement to abolish the imperialist US dollar as a necessary step towards the cancellation of debt and establishing a worldwide basic income. Linares shows that money, beyond a store of value and a medium of exchange, is a series of promises a society makes to itself – and he challenges us to make them otherwise.This innovative book takes up lessons from global history and social movements in order to unleash the political imagination. It shows us how the creation, use and most importantly the destruction of money are forms of power that need to be reclaimed through direct action, as part of a radical democratic project for autonomy and self-determination.Julio César Linares is a community organizer and economic anthropologist born in the territories known today as Guatemala. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics where he studied and worked on projects with the late David Graeber. He serves as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). He lives in Berlin, Germany.
How can games be part of the struggle against fascism?Guests: Mark Bray (author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook) Marijam Did (author of Everything to Play For: How Video Games Are Changing the World)On 19 May 2026, Games Transformed (a festival for radical games and play) hosted an online event exploring What can games contribute to antifascist struggles? How can game designers think about antifascism?The event supported Games Transformed's 2026 game jam 'Smash the Fash' where digital and analog game-makers are invited to submit games and game ideas.At this free online event, Briar Dickey and Max Haiven interviewed the guests, and passed along questions from the audience. This event was supported by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.Mark Bray Mark Bray is a historian of Modern Europe at Rutgers University focusing on themes of radicalism, political violence, and, more recently, scams. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists and Martyrs in Spain and France among other works.Marijam Didžgalvytė is a Lithuanian-Tatar games industry critic dissecting the intersection between videogames and IRL politics. Her work has been published by the Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and others. Marijam was a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is currently a Senior Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning videogames studio. In the past, Marijam served as the Chair of Communications Committee for Game Workers Unite International - an organisation that assisted the global push for unionisation in the videogames industry; she also co-founded GWU UK - the first legal trade union that has come out of the movement. She is an author of Everything To Play For: How Videogames Are Changing The World published by Verso Books in 2024 with 8 translations.
Society in 2026. You can read it at https://maxhaiven.com/capitalismcheats/In a financialized world where we are all conscripted to be competitive players, the category of cheating takes on new political and cultural potency and has become key to reactionary ideology. This speculative essay moves beyond the conventional framing of cheating as the exceptional malfeasance of bad economic actors, as well as beyond the claim that capitalism’s drive to profit encourages dishonesty and manipulation (thought that is indeed true). Rather, it proposes we recognize cheating at capitalism’s ideological and operational core, not its periphery. By examining (1) imperialism’s ‘Great Game’, (2) the links between game theory and neoliberalism, and (3) the role of recursive rule-breaking in the history of finance, we can triangulate the normalization of cheating within the dominant economic paradigm. This essay approaches cheating as a discursive formation entangled with financial power. Such an approach can help us recognize some elements of the rise of reactionary, far-right, and fascistic sentiment and politics today. These in many cases revolve around a rhetoric of cheating that misrecognizes the culprits, targeting poor and precarious minorities rather than those at the commanding heights of the economy.
Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity. senseandsolidarity.org/Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025). www.sarahsteinlubrano.comMax Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022). maxhaiven.com/Music by Dan Gouly.
In this episode, we speak with Omar Zahzah about his new book Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, published by the Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. Our conversation touches on: the gamified collaboration between big-tech and the apparatus of mass murder and apartheid; the digital targeting, harassment and silencing of Palestinian solidarity organizers; the colonial violence invested in the algorithms that shape our lives (and deaths); and the way a profoundly transformative "Virtual Palestine" is created through the protagonism of those resisting genocide and their supporters around the world.Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, artist, musician, freelance journalist, and Assistant Professor of Arab, and Muslim, Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar is the former Education and Advocacy Coordinator for Eyewitness Palestine, a role that saw him training delegates to Palestine on Palestinian political history and culture and racial justice. Omar’s writing on Palestine has appeared in outlets such as The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, andThe Nation. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA.Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
Sarah indulges Max's controversial take that...- Students are workers- Use of ChatGPT and generative AI is the refusal of work- Workers can and should reclaim the means of study as part of a class warTHOUGHTSNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.http://senseandsolidarity.org/Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).http://www.sarahsteinlubrano.comMax Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).http://maxhaiven.com/Music by Dan Gouly.
In this episode we discuss the contradiction within games between gender play and fantasies to control and order; video games as reproductive technology; the playfulness of the far right which could be characterised as play without pleasure; how rulebreaking and gamebreaking play out in liberal democracy and fascism; and the possibilities of play and protest in antifascist practices and riotous revolution.Vicky Osterweil is a writer, worker and agitator based in Philadelphia. She is a founding member of the anarchist writing collective CAW, which can be found at cawshinythings.com She is the author of In Defense of Looting and the forthcoming book The Extended Universe: How Disney Destroyed the Movies and Took Over the World.Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
Sarah and Max try and figure out why everyone is so obsessed with (mis)counting babies. Of course, we talk about capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and much more.Here's what set us off:"The Birth-Rate Crisis Isn’t as Bad as You’ve Heard—It’s Worse" in The Atlantic."How does Low Fertility Affect Economic Growth, Worldwide?" in Rocking our Priors podcast****THOUGHTSNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.http://senseandsolidarity.org/Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).http://www.sarahsteinlubrano.comMax Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).http://maxhaiven.com/Music by Dan Gouly
Max and Sarah sketch a framework for understanding three core fascist motivations, based on Max's forthcoming book The Player and the Played: From Gamified Capitalism to 21st Century Fascism.- An OPPORTUNIST motivation to personally benefit from authoritarianism- A PARANOID fear that the "natural" order is collapsing- A PSYCHEDELIC infatuation with the power to bend and break realityTHOUGHT SNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity. https://senseandsolidarity.org/Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025). https://www.sarahsteinlubrano.comMax Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022). https://maxhaiven.com/Music by Dan Gouly.
In this episode, we discussed the concept of microfascism, which refers to everyday life practices, and intersubjective relations that establish power dynamics and form the organisation of desire. The yearning for and supplication to power is at work in everyone and must constantly be guarded against, for these are easily amenable to fascist organisations and movements. As the saying goes: “Kill the cop in your head!” We also discussed martial masculinity as it manifests in combat sports such as Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), as well as figures of such franchises such as Dana White, who is a close associate of Trump and many other fascist personalities.Jack Z. Bratich writes about the intersection of popular culture and political culture. He applies social and political theory to such topics as social movements, craft culture, patriarchal subjectivities, and the cultures of secrecy. He is professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University and author of On Microfascism: Gender, War, Death (Common Notions, 2022) and Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008). His latest publication is “What Can a Body Do(om)?: Fratriarchy’s Affects and the Capacities to Break Together” (2025) in Capacities to: Affect Up Against Fascism.Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
In this episode we talked about how we got from Gamergate to the far right fascist politics we’re seeing unleashed today. Gamergate refers to a strange phenomenon that occurred in 2014, where a group of video game fans used online platforms - from Reddit to 4Chan to Craigslist - to create a harassment campaign against feminist gamemakers and critics, making tactics like doxxing and shitposting widespread. Gamergate is a signature moment in the ascendency of the new far right. We spoke with Adrienne about how Silicon Valley and its economic framework gave rise to the platforms implicated in fascist movements like Gamergate; whether we are embroiled in the normalisation of dark play; and what the Left should be doing in the face of our servitude to privatised digital infrastructure.Adrienne Massanari is an Associate Professor at the School of Communication at American University and affiliate faculty with the AU Games Center. Her research interests include digital culture, platform politics, game studies, pop culture, and gender and race online. Her most recent book, "Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right" (MIT Press, 2024), discusses the connections between the far right, Silicon Valley, and gaming culture. She is also the author of "Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit" (Peter Lang, 2015).Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
A short selection from Max Haiven's forthcoming book The Player and the Played: How Gamified Capitalism led to 21st Century Fascism in which he goes over why it's fruitful for antifascists to keep three meanings of fascism in mind. For more information, visit http://maxhaiven.com
This episode was recorded as part of a live panel event at Pelican House on the 13 April 2025 celebrating the London launch of Max’s board game Billionaires and Guillotines, published by Pluto Press. In this episode we talked about the role of games and play in the coming revolution; the game mechanics of Billionaires & Guillotines and what its format might offer players; why Max chose the guillotine as the instrument of abolition; and we even played a game role-playing a war profiteer, an aristocrat and a tech overlord.Danny Dorling is Oxford geography professor and bestselling author of books including Seven Children: Inequality and Britain's Next Generation and Peak Injustice: Solving Britain’s Inequality Crisis.Meg Jayanth is an award-winning narrative and game designer whose credits include 80 Days, Sunless Sea and Horizon Zero Dawn.Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination, writer of books including Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts.Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
On 21 May 2025, Sarah Stein Lubrano, author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds sat down with Max Haiven at Berlin's Shakespeare and Sons bookshop."Democracy is dying because we are clinging to a dangerous and outdated myth: talking about politics can change people's minds. It doesn't.This provocative debut from a bold new voice combines a fascinating range of research to show us the psychological and sociological factors that really shape our politics.Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to community organizing and social infrastructure, she explores the actions that actually do change minds.In a world where politics keeps getting more irrational, dishonest, violent and chaotic, it's getting much harder to reach people with words alone. So people who really care about democracy must ask: how can we stop arguing and do the deep work to build stronger foundations for political life, and a better world for us all?"
In this episode, we talked about how fascism transforms itself in and across different historical conjunctures; how the far right uses race and gender as key points of articulation and why we should be engaging with psychoanalytic theories of fascism alongside radical anti-fascist thinkers; our current moment of transition as one of systemic instability, uncertainty and reorientation; and how in the contemporary moment of resurgent fascism, migration must be thought together with carcerality, especially when deportation has become the emblem of the Trump administration.Alberto Toscano is the author of Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea (Verso, 2010; 2017, 2nd ed.), Cartographies of the Absolute (with Jeff Kinkle, Zero Books, 2015), La abstracción real. Filosofia, estética y capital (Palinodia, 2021), Terms of Disorder: Keywords for an Interregnum (Seagull, 2023), Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis (Verso, 2023), and Communism in Philosophy: Essays on Alain Badiou and Toni Negri (Brill, 2025). He is the co-editor of the 3-volume The SAGE Handbook of Marxism (with Sara Farris, Bev Skeggs and Svenja Bromberg, SAGE, 2022), Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Abolition Geography: Essays in Liberation (with Brenna Bhandar, Verso, 2022), and Georges Bataille's Critical Essays, vols. I and II (with Benjamin Noys, Seagull, 2023 and 2025). He is series editor of Seagull Essays and The Italian List for Seagull Books, and a columnist for the magazine In These Times. He has also translated the work of Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou, Franco Fortini, and Furio Jesi.Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
On 28 April 2025, Max Haiven presented an outline of his forthcoming book "The Player and the Played: Gamification, Financialization and (anti-)Fascism" at Brussels' Au JUS space.If fascism names a form of tyranny that incubates within capitalism and bears its' traces, what kind of 21st century fascism emerges from financialized capitalism? 1. Why do we feel trapped in an unwinnable game?2. How can we think about fasicsm?3. What is financialization?4. What is gamification?5. What is "derivative" and what is new about today's fascism?6. How can we make sense of gamified fascist violence?7. Why do fascist cheats succeed (and why is cheating so central to their rhetoric?)8. What is fascist worldbuilding (and worldrazing)?9. What is the antifascist game?
In this episode we talked with Luce about her latest work on digitalised tyranny. About how private property structures the terms of the contract and gives rise to ever more terms; how the far right are both breaking the rules and playing by the rules to break the game; and about the overall structure of desire across society and what it’d mean to exit the transsexual contract of libidinal intelligibility, towards a horizon of hospitality and indeterminacy, driven by joy.Luce deLire is a ship with eight sails and she lies down by the quay. As a philosopher, she publishes on the metaphysics of infinity and early modern philosophy but also on art, queer theory, anti-racism, postcolonialism, and political theory. In her performances, she embodies figures of the collective imaginary. She is currently an assistant professor at the department of philosophy at Humboldt University, Berlin. For more (including booking), see getaphilosopher.com and IG :@Luce_deLire Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join host Max Haiven and producer Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right around the world using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.
In this short bonus episode...👹 We at Sense & Solidarity invite you to apply for our study workshop “Fascist Dreams, Antifascist Awakenings” in Palermo, May 25-29 (applications due April 7!).📘 Sarah tells you about her forthcoming book Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st Century Minds and events this Spring and Summer. 🎲 And Max tells you about the crowdfunding campaign on now for his board game Billionaires & Guillotines. 🖼️ Plus, we critique public art and muse about the end of the world.
The world is giving fascism in 2025, so we’ve been away writing, reading and getting ready to serve up more on that topic. Meanwhile, here’s a chattier, less-structured version of our usual schtick - recorded over the holidays, live in front of a studio (well, living room) audience. Tune in to hear: Sarah talk about why we shouldn’t argue with our relatives and why fascists are much like guys who send dick pics. Max explain how games influenced fascists like Steve Bannon and why he’s obsessed with a rat.We also get asked questions from the living-room-and-online-studio audience. For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/
Live, in front of a seductive studio audience, Sarah and Max bring to a climax the first intoxicating season of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) with an episode on PLEASURE.They are joined by dazzling special guests Sita Balani and Zrinka Balo, to explore salacious questions including: Should we prioritize activism being pleasurable? In a world of work and worry, is taking pleasure itself an important form of activism? And in our quest for collective liberation, what kinds of sacrifices can and should we expect of ourselves and others?It’s podcasting that goes beyond the pleasure principle and puts its finger right on the most sensitive questions.For more information, visit https://senseandsolidarity.org/
Why do so many people insist on believing in systems that hurt them? Why do so many of us dwell in fantasy, rather than facing reality? (Wait, is dwelling in fantasy an option? Why weren’t we told?) In this episode of WHAT DO WE WANT? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) Max and Sarah dive deep into the murky waters of FANTASY, desire and illusion to ask questions like: How do we break through destructive ideologies? How can we win arguments (and when should we)? And should we just abandon activism? Then we’re joined by veteran Toronto-based activist, movement trainer and editor Sharmeen Khan, who tells us about the state repression that broke her fantasies and what she dreams of now. It's podcasting that accompanies you right to the precipice of Mount Doom and helps you throw away your Precious.ACTION ALERT! Our guest, Sharmeen, is facing outrageous, repressive charges for standing up for Palestinian human rights. Read Naomi Klein’s summary of the case (https://breachmedia.ca/naomi-klein-calls-on-heather-reisman-drop-charges-indigo-11/), and please consider donating to the legal defence fund (https://www.tcjf.ca) or signing the letter demanding the charges be dropped (https://www.cjpme.org/drop_the_charges). To learn more about the many things we do and support us financially or otherwise, visit us at Sense and Solidarity .org
Do you sometimes feel like a little cartoon dog, surrounded by flames? Is the dog also our movements for justice? Are the flames systems of domination? Is nothing, in fact, at all “fine”?Then break out the marshmallows and join us for an episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart) about despair!This time Sarah and Max go deep and dark with questions like... Should we just give up hope? Should we embrace nostalgia?And should we stop being sad and… just do something?But wait! Who is that on the bleak horizon? It’s climate-corruption journalist Rachel Donald of the Planet Critical podcast, joining us to deliver the tough love and a shot of common courage!It’s podcasting that will make you feel cruelly optimistic or your money back (it’s also free). Fore more information, visit https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/#despair
Unless you are a lizard person hiding under a tin-foil rock, you, dear activist, have met your fair share of conspiracists.What the f*ck is wrong with these people? And why are they so damn successful in attracting others when their stories are so implausible?In this episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart), Max and Sarah sail to the farthest reaches of our beautiful flat earth to answer questions about CONSPIRACY like…What actually separates us radical malcontents from conspiracy theorists?Should movements have better enemies?And should we bother trying to drag people out of the rabbit-hole?Then ex-conspiracist and anti-conspiracy podcaster Brent Lee of Some Dare Call it Conspiracy patiently explains all the things we got wrong.It’s podcasting that wakes up the sheeple.For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/
“Heartbreak is at the heart of revolutionary consciousness” writes Gargi Bhattacharyya. So let’s get used to it! In this episode of What Do We Want? (a podcast about what brings social movements together and drives them apart), Sarah and Max ask the tear-jerking questions about movement breakups, wounded hearts and petty revenge fantasies.Should we try and hit on (recruit) everyone?How can we keep our movement romance alive (or should we fight about the kitchen)?And should we utter goblins have more schisms (and can we even help it)?Then, thank god, Black feminist writer and activist Lola Olufemi joins us to set the record queer.It’s podcasting that hits you like cheap wine and a romcom. Get back out there, tiger.For more information, visit: https://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast/
In this trailer, Max and Sarah discuss what motivated them to produce WHAT DO WE WANT? (a podcast about what draws movements together... and drives them apart) and what they're looking forward to in season 1, with episodes on heartbreak, conspiracy, despair, fantasy, shame and pleasure and special guests including Rachel Donald, Lola Olufemi, Brent Lee and Sophie Lewis.For more information, visit http://senseandsolidarity.org/podcast
What can speculative fiction offer today's movements for collective liberation?On this panel, assembled to celebrate the launch of The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers (http://afteramazon.world), four activist writing facilitators share their perspectives: Max Haiven (editor of the collection), Lola Olufemi, Phil Crockett Thomas, Sarah E. Truman, and Jamie Woodcock.This is a recording of an event that took place on 15 September 2024 at London’s Pelican House. This event is presented by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, Red Futures and Notes from Below.Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022) and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020). He is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. Phil Crockett Thomas writes fiction and poetry, and teaches sociology and criminology at the University of Stirling. Her research focuses on social harm, justice, and creative and collaborative methods. Her fiction has appeared in Granta and on BBC Radio 4. She is the editor of Abolition Science Fiction (2022) a collection of creative writing by activists and scholars involved in the movement for prison abolition in the U.K, and of The Moon Spins the Dead Prison (2022) with Thomas Abercromby and Rosie Roberts.Associate Professor Sarah E. Truman is a trans-disciplinary scholar in literary education, cultural studies, and the arts, and co-director the Literary Education Lab at University of Melbourne. From 2022-2025, Dr. Truman is an ARC DECRA Fellow, their project ‘Speculative Futures’ focuses on speculative fiction as an interdisciplinary method for thinking about the world and mode of literary engagement in diverse pedagogical settings (high schools, universities, and interdisciplinary scholarship). Truman is also PI on the ARC Linkage Grant ‘Reading Climate’ (2024-2026) which focuses on the relationship between Indigenous climate fictions, literary education, and climate justice. Jamie Woodcock is a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London. He is the author of various books, including the recent Star Wars Andor collection. He is an editor of Red Futures, Notes from Below, and Historical Materialism.
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
The World After Amazon is a collection of 9 short speculative stories, written by rank-and-file workers at the corporation that has transformed the way we read and so much more.Amazon's sci-fi propaganda tells the story of a company using cutting-edge technology to deliver a utopia of cheap consumer convenience. But its workers pay the price, toiling in dystopian conditions to create a future that will exclude them. What happens when those workers reclaim the radical imagination and their power to tell their own stories?The World After Amazon can be ordered in print or read or downloaded online for free, and is also available as a podcast and audiobook.For more information, visit http://afteramazon.world. Book editors: Xenia Benivolksi, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola and Graeme WebbNarrator: Sook-Yin LeeEditing and music: Robert SteenkamerIllustrations: Amanda PriebePublisher: RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab
This podcast is a collaboration with Stefan Christoff of Free City Radio (freecityradio.org/)========================Capitalism’s sacrifice of humanity:An interview series produced for broadcast on Free City Radio by Stefan Christoff in consultation and collaboration with Max Haiven, for broadcast on Free City Radio.This program is the second in a series of 3 interviews that aim to examine contemporary capitalism as dependent on economic models that necessitate large levels of human sacrifice.These programs are supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.A series of voices that speak to both the frontlines of struggles that are confronting the realities of colonial capitalism that speaks to the fact that humans are being rendered up for sacrifice to capitalism. Palestine is an example and also the prison industrial complex.On this edition we speak with Max Haiven who outlines some of the research shared in "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire" a book published by Pluto Press. Max also speaks about the importance of building cultural understanding around the fact that capitalism in the current format is inherently tied to a reliance of sacrificial populations and looks into the example of prisoners.For more information on Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire visit:www.plutobooks.com/9780745345826/palm-oilAccompanying music is by Anarchist Mountains. Thanks to the Social Justice Centre for supporting my work on this weekly program.Free City Radio is hosted and produced by Stefan @spirodon Christoff and airs on @radiockut 90.3FM at 11am on Wednesdays and @cjlo1690 AM in Tiohti:áke/Montréal on Wednesdays at 8:30am. On @ckuwradio 95.9FM in Winnipeg at 10:30pm on Tuesdays. On @cfrc 101.9FM in Kingston, Ontario at 11:30am on Wednesdays. Also it broadcasts on @cfuv 101.9 FM in Victoria, BC on Wednesdays at 9am and Saturdays at 7am, as well as Met Radio 1280 AM in Toronto at 5:30am on Fridays. Now Free City Radio will also be broadcasting on CKCU FM 93.1 in Ottawa on Tuesdays at 2pm, tune-in!
This podcast is a collaboration with Stefan Christoff of Free City Radio (freecityradio.org/)========================Capitalism’s sacrifice of humanity:An interview series produced for broadcast on Free City Radio by Stefan Christoff in consultation and collaboration with Max Haiven, for broadcast on Free City Radio.This program is the second in a series of 3 interviews that aim to examine contemporary capitalism as dependent on economic models that necessitate large levels of human sacrifice.These programs are supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.A series of voices that speak to both the frontlines of struggles that are confronting the realities of colonial capitalism that speaks to the fact that humans are being rendered up for sacrifice to capitalism. Palestine is an example and also the prison industrial complex.On this edition we speak with scholar Keren Wang, author of "Legal and Rhetorical Foundations of Economic Globalization: An Atlas of Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism." Keren points to layers of analysis in relation to the world economy today that illustrate the inherently sacrificial nature of capitalism, specifically we speak about the fast fashion industry and the example of the textile industry fires at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh. Also we speak about the ways that the military industrial complex corporations benefit from the brutal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza.Learn more about Keren's book here:www.routledge.com/Legal-and-Rhetor…ok/9780367727826Accompanying music is by Anarchist Mountains. Thanks to the Social Justice Centre for supporting my work on this weekly program.Free City Radio is hosted and produced by Stefan @spirodon Christoff and airs on @radiockut 90.3FM at 11am on Wednesdays and @cjlo1690 AM in Tiohti:áke/Montréal on Wednesdays at 8:30am. On @ckuwradio 95.9FM in Winnipeg at 10:30pm on Tuesdays. On @cfrc 101.9FM in Kingston, Ontario at 11:30am on Wednesdays. Also it broadcasts on @cfuv 101.9 FM in Victoria, BC on Wednesdays at 9am and Saturdays at 7am, as well as Met Radio 1280 AM in Toronto at 5:30am on Fridays. Now Free City Radio will also be broadcasting on CKCU FM 93.1 in Ottawa on Tuesdays at 2pm, tune-in!
This podcast is a collaboration with Stefan Christoff of Free City Radio (https://freecityradio.org/)========================Capitalism’s sacrifice of humanity:An interview series produced for broadcast on Free City Radio by Stefan Christoff in consultation and collaboration with Max Haiven, for broadcast on Free City Radio.This program is the first in a series of 3 interviews that aim to examine contemporary capitalism as dependent on economic models that necessitate large levels of human sacrifice.These programs are supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.A series of voices that speak to both the frontlines of struggles that are confronting the realities of colonial capitalism that speaks to the fact that humans are being rendered up for sacrifice to capitalism. Palestine is an example and also the prison industrial complex.On this edition we speak to activist scholar Nick Partyka who works with the Hampton Institute. In this conversation we review some of the main ideas that Nick articulated in an excellent article entitled "Capitalism as a Form of Human Sacrifice: The Comedy of Innocence and The Comedy of Guilt."Read the full article here:www.hamptonthink.org/read/capitalis…omedy-of-guiltAccompanying music is by Anarchist Mountains. Thanks to the Social Justice Centre for supporting my work on this weekly program.Free City Radio is hosted and produced by Stefan @spirodon Christoff and airs on @radiockut 90.3FM at 11am on Wednesdays and @cjlo1690 AM in Tiohti:áke/Montréal on Wednesdays at 8:30am. On @ckuwradio 95.9FM in Winnipeg at 10:30pm on Tuesdays. On @cfrc 101.9FM in Kingston, Ontario at 11:30am on Wednesdays. Also it broadcasts on @cfuv 101.9 FM in Victoria, BC on Wednesdays at 9am and Saturdays at 7am, as well as Met Radio 1280 AM in Toronto at 5:30am on Fridays. Now Free City Radio will also be broadcasting on CKCU FM 93.1 in Ottawa on Tuesdays at 2pm, tune-in!
What is the anti-capitalist game? For several decades, Jay Jordan and Isa Fremeaux of the game-changing Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination have been using play and games as methods of class war: from the disruptive frivolity of Reclaim the Streets marches to a Carnival Against Capitalism that shut down the London Stock Exchange; from the Climate Games that crowdsourced playful interventions against greenwashing to the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. On the final episode of "The Exploits of Play" we speak to Jay and Isa about their past “work” as well as their current activities, including at the ZAD: the autonomous “zone to defend” at Notre Dame de Landes, near Nantes, France, the subject of their 2021 book We Are Nature Defending Itself.Jay Jordan is co-founder of Reclaim the Streets (1995-2000) and the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and co-author of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism (Verso, 2003) and A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible (Minor Compositions, 2011). Isabelle Fremeaux is a popular educator and action researcher. She was formerly Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College London. Along with Jay Jordan, she is a coordinator of The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. Together, they are the authors of "We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones" from Pluto Press in 2021. That book details their role in the struggle for the ZAD: an autonomous community in Western France that for decades fought back against state repression and is today a beacon of hope for radical ecological activists in that country and around the world.For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
What if we handed some of the most consequential decisions about the future of humanity and the planet to a bunch of game-obsessed nerds? From artificial intelligence to the future of money, from the way we find love to the way we come to know our bodies and communities, Silicon Valley has become one of the most revolutionary and transformative forces of our times. What games do they play? In this episode Christian Nagler helps us understand with a deep dive into the ideology and fantasy of the “longevity community” seeking to leverage unimaginable wealth and technological utopianism to beat death at its own game.Christian Nagler is a writer and artist. His work looks at (and performs) the imbrications of embodiment and global economics both in his everyday life and in projects like Market Fitness, and Yoga for Adjuncts he researches critical ethnography, political theory, and media and cultural studies at UC Berkeley.For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
In an age when our most intimate connections with others are mediated by gamified interfaces, it’s high time to revisit how the game of love became the plaything of capital. Alfie Bown joins us for episode 8 to explore the joys and horrors of the ero-tech and the burning question: can hookup apps, dating sims and thirst traps can be reclaimed for the common good?Alfie Bown is editor of "Everyday Analysis" and "Sublation Magazine". His books include Post Comedy, which is forthcoming in 2024, Dream Lovers, Capitalism and the Gamification of Relationships from 2022, Post Memes from 2019 and the PlayStation Dream World from 2017.For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
On the blockbuster "reality" tv show "Love Island," an even number of conventionally attractive cis men and women compete to partner up and win the audience's affection in a spectacle that, like most of its kind, sees producers push heteronormative cliches to their absurd and humiliating limits. On this episode, theorist and author Sophie Lewis joins us to explore the show's popularity in a late capitalism era marked by pervasive "heteropessimism" and the relentless gamification of romance.Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic, freelance writer, and independent scholar with teaching affiliations at Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. In 2022, they published Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation from Verso and they have an upcoming book called Enemy Feminisms set to be published in 2025 from Haymarket Books.For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
The worldwide gaming market is estimated at $347 billion. That's a hefty chunk of change, power and influence which lies in the hands of an exceptionally few game makers primarily in the global north. How does the culture of an industry like gaming leak into the broader political sphere? Episode 6 of "The Exploits of Play" features guest Thiago Falcão who is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Digital Media at the Federal University of Paraíba. He is the current president of the Brazilian chapter of the Digital Games Research Association - Digra, which he helped found in 2022. He researches the relationships between entertainment, video games, and neoliberal capitalism, with a broad focus on issues related to work, politics, and financialization dynamics in these media.For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
Race and capitalism have always shaped one another, but what do we make of their relationship in an age when both systems increasingly toy with our lives in apocalyptic ways? How has the rhetoric of the cheat become part of a vicious racist reactionary politics, and what's the role of humour and fun in the struggle for a better world?Gargi Bhattacharyya lives and works in London. She writes on issues of systemic injustice, racial capitalism, social reproduction, climate crisis and collective survival and is the author of The Futures of Racial Capitalism (2024), Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2018) and Dangerous Brown Men (2008).THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven. For full transcript and show notes please visit weirdeconomies.com.Credits:Founder and organizer of Weird Economies: Bahar NoorizadehHost: Max HaivenProducer: Halle FrostSound editor: Faye HarveySponsor: Canada Council for the Arts
Leading game scholar, game designer and game company impresario Mary Flanagan joins us to talk about themes in her new book (co-authoered with Mikael Jakobsson) Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games. Along the way we speak about the yet fully realized potential of games to transform society.Mary Flanagan is an artist, author, educator, and designer who pioneered the field of game research with her ideas on critical play. She is the founding director of the research laboratory and design studio Tiltfactor Lab, a professor of Digital Humanities at Dartmouth College and the CEO of the board game company Resonym which publishes original games and goods for social innovation.
From Squid Game to Hunger Games to Fortnite, how did the trope of cruel, inescapable games become so central to the stories that animate 21st century neoliberal capitalism? With tom Boland We explore how the game changes the player and how this fits into western literature's beloved 'character arc', as well as the new-age obsession with personal transformation. More information: weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-playTHE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.Tom Boland is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University College Cork. His main research interests are in critique, culture, unemployment and welfare though recently Dr. Boland has been interested in the proliferance of dystopian games media such as The Hunger Games and “Squid Game”.
From military strategy to the corporate imaginary, from public policy to the worldview of Big Tech, game theory has dramatically reshaped power and the way live. On this second episode of THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY we speak with S. L. Amadae about how game theory and its elemental puzzle, the prisoner's dilemma, won the war for our hearts and minds, and the dire consequences for our world. More information: weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-playTHE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.Dr. Sonja Amadae teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University of Helsinki and works as a research affiliate at MIT. Dr. Amadae writes on the foundations of liberalism and the philosophy and history of political economy. Her 2016 book, Prisoners of Reason: Game Theory and Neoliberal Political Economy as well as an earlier book, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism shows us the world that game theory built and how this model of human behavior became so prevalent.Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).
On this first episode of THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY we speak with Hugh Davies about alternate reality games and gaming and the paranoid world of conspiracism.More information: https://weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-playTHE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.Dr. Hugh Davies is an artist, curator, and researcher. Working across digital media, academic scholarship, and creative practice, he explores the social, cultural, and political dimensions of art and technology. He’s written two books on game culture and ethnographies of play and is currently a research fellow with a focus on Chinese Platform Studies at RMIT in Melbourne.Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).
This essay, which explores histories of the corporation, race and (intellectual) property regimes, appeared in a catalogue published to accompany Danish artist Hannibal Andersen’s 2022 exhibition The Abstract Expression of Privatization. In that work, an installation and a large mural explored corporate claims to the ownership of certain colours. The full essay can be read here:https://maxhaiven.com/colour-corporations-and-other-fictions/
Amazon, a corporation that is by some estimates the world's largest private employer, has succeeded in part because of a kind of sci-fi storytelling that places the firm at the forefront of capitalism, technology and human achievement. But if it presents a utopian narrative of itself, its workers pay the price, many of them toiling in dystopian conditions to create a profit-driven future that will exclude or exploit them.The Worker as Futurist Project supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write and publish short, speculative fiction about "the world after Amazon." It is undertaken in solidarity with workers' and communities' struggles around the world against a corporation whose wealth and power, today, rivals or exceeds that of many states. But beyond just fighting back, the Worker as Futurist project aims to reclaim the imagination of what the world might yet be if workers, rather than bosses, got to decide.In this presentation, the project's initiator, Dr. Max Haiven (Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University) speaks at the 2023 Historical Materialism Conference (London) about the origins, inspirations, goals and progress of the project.In particular, Haiven focuses on the project in the context of methodologies of "workers' inquiry" and militant inquiry more broadly, in which researchers play the role of facilitators creating space and time for an analysis of the changing nature of capitalism to emerge from those who experience its cutting edge directly: workers at firms like Amazon.For more information about the project, visit: https://reimaginingvalue.ca/waf/
Steven Shaviro is a cultural critic and leading theorist of the social roles of science fiction and author of many books, including The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (2014) and Discognition (2016). His book on science fiction, Fluid Futures, will be published in 2024. In this interview, he helps us understand the history of science fiction and its potentials to critique dominant power relations.http://www.shaviro.com/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org reimaginingvalue.ca
In the thick of the pandemic, Montreal-based writer and organizer Mostafa Henaway worked at an Amazon fulfillment centre to learn how "essential" workers were made disposable in the name of corporate profits. In this episode, he shares stories and critical reflections on the sci-fi nature of Amazon's brand of capitalism, and the implications for workers' organizing and resistance. He concludes with vital thoughts on how this is connected to a broader story of imperialism that also encompasses the ongoing nightmare in Gaza.Mostafa Henaway, a Canadian-born Egyptian, is a long-time community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, where he has been organizing for justice for immigrant/migrant workers for over two decades. He is also a researcher and PhD candidate at Concordia University. His book Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class was published in 2023. https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/essential-work-disposable-workersThe Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. http://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative http://workersspeculativesociety.org http://reimaginingvalue.ca
Heike Geissler is a prominent German novelist and writer who lives and works in Leipzig, once a major city in communist former "East Germany." Today, it is a major logistics hub for Amazon and site of the "reunified" country's first strike against the American corporation in 2013.In her 2014 memoir Saisonarbeit (published in English in 2018 as Seasonal Associate), Geissler meditates on the months she spent working at an Amazon fulfillment centre in 2010 and what it tells us about work under capitalism today. https://www.heikegeissler.de/ https://spectorbooks.com/de/buch/saisonarbeit https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900439/seasonal-associate/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org reimaginingvalue.ca
Since 2011, the poet Mark Nowak has been facilitating rank-and-file workers' writing through the Workers Writers School. In collaboration with PEN, trade unions and other organizations, the WSS's workshops "create a space for participants to re-imagine their working lives, nurture new literary voices directly from the global working class, and produce new tactics and imagine new futures for working class social change." On this episode, Mark joins us along with long-time participant Lorraine Garnett, who reads several of her poems and discusses the School's impact on her life. https://www.workerwriters.org/https://pen.org/worker-writers-school/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org* reimaginingvalue.ca
How has writing been part of the coming-to-consciousness of the working class and our ability to imagine and fight for different futures? We speak with Jamie Woodcock, senior lecturer of management at the University of Essex about the history of Workers' Inquiry, a method where intellectuals and workers collaborate to learn about the changing nature of capitalism and his own project, Notes From Below, which supports workers to write about their experiences. We also discuss his initiative Red Futures, a magazine of Marxist and radical science fiction.https://www.jamiewoodcock.net/https://notesfrombelow.org/https://www.redfuturesmag.com/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org* reimaginingvalue.ca
Cory Doctorow is an essayist, novelist, activist, and public intellectual whose work focuses on themes of technology, intellectual property and the prospects for freedom in our digital age. Since the 1990s he’s been on the forefront of struggles for the rights of creators, including ongoing work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Today, he is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Locus, and many other publications. In this interview, we speak about his recent book (co-authored with Rebecca Giblin)Chokepoint Capitalism and the grave threats that Amazon and other huge corporations pose to creative freedom and the wellbeing of authors and the world. We also speak about his own career as a speculative fiction writer and the politics of the genre in an age when capitalism is getting pretty dystopian. https://craphound.com/ https://chokepointcapitalism.com/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org* reimaginingvalue.ca
Co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Canada and the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, Syrus Marcus Ware explores the importance of future imagining for Black, queer, trans, disability and collective liberation projects. He speaks to us about the importance of speculative fiction for social movement organizers and radical dreamers. Syrus is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University whose work in curation, painting, installation and performance has been widely exhibited in Canada and internationally. Their writing (fiction, non-fiction and academic) can be found in many leading and grassroots venues. https://www.syrusmarcusware.com/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org reimaginingvalue.ca
Léonicka Valcius is a literary agent specializing in championing the work of racialized and equity-seeking writers in genres including YA fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, kid lit, romance and sci-fi. In this interview, Léonicka breaks down how the publishing industry is changing and the consequences, good and bad, for emerging authors trying to disrupt the dominant scripts of the fantastic and futuristic. https://www.leonicka.com/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org reimaginingvalue.ca
Amazon presents its "revolution" in logistics as a bloodless technological coup against the forces of convention, waged in the name of customer satisfaction. But in Alessandro Delfanti's book The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon, the University of Toronto professor reveals that its labour exploitation all the way down. In this episode he helps us understand the stakes of a struggle not only for workers' rights, but for the future of technology. https://delfanti.org/ https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342177/the-warehouse/The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org* reimaginingvalue.ca
In his 2020 memoir Black Water, award-winning author David A. Robertson reflects on how his Cree heritage and his family's survival of colonialism has shaped his imagination. In this conversation, he speaks of the joys and challenges of writing speculative fiction for adults and children, informed by Indigenous worldviews and struggles. Approaching fiction as a work of community-building, he speaks to the need for courage to push back against dominant narratives.Robertson is author of numerous bestselling books for readers of many ages in a wide diversity of imaginative genres. In 2021 he received the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award and was named Globe and Mail Children's Storyteller of the Year. He has won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award several times. https://www.darobertson.ca/ https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/425-kiwewThe Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative workersspeculativesociety.org* reimaginingvalue.ca
The legendary thinker and radical historian Robin DG Kelley joins us to discuss the importance of the radical imagination and the history of workers' writing. Kelley is author of many books on the history of labour and anti-racist struggles, and about luminary proletarian creative figures. These include: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. In this conversation, Kelley explains how, in the face of corporate and capitalist power, which has never failed to mobilize racism, working people have consistently turned to the written word as a tool of solidarity and a means to demand a different future. In an age of digital capitalism where corporations like Amazon dominate the market for books, films and other "content," reclaiming the power to create and share works of the imagination are more important than ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Kelley http://www.beacon.org/Freedom-Dreams-P1855.aspxThe Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative http://workersspeculativesociety.org* http://reimaginingvalue.ca
Amazon's exploitation of data, robotics, and workers has created a breathtaking global empire. Charmaine Chua, a labour organizer with Amazonians United and an assistant professor at University of California Santa Barbara's Department of Global Studies, is uniquely well qualified to guide us through what that means, for workers and for the world. Her work focuses on the ways working people resist and build solidarity against what can seem like insurmountable odds. https://www.charmainechua.com/ https://www.amazoniansunited.org/ https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/charmaine-chuaThe Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is trying to build and the workers, writers, and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon." It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative http://workersspeculativesociety.org http://reimaginingvalue.ca
In Marc McGurls " Everything and Less" the Stanford University professor of American literature explores the fate of the novel in the "Age of Amazon." Well known for his illuminating studies of the institutions that surround how we read and write, McGurl turns his attention to what he suggests may be the most important shift in literature in our moment: the fact that, today, one corporation has disproportionate control over the market for books and especially e-books. In this interview, we consider the consequences for readers, writers and the future of the written word. https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2769-everything-and-less https://english.stanford.edu/people/mark-mcgurlThe Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon". It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer. https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative http://workersspeculativesociety.org* http://reimaginingvalue.ca
For 15 years Brent Lee not only believed in conspiracy theories but helped produce and popularize them. Today, he warns others about both the danger and the appeal of conspiratorial world-building. We have been taught to imagine that people fall into the proverbial "rabbit hole" because of isolation, idiocy and paranoia. But in this interview, Brent explains how he and many others came to it from through critical thinking, skepticism towards the operations of social power and empathy with those who were suffering. We explore with him why he stayed in the conspiracy world thanks, in part, to the sense of righteous community it provided. And we cover how the right-wing weaponization of conspiracy theories in the mid-2010s triggered Brent's exit from the community. Today, motivated by contrition for what he helped create and compassion for those who, like him, are taken in, he dedicates his time to helping those inside and outside conspiracy worlds understand and challenge them.
Brent Lee, a former conspiracist who now seeks to challenge and reveal the lures and dangers of conspiracism, maintains a blog (http://brentleetv.blogspot.com/) and a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/BrentLeeTV) and can often be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BrentLeeSDCIC). His new podcast Some Dare Call it Conspiracy, dedicated to reverse-engineering conspiracy theories, launched in June 2022 (https://anchor.fm/somedarecallitconspiracy)
How do today's videogames inherit and reiterate colonial ideologies, tropes and ways of seeing the world? Can such games be played “against the grain" in ways that defy the colonial script? We speak with Souvik Mukherjee.
Dr Souvik Mukherjee is assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, India. Souvik’s research looks at the narrative and the literary through the emerging discourse of videogames as storytelling media and at how these games inform and challenge our conceptions of narratives, identity and culture, especially in Postcolonial contexts. Souvik is the author of two monographs, Videogames and Storytelling: Reading Games and Playing Books (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back (Springer UK 2017). He is also the co-editor (with Dr Emil Hammar) of the special issue ‘Postcolonial Perspectives in Videogames’. Souvik was named a ‘DiGRA Distinguished Scholar’ in 2019 by the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA)
For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
The line separating conspiracy theories from "legitimate" political discourse or critical theory is far from sharp. Renowned scholars Peter Knight and Clare Birchall join us to to reveal what's at stake and the broader (neoliberal capitalist) context.
Clare Birchall is Reader in Contemporary Culture at King’s College London. She is the author of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip and Radical Secrecy: The Ends of Transparency in Datafied America. With Peter Knight, she is writing a book on Covid-19 conspiracy theories, which is the result of a one year AHRC grant on the topic.
Peter Knight is professor of American Studies at the University of Manchester. His research is on conspiracy theories, and the economic humanities. He is the author of Conspiracy Culture (2000), The Kennedy Assassination (2007), and Reading the Market (2016). He is editor of Conspiracy Nation (2002), Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia (2004), and The Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020). He directed the EU-funded Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories network, and a project funded by the AHRC on conspiracy theories and the pandemic. He is currently leading “Everything Is Connected,” an AHRC-funded team project examining how conspiracy theories have changed in the age of the internet.
The left's relationship with games is "complicated." We're joined by labour organizer, YouTuber, writer and teacher Marijam Didžgalvytė to explain why, and what can be done about it.
Marijam Didžgalvytė is a creator of content at the intersection between videogames and politics. She lectures at the Royal Holloway, University of London and is a Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning games studio. Didžgalvytė has helped form both the British and International chapters of the game unionisation movement and organizes antifascist gaming events. She has been shortlisted for GamesIndusty.biz's 100 Women in Games 2019 and was nominated Campaigner of the Year at MCV UK Awards 2019. Her writing has been commissioned for publications including Vise, the Guardian, Kotaku and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and she ha sconsulted for Tate, V & A Galleries, Birkbeck, the European Humanities University and Indiecade.
With game designer and professor Paolo Pedercini we explore the possibility of anti-capitalist games and what's behind today's conspiracy movements.
Paolo Pedercini is a game developer, curator and educator. He teaches digital media production and experimental game design at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Since 2003 he works under the project name “Molleindustria” producing provocative games addressing issues of social and environmental justice, religion, and labor and sexuality. Paolo is the director of LIKELIKE, a neo-arcade devoted to independent games and playful art in Pittsburgh, PA.
Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan of the Laboratory for the Insurectionary Imagination present their 2021 book We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones published by the RiVAL-affiliated VAGABONDS series of Pluto Press in cooperation with the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest
For a video version of this talk, please visit: https://youtu.be/4rcJjws1tlk
Information about the book: https://vagabonds.xyz/wandi/ Purchase the book worldwide: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345871/we-are-nature-defending-itself/ Information about the authors: https://www.labo.zone/ ============
In 2008, as the storms of the financial crash started to blow, Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan deserted the metropolis and their academic jobs, embarking on a journey across Europe in search for postcapitalist utopias. They wanted their art activism to no longer be uprooted.
They arrived at a place French politicians had declared “lost to the republic”, known by those who inhabited it as la ZAD (the ‘zone to defend’): a messy but extraordinary canvas of commoning, illegally occupying 4,000 acres of wetlands where an international airport was planned.
In 2018, the 40-year-long struggle snatched an incredible victory, defeating the infrastructure project through a powerful cocktail that merged creation and resistance.
The following piece by Max Haiven, A. T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou was pubished in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Saturday, 13 November 2021 and is available here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/whither-harmony-square-conspiracy-games-in-late-capitalism
We're joined by Keir Milburn joins us to talk about the rise of the cosmic right and their conspiritual weirdness, as well as the fate of the acid left and the role of games in revolutionary movements.
Keir Milburn is a longtime political activist from the UK. He spent over a decade teaching political economy and organization but now works on municipalism, economic democracy and political economy for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. His most recent book is Generation Left. He is a member of the Red Plenty Games Collective and co-hosts the #ACFM podcast on Novara Media.
Ruth and Marc of Furtherfield Gallery join us to talk about the connections between art, games and revolutions in everyday life and technology.
Furtherfield disrupts and democratises art and technology through exhibitions, labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free thinking and is London’s longest-running (de)centre for art and technology whose mission is to disrupt and democratise through deep exploration, open tools and free-thinking. Ruth Catlow is its co-founding artistic director and has spent 20 years exploring games, and more recently Live Action Role Play as a way of engaging people's imaginations and expertise across silos, around emerging technologies and the wicked social and political problems they give rise to or intensify. Catlow is the founder of DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab crowdsourcing R&D by leading artists, using blockchain and web 3.0 technologies for fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies. She is also PI at the Blockchain Lab at the Serpentine Galleries R&D Platform. Marc Garrett is a co-founder of Furtherfield ho has curated over 60 contemporary Media Art exhibitions and projects in the UK and internationally. Heb is recently the co-editor of the books Artists Re: thinking the Blockchain, State Machines: Reflections & Actions at the Edge of Digital Citizenship, Finance, & Art and Frankenstein Reanimated: Art and Life in the 21st Century.
A wide-ranging conversation with Aleena Chia about the labour of fans, the joys of rabbit-holing, con/spirituality communities and the importance of democratic engagement.
Aleena Chia is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University and incoming Lecturer of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. She researches cultures of creativity such as automation in digital game production, lucid dreaming in Consciousness Hacking communities of practice, and wellness ideologies in social media disconnection. She is co-author of TechnoPharmacology (University of Minnesota Press/ Meson Press, forthcoming) and has published in journals such as the Journal of Fandom Studies and Television and New Media. - http://aleenachia.org/
For more information about the podcast visit http://conspiracy.games
A feminist care conspiracy? An artwork transmogrified into a world-wide secret society? A free anti-capitalist social technology? A revolutionary pyramid scheme? Cassie Thornton shares The Hologram project: a ferminist, peer-to-peer social technology for collective health and rebellion (thehologram.xyz).
Cassie Thornton (feministeconomicsdepartment.com) is an artist and activist who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience, and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). Her new book, The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future, is available from Pluto Press (https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343327/the-hologram). She is currently the co-director of the Re-Imagining Value Action Lab (reimaginingvalue.ca) in Thunder Bay, an art and social centre at Lakehead University in Ontario, Canada.
A wide-ranging conversation with acclaimed and bestselling author, essayist and podcaster Hari Kunzru centring on his 2020 novel Red Pill.
Born in London, Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission, My Revolutions, Gods Without Men, and White Tears, as well as a short story collection, Noise and a novella, Memory Palace. His new novel Red Pill was published in September 2020. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College Oxford, and has received fellowships from the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. He is the host of the podcast Into The Zone, from Pushkin Industries. He lives in New York City.
We are caught between two wars of restoration: the far-right, seeking to return us to a fabled past and a liberal capitalist "centre" demanding more business as usual. Between these two, dark new "conspiracy theories" breed, especially among men, which reinforce the worst of patriarchy, with deadly effect...
Jack Bratich is professor of Journalism and Media Studies at the Rutgers School of Communications and Information. His research focuses on themes including the interface of political culture and popular culture, conspiracy panics, surveillance, journalism, activism, and the production of truth. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008).
How have governments and other powerful forces conspired against Black people in "North America" since the colonial invasion? How are fears about conspiracy theorizies displaced onto Black and racialized people? How do we separate the real conspiratorial functions of power from dangerous conspiracy fantasies?
El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and abolitionist activist living in K'jipuktuk (Halifax, Canada). She is a two-time Canadian national spoken word champion and served as Halifax's poet laureate from 2013-15.
We speak to Brian van Slyke of the TESA Collective about how board games have become an important part of the social movement ecosystem and what it takes to design a game that contributes to today's struggles for racial, social and economic justice.
The TESA Collective is a 10-year old worker cooperative that designs and manufactures games for social movements. Their most recent game, “STRIKE! The Game of Worker Rebellion,” builds on a long legacy including “Space Cats Fight Fascism”, “Rise Up: The Game of People & Power”, and “Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives.” Brian Van Slyke is a co-founder, lead designer and head of games for the collective.
Is it wise to approach today's rise in conspiracy fantasies as a form of dangerous play? The Conspiracy Games and Countergames team (Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, A.T. Kingsmith and Max Haiven) kick off the inaugural session of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab's 2021 Summer Institute (reimaginingvalue.ca/cgcg). They discuss anxiety, financialization and the game they're working on: DEEP STATE.
Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou is Associate Professor of Sociology at University College London, where he leads the Sociology and Social Theory Research Group. He is the author of Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World (University of Chicago Press, 2021). His current book project, tentatively titled ‘Winning in the Real Fake’, is an intellectual history of conspiracy in finance capitalism.
A.T. Kingsmith is PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics at York University and Co-founder of EiQ Technologies, an emotion-AI start-up based out of the Design Fabrication Zone in the Creative Innovation Studio at Ryerson University. His forthcoming monograph, Anxiety as a Weapon: An Affective Approach to Political Economy, explores new modes for transforming the mental health landscape. For more, see atkingsmith.com.
Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice and co-director of the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) at Lakehead University. His recent books include Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts and Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization. More information can be found at maxhaiven.com.
Rebecca Rouse joins us to discuss the use and misuse of empathy in games and the ways games and gaming can be profound platforms for individual and social transformation.
Rebecca Rouse, PhD is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Game Development at the University of Skövde, Sweden. Rouse’s research focuses on both the history and practice of storytelling with new technologies. Rouse creates projects for museums, heritage sites, interactive installation, movable books, and theatrical performance, all with the thread of investigating and inventing new modes of storytelling, as well as accompanying historical research into connections of today’s emerging media with technologies of the past. If you’re curious to learn more about Dr. Rouse’s work, check out her website at RebeccaRouse.com.
Marcus Gilroy-Ware explores how conspiratorial thinking thrives in a digital neoliberal world where truth is sold to the highest bidder and where alienation is rampant.
Marcus Gilroy-Ware is a writer and scholar-activist who is focused on understanding how people learn about the world they live in through media. His work draws connections between a variety of fields, from political economy, to psychology, to journalism studies, to theorise the status of information in the late-capitalist public sphere. He is senior lecturer in digital media at UWE Bristol and author of Filling the Void - Emotion, Capitalism and Social Media (2017) and After the Fact - The Truth about Fake News (2020)" More information: http://www.mjgw.net/
Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
Writer and activist Arun Kundnani helps us unpack over two decades of Islamophobic conspiracy fantasies of the War on Terror and think about radical responses to a world of neoliberal warlordism.
Arun Kundnani writes about racial capitalism and Islamophobia, surveillance and political violence, and Black radical movements. He is the author of The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014) and The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain (Pluto, 2007), which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year. He has written for the Nation, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, and The Intercept. More info: https://www.kundnani.org/
Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
Game designer, writer and researcher Jess Rowan Marcotte joins us to discuss the importance of community, connection and queerness in game design.
Jess Rowan Marcotte (they/them) is a queer mixed white-passing Mi’kmaw game designer, writer, maker and Doctor of Philosophy (Critical Interaction Design, Individualized Program). Their work focuses on interactive experiences of all sorts. They are the lead co-organizer of the Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon) and one-third of Soft Chaos, a worker’s co-op that designs intimate, vulnerable interactive experiences. Their most recent solo work includes TRACES, a hybrid game about trans experiences and time travel, and UNLOCK. UNPACK., exploring carry-on suitcases, puzzles, and written messages as tools for creating intimacy between strangers who may never meet face to face. More information: http://jeka.games/
Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
In the conclusion of our two-part interview, Wu Ming collective member 1 discusses the power of narrative and games in driving conspiracy fantasies and the forms of activism that have risen to confront a system that gives rise to them.
Wu Ming 1 is an original and ongoing member of the Wu Ming collective, which was founded in Bologna in 2000 and has, since that time, published several collaboratively written novels including 54, Manituana, Altai, The Army of Sleepwalkers, and The Invisible Everywhere, which have been translated into many languages. Wu Ming evolved out of the experimental collective project Luther Blisset whose famous 1999 novel Q focused on conspiracies of liberation and of repression during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. More recently, that novel and the Wu Ming Collective have been the subject of a great deal of speculation around the rise of the QAnon conspiracy fantasy. Regarding that, Wu Ming 1 has just published a book in Italian, La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System), which presents a highly original and important analysis of the genesis and dangers of this strange hallucination.
Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
In the first of our two-part interview, Wu Ming collective member 1 discusses his new book La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System).
Wu Ming 1 is an original and ongoing member of the Wu Ming collective, which was founded in Bologna in 2000 and has, since that time, published several collaboratively written novels including 54, Manituana, Altai, The Army of Sleepwalkers, and The Invisible Everywhere, which have been translated into many languages. Wu Ming evolved out of the experimental collective project Luther Blisset whose famous 1999 novel Q focused on conspiracies of liberation and of repression during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. More recently, that novel and the Wu Ming Collective have been the subject of a great deal of speculation around the rise of the QAnon conspiracy fantasy. Regarding that, Wu Ming 1 has just published a book in Italian, La Q di Qomplotto (The Q in Qonspiracy: How Conspiracy Fantasies Defend the System), which presents a highly original and important analysis of the genesis and dangers of this strange hallucination.
Conspiracy Games and Countergames is a podcast exploring the rise of conspiratorial thinking in a gamified, capitalist world hosted by Max Haiven, A.T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. For more information, visit http://conspiracy.games
- Hannah Appel (UCLA/Debt Collective)
- Max Haiven (Lakehead)
- Denise Ferreira da Silva (UBC)
- Frances Negrón-Muntaner (Columbia)
- Facilitator: Catherine Cumming ~~~~~~~~~~ DESCRIPTION ~~~~~~~~~~
- How do debts function, yesterday and today, as racial capitalim’s revenge?
- Can debt be a grounds for emergent solidarities, today and tomorrow?
- What are the oppressed owed? -How might those debts be reclaimed? As the late David Graeber’s bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years taught us, unpayable debts have long been a tool that the powerful used to subjugate the oppressed. No less today when, as Denise Ferreira da Silva shows, the weight of debt disproportionately falls on the shoulders of those already encumbered by the burdens of racialization. But da Silva also encourages us to recognize the kinds of unpayable debts we owe to one another, to ancestors and to common struggle that might be the grounds of (re)emergent solidarity. Likewise Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s investigation of Puerto Rico’s colonial unpayable debt reveals that artists, activists and intellectuals are seizing the moment to ask profound questions of who really owes whom what. Likewise, the activist group Debt Collective is seeking to organize otherwise isolated debtors into a union of collective refusal and reinventing solidarity along the way. Can such efforts truly challenge a form of global racial capitalism that appears, as Max Haiven argues, to be taking a kind of nihilistic revenge on the planet?
More information: https://reimaginingvalue.ca/The-vengeance-of-unpayable-debts-Racial-capitalism-and-the-reclaiming-of-debts-from-below-efffbe8fcab24298adf5d6ef2a2263e5
Recorded April 7 as part of the “Pivot(al): Possibilities for a Post-pandemic World” lecture series of the Third Age Learning program of Lakehead University --> https://www.lakeheadu.ca/about/orillia-campus/community-programs/tal
What if we imagined the imagination as the basic building block of our society and everything in it? Take today’s increasingly digital form of money for example: an imaginary substance given value by our shared imaginative energies, but with a profound power over life and death around the world. Money is only one of many social and political institutions that depends on the imagination. Indeed, most of what we consider normal, necessary or eternal is imaginary. In the face of the urge to return to a “normal" that was destroying the planet and so many lives, how can we orchestrate the imagination more fair, peaceful and abundant ways of living together?
Dr. Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University, where he co-directs RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, a workshop for the radical imagination, social justice and decolonization.
A recording of the essay "Revenge Against Revenge?: Biden’s Revenge Politics and The Cure at Troy" by Max Haiven, published in the Los Angeles Review of Books in March of 2021 - https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/revenge-against-revenge-bidens-revenge-politics-and-the-cure-at-troy/
A launch of Max Haiven's new book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts, part of the ambitious 'Radical May' programme of round tables, talks and debates around the ideas that will transform the world to come. This dialogue takes 'Revenge Capitalism' as an impetus for a wide-ranging conversation about politics, literature, film, poetry and society.
Phanuel Antwi works with dance, is a poet as well as an assistant professor in the Department of English language and literatures at University of British Columbia.
Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in Culture, Media and Social Justice at Lakehead University. -------------
FURTHER READING: 'Revenge Capitalism' is published on May 20th. You can pre-order your copy from plutobooks.com. To get 40% off the cover price, enter the code 'REVENGE40' at the checkout. https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340...
RADICAL MAY: Check out the rest of the Radical May programme for more talks from a plethora of international radical publishers. https://radicalmay.literalbcn.cat/
"The GameStop saga is not the revenge against finance we deserve" by Max Haiven was published by Truthout on February 3, 2021 --> https://truthout.org/audio/the-gamestop-saga-is-not-the-revenge-against-finance-we-deserve/
"The power, potential and peril of the GameStop affair," an essay by Max Haiven, was published in ROAR Magazine February 3, 2021 --> https://roarmag.org/essays/gamestop-affair-financialized-resistance/
A brief, eight minute overview of Max Haiven's book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (Pluto Press 2020), an excerpt form in interview with Scott Stoneman on Pretty Heady Stuff.
The audio from The University of the Phoenix's 2019 performance "The Order of the Immortal Stranger) at Berliner Gazette's MORE WORLD conference.
Opioid drugs were widely and readily prescribed, and hundreds of thousands of people became addicted and died. What explains the opioid epidemic in the U.S.? What kind of pain were these drugs taken to alleviate – and what is the root of such suffering? Max Haiven draws connections between the opioid crisis and racial politics, corporate malfeasance, the Opium Wars, and neoliberalism’s impact on our psyches.
Originally broadcast on KPFA's Against the Grain --> https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-march-9-2020/
On this episode of the Order of Unmanageable Risks: A Podcast about Capitalism and Anxiety hosts Aris and Max talk with UCL student and Common Anxieties Project summer research assistant Anna Reid about her examination of the way the mainstream media and students themselves speak about the crisis of mental health on UK university campuses.
This article by Max Haiven was published in ROAR Magazine September 24, 2020 --> https://roarmag.org/essays/nature-revenge-capitalism/
Lecture by Max Haiven on themes of his 2020 book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts. Recorded in November of 2019 at the Thunder Bay Public Library.
This lecture mentions a particular scene from Herman Melville's Moby Dick, which can be seen from 47:07-58:13 of this film rendition of the book: https://youtu.be/e9DXkSZNG2k?t=2827
The book is available from Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340562/revenge-capitalism/
An excerpt from the introduction to Max Haiven's 2020 book "Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts," published by Pluto Press. For more information, visit maxhaiven.com/revengecapitalism
How has capitalism weaponized anxiety? And how might that weapon be turned against capitalism? We speakn with A. T. Kingsmith about the "anxiety industry," new affective technologies and the lonely terr of individualism.
A.T. Kingsmith is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University and co-founder of EiQ Technologies, an emotion-AI start-up based out of the Design Fabrication Zone (DFZ) at Ryerson University. He is currently writing an open access book entitled "Anxiety as a Weapon" at AU Press.
On this episode of the Order of Unmanageable Risks we speak with author, teacher, broadcaster, film-maker and columnist Juliet Jacques about the generational cleavages of the past decade as represented by Jeremy Corbyn's Labour campaign in the UK, for which she campaigned. We also discuss movements for trans rights as they signal broader struggles against austerity, as well as the backlash against them.
Juliet Jacques is a writer and filmmaker based in London and author of Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study (Dalkey Archive, 2007) and Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015). Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, for whom she documented her gender reassignment in a landmark series entitled "A Transgender Journey" (2010-12), as well as London Review of Books, Granta, Sight & Sound, Frieze, Art Review, New York Times and The Washington Post. Her short films have been screened in galleries and festivals worldwide. She is founder and co-host of Suite (212), first on London's Resonance FM, lately as a listener-supported podcast.
Mikkel Krause Frantzen explores the way that neoliberal, financialized capitalism ensnares us in a perpetual mode of suffering and then offers insufficient, individualizing "solutions" to our woes through the medicalization of mental illness.
Mikkel Krause Frantzen, author of Going Nowhere, Slow: The Aesthetics and Politics of Depression (Zero Books 2019), literary critic at the Danish newspaper Politiken, and postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, where he focuses on financialization and literature. In this episode we discuss his essay of 16 December 2019 "A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health" published in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
This episode we're joined by notaed sociologist Nikolas Rose to discuss his 2018 book "Our Psychiatric Future" which explores how the "epidemic" of mental ill-health has been framed by policy, medical institutions and the media.
Rose is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London where he is also co-director of the recently established Centre for Society and Mental Health. His many books include "Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood" (1998, "Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self" (2nd edition, 1999), and co-author of "Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind" (2013). He is co-editor of "The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984."
Hosts Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and Max Haiven discuss 'The The Order of Unmanageable Risks: a Podcast about Capitalism and Anxiety' * Main themes * The story of how it came to be * Three bad explanations for today's "anxiety epidemic" * Past, present and future episodes * Connections to the hosts' research
For more information about the podcast, visit http://anxious.community
This episode we speak to celebrated anthropologist Arjun Appadurai about his book "Banking on Words: The Failure of Language in the Age of Derivative Finance," as well as about the current pandemic and its links to a culture of unequal uncertainties around the world.
Arjun Appadurai is Paulette Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and Professor of Anthropology and Globalization at the Hertie School in Berlin. He is an internationally recognized scholar of globalization, the cultural dimensions of economic development, and struggles over national and transnational identity. He specializes in South Asia. Appadurai is the author of numerous books and articles on migration, transnational dynamics, sovereignty and media.
{please note some minor technical issues in this episode}.
Eulogy for a Village: Gentrification and the Dis/appearance of Queer Sexual Geographies Presented by C.G. Smith (aka Christopher Smith)
[the third stop on The Bank, The Mine, The Colony, The Crime walking tour to explore extraction, colonialism and financialization in Toronto's financial district, organized by WalkingLab and the ReImagining Value Action Lab]
This talk considers the rise of gentrification in the Church/Wellesley village in Toronto. Once understood as a necessary site to ensure an autonomous LGBT+ community, rising rental costs have facilitated the displacement of persons and historic establishments. With the homonormative turn in queer politics one guiding assumption was that an alliance with corporate institutions would benefit queer communities through the redistribution of finance through corporate sponsorship. This however is far from the truth as seen in the gradual disappearance of venues that enabled a vibrant sexual culture. Whether speaking of bathhouses, night-clubs, or one’s favorite watering hole, these sites of pleasure are increasingly lost amidst a rising condo boom. Thus, this talk is framed as a eulogy for those cherished spaces gone but not forgotten.
*This recorded talk on October 5th 2019 occurred on a cold windy day, which prompted written notes to flap, flip, and return to my sight. Listen with kindness.
Dr. Christopher Smith received his Ph.D. from the Dept. of Social Justice Education - Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) / University of Toronto in 2020. Their research interests reside in the productive interstices of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, Queer and Feminist Theory, including Post-Colonial and Decolonial studies. They are currently teaching as a Sessional Lecturer in the Dept. of Historical & Cultural Studies (University of Toronto, Scarborough).
On 5 October 2019 WalkingLab and the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) assembled a temporary community of activists, artists, scholars and other peripatetic counter-speculators in Toronto’s financial district to share our knowledge, ideas and forms of resistance through a series of presentations at various locations.
This episode we speak with consultant, educator, writer and speaker Hári Sewell about the ways in which anxiety in the context of societies structured around race and marked by racism, including in the fields of mental and social care.
Hári Sewell is founder and Director of HS Consultancy and is a former executive director of health and social care in the NHS. He is a writer and speaker in his specialist area of social justice, equalities and ethnicity, race and culture in mental health. Hári is honorary Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Central Lancashire and was the co-founder of the national Social Care Strategic Network (Mental Health) and was chair until November 2010. Hári has had various books, articles and book chapters published, with new material emerging regularly, usually ever year.
Hári worked with another local campaigner to secure services for survivors of sexual violence and currently runs a campaign “Men Supporting Women’s Rights” including “Men Against Rape”. He is increasingly studying forms of masculinity and the possibilities in practice and employee relations to recognise the intersections between masculinity and other aspects of identity.
In this episode we speak with race-critical scholar Alana Lentin about the dangers of racial illiteracy, why talk of race makes so many (mostly white) people so anxious, and how "not racism" became the dominant paradigm for talking about race and racism today.
Alana Lentin is Associate Professor in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University. She is a European and West Asian Jewish woman who is a settler on Gadigal land. She works on the critical theorization of race, racism and antiracism. Latest book, Why Race Still Matters, is now out from Polity.
In this inaugural episode of The Order of Unmanageable Risks we talk with scholar Esther Leslie about work, exploitation, emojis and corporate digital power.
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016) and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018). `She is currently working on a project called Turbid Media, about the new presence of fog, froth and foam in our world and - also - a history and philosophy of the device.
In this inaugural episode of The Order of Unmanagable Risks we talk with artist and writer James Bridle, about the politics of algorithmic opacity, populist technologies, and new ways of seeing through capitalism’s darkness.
James' artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Observer. "New Dark Age", their book about technology, knowledge, and the end of the future, was published by Verso (UK & US) in 2018, and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000458m). Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.
The Order of Unmanagable Risks is an occasional podcast hosted by Dr. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and Max Haiven about capitalism, anxiety and points inbetween. It is produce by the Common Anxieties Research Project (http://anxious.community) and supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) and UCL's Institute for Advanced Study.