Author: sashapchx

Massumi and Raley both articulate visions of what an oppositional politics could look like amidst the ubiquity of neoliberal common-sense embodied by digital culture. As we’ve been discussing, networks and neoliberalism both immerse us in systems that feel ubiquitous and inescapable; their omnipresence denies both the possibility of desisting and the perceptual distance that allows images to … Continue reading Habitual(Splash)

In Jagoda and McDonald’s piece, I was a little stunned and more than a little troubled to learn of the game PeaceMaker. I wondered: Did Jared Kushner play this game during the prolific research process that informed his recently unveiled “peace” plan? I decided, due to self-hatred, that I would sacrifice my morning to it. After … Continue reading PeaceMaker

The texts by Hayles, Mirowski, Robinson, and Schüll all stage tensions between different accounts of what happens to the subject when their cognition becomes implicated in a system’s functioning—from the posthuman extension of the organic body’s thresholds (centrifugal) to digital interfaces’ consolidation of an agential subject’s sense of sovereignty (centripetal). Schüll’s study does much to … Continue reading Valences of Cybernetic Volition

I suspect that one reason that Benjamin’s “Work of Art…” essay is so rich is that its nineteen theses are not strictly accountable to one another. In fact, they advance proposals that are at times incompatible. One point of tension that I find particularly compelling is in Benjamin’s diverging accounts of the politics of technologically-mediated … Continue reading Blog Post: Benjamin