Professor of Culture and Media, New School for Social Research

Education

How to Get Organized: A Teach-In

Starr Foundation Hall, University Center, The New School, 63 5th avenue, 10th March 12-5PM

February 27, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

The purpose of the teach-in is to share experience from different kinds of political organizing (broadly understood). Each of our panels feature participants who can describe (1) a situation in which they have been active and/or have firsthand knowledge (2) describe particular tactics and methods employed in that situation, and ...

Science & Technology

A Geology of Media

On Jussi Parikka

February 27, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

The rabbit hole keeps going, becoming more of a mineshaft. For some the chemical and mineral dimension is also a big part of what appears when one looks behind the sign (Negarestani, Leslie, Kahn), which brings us to Jussi Parikka’s A Geology of Media (U. Minnesota Press, 2015). Which tunnels ...

Race

On Digital Racism

For Lisa Nakamura

February 21, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

Digitizing Race draws together three things. The first is the post-racial project of a certain (neo)liberal politics that Bill Clinton took mainstream in the early nineties. Its central conceit was that all the state need do is provide opportunities for everyone to become functional subjects of postindustrial labor and consumption. ...

Science & Technology

CRIT: Critical and Radical Information Theory

On Tiziana Terranova

February 13, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

Contrary to certain popular narratives by latecomers, not everybody went gaga over ‘new media’ back in the late twentieth century. In the cyberculture period, from the popularization of cyberpunk in 1984 to the death of the internet as a purely scientific and military media in 1995, there were plenty of ...

Race

Black Accelerationism

January 27, 2017 • by McKenzie Wark

If accelerationism has a key idea, it is that it is either impossible or undesirable to resist or negate the development of the commodity economy coupled with technology. Rather, it has to be pushed harder and faster, that it has to change more rather than less. It is an idea, a ...

Uncategorized

Design+Media Theory

December 30, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

GLIB 5610 | Media + Design Theory Syllabus | Spring 2017 | v 5.0 | Our focus will be on key thinkers across the fields of media, design and technology. The course starts our everyday experience of designed and mediated environments, whether as creators or regular users (1-3). It then moves ...

Uncategorized

The Stack to Come

On Benjamin Bratton’s The Stack

December 28, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

What I like most about Benjamin Bratton’s The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press, 2015) is firstly its close attention to what I would call the forces and relations of production. We really need to know how the world is made right now if it is ever to be ...

Uncategorized

Book notes from 2016

December 19, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

These are the books I read and got around to working up notes on in 2016. Some will appear in much revised and edited form in: McKenzie Wark, General Intellects (Verso, 2017): https://www.versobooks.com/books/2446-general-intellects Some are lecture notes from 2016 classes, some for future classes in Liberal Studies at The New School: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/liberal-studies/ Judith Butler, Notes ...

Feature

A Thanksgiving Letter to My Students

November 17, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

A happy thanksgiving, everyone! I know thanksgiving can be a difficult time for some students. Maybe you’re not going home or don’t feel like you have a ‘home’ to return to. In which case I really recommend pulling together your own community and celebrating any way you can. A chicken ...

Uncategorized

Psychogeography and Speculative Design v2.1

November 12, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

Another City for Another Life: Here is v2.0 of a possible course on psychogeography and speculative design. What follows is an effort to gather materials and ideas for such a course. Many thanks to everyone who proposed materials, much of which has been incorporated. (Special thanks to Dunne + Raby) Suggestions still ...

Psychogeography and Speculative Design v2.1

Theory & Practice

The Spectacle of Disintegration

November 9, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

Everyone I know was sad and shocked and disbelieving when Donald Trump did so well in the 2016 election. Whatever happened was not quite what the models predicted. It may take some time to figure out what part of this was driven by a rage whose roots are in experiences ...

Uncategorized

Dividuum

On Gerald Raunig

November 3, 2016 • by McKenzie Wark

Like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain, who was so surprised to learn that all these years he has been speaking prose, people are often shocked to learn that they think in concepts. It’s not just us theorists who make up funny meanings for funny words. Take the word individual. It seems ordinary enough. ...