Archive of General Intellects

McKenzie Wark looks at Jackie Wang's new book on carceral capitalism, the predatory state, municipal plunder, and algorithmic governance. 

In the centenary of the October revolution, much has been said about it as a moment in history. Here McKenzie Wark inquires as to what becomes of the myth of October, now that we are in the time of the Anthropocene. 

In General Intellects, I offer condensed versions of twenty-one leading thinkers across a range of fields. but I did not include figures in anthropology, as I am still working my way through reading in what's going on there. I have been finding some exciting stuff. Elsewhere, I wrote about Anna Tsing and Achille Mbembe and Eduardo Viveros de Castro. Here I offer a critical account of the recent work of Bruno Latour on the occasion of the publication of his lectures Facing Gaia. 

Continuing with a series of bonus chapters to General Intellects, McKenzie Wark looks at Yves Citton's work on the ecology of attention. Given the what can only be described as the media shitshow of recent times, an ecology of attention might be a good thing to which to pay some attention.

How can cultural workers respond to climate change? Can the cultural work of responding to climate change be a global conversation? In his latest addition to his General Intellects collection of critical appreciations, McKenzie Wark writes about the novelist Amitav Ghosh's influential lectures on "the great derangement."

Continuing his series of additional chapters to General Intellects, McKenzie Wark writes about the recent work of leading Chinese general intellect, Wang Hui. 

In General Intellects I only touched on aesthetic questions. This essay extends my treatment there of Hiroki Azuma and Angela McRobbie, with a look at an influential book by Sianne Ngai.

In General Intellects there was only space to cover twenty-one influential theorists. I'm often asked why this or that figure is not in it. Here's an attempt to compress the work of Nick Land — one I'm most often asked about. And certainly one of the most controversial. 

In General Intellects, I offer condensed versions of twenty-one leading thinkers across a range of fields. but I did not include figures in anthropology, as I am still working my way through reading in what's going on there. I have been finding some exciting stuff. Elsewhere, I wrote about Anna Tsing and Achille Mbembe. Here's my report on the work of Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, author of the brilliant Cannibal Metaphysics, including notes on a recent collaboration with the Brazilian philosopher Déborah Danowski, called The Ends of the World.