Forerunners: Ideas First
Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead
Books in this Series
Furious Feminisms
Alternate Routes on Mad Max: Fury Road
A provocative peek into this complicated film as a space for subversion, activism, and imaginative power
Spoiler Alert
A Critical Guide
All of this information at our fingertips—and we might not need any of it
Medical Technics
A personal account of the aging body and advanced technologies by a preeminent philosopher of technology
Town Hall Meetings and the Death of Deliberation
Tracing the erosion of democratic norms in the US and the conditions that make it possible
Burgers in Blackface
Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now
A powerful account, and rebuke, of historical and contemporary racism in restaurant branding
The Swindle of Innovative Educational Finance
How “innovative” finance schemes skim public wealth while hijacking public governance
Edges of the State
Using philosophical and scientific work to engage the perennial question of human nature
Theory for the World to Come
Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology
Can social theories forge new paths into an uncertain future?
The Neocolonialism of the Global Village
Uncovering a vast maze of realities in the media theories of Marshall McLuhan
Carceral Humanitarianism
Logics of Refugee Detention
Considering the uneasy alliance between humanitarian aid, human rights, and military operations
The End of Man
A Feminist Counterapocalypse
Debugging the Anthropocene’s insistence on apocalyptic tropes
Callous Objects
Designs against the Homeless
Uncovering injustices built into our everyday surroundings
Aspirational Fascism
The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism
Coming to terms with a new period of uncertainty when it is still replete with possibilities
How Noise Matters to Finance
The stock market is the background of how we begin to deal with the complex imbrication of humans, machines, and noise
Shareveillance
The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data
Cracking open the politics of transparency and secrecy
Ten Theses for an Aesthetics of Politics
Reckoning the unsettled relationship between aesthetics and politics
The Politics of Bitcoin
Software as Right-Wing Extremism
The first comprehensive account of Bitcoin’s underlying right-wing politics
Fifty Years of The Battle of Algiers
Past as Prologue
A fresh, important intervention into understanding our post-9/11 world
The Uberfication of the University
The contemporary university’s implications for the future organization of labor
Digital Stockholm Syndrome in the Post-Ontological Age
Rethinking the philosophical and anthropological basis of our ontology
Cinema without Reflection
Jacques Derrida’s Echopoiesis and Narcissism Adrift
Excavates a theory of cinema in Derrida’s writing on love, narcissism, echopoiesis, and fluidity
Mandela’s Dark Years
A Political Theory of Dreaming
Inspired by one of Nelson Mandela’s recurring nightmares, Mandela’s Dark Years offers a political reading of dream-life
Martin Heidegger Saved My Life
Could there be a bigger paradox than the black man using Martin Heidegger to repel the white woman's racism?
The Geek’s Chihuahua
Living with Apple
The evolution and meaning of our love affair with Apple and its devices
No Speed Limit
Three Essays on Accelerationism
Proposes a vision of survival and flourishing in the face of economic and environmental catastrophe
Mediators
Aesthetics, Politics, and the City
Toward a theory of the city at the crossroads of aesthetics and politics
The Anthrobscene
Critiques the environmental destruction caused by media technologies in the anthropocene era
Kill the Overseer!
The Gamification of Slave Resistance
Explores the representation of slave revolt in video games—and the trouble with making history playable
Wageless Life
A Manifesto for a Future beyond Capitalism
Drawing up alternate ways to “make a living” beyond capitalism