Ben Gook

My new article is just out in @finandsoc.bsky.social. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I have a long piece at @theconversation.com about AI and the university theconversation.com/friday-essay...

Excellent post reacting to the Ezra Klein interview with Sherry Turkle, but goes beyond to consider empathy, attachment, Erikson and higher ed and... livingtogethersomehow.substack.com/p/ai-love-you

My next book, 'The Reaction Economy: Searching for Humanity in an Age of Screens', is now done, dusted, covered, endorsed, and available for pre-order - all details here substack.com/home/post/p-...

Latest open access article by TASA member Ben Gook: The nihilism industry: Streaming disavowal and ressentiment in the age of prediction markets www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Fascinating piece on Gen Z pro polymarket bros - especially the mood of alienation and ennui, that isn’t even lifted by big wins share.google/i6MBW68Jptxl...

I’m so angry I wrote an article: In Germany, fascist majorities are a real possibility again, but the centrist merger of a revived Red Scare with open racism shows that mainstream media & politics are unable or unwilling to comprehend the seriousness of the crisis tribunemag.co.uk/2026/09/germ...

newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Our Evening School programme is open for registration. Two semester-long courses are on offer. - Philosophy and Poetry: The Originality of Poetry in the Writings of Martin Heidegger - Andrew Benjamin - Nietzsche’s Symptomatology of Value - Max Lowdin www.mscp.org.au/courses/even...

Excellent reading for those seeking to trace the earthquakes of contemporary politics to the plate tectonics of social psychology.

A new episode of Future Histories Live! This time I talk to Rabea Berfelde ( @ktbberlin.bsky.social, @humboldtuni.bsky.social) about socialisation, its history, and contemporary movements. Recorded during the 2025 Rethinking Economics Summer School Switzerland. Full Episode: buff.ly/EeUb9Wj

this is so sad … Asad was such an incisive thinker & wonderful human being. he joined us for the 2021 Summer School in Critical Theory on solidarity & our discussions on Stuart Hall still echo in my mind. a video of the public panel with him is here: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/en/event/fou...

not clear if the loneliness becomes visible to the chatbot user, though it certainly becomes visible to tech companies, who have incentive to perpetuate it datasociety.net/points/all-t...

Great looking event with @robin-c.bsky.social @dirkmoses.bsky.social and Teresa Koloma Beck at diffrakt for @blnreview.bsky.social, discussing Dirk’s piece on critical theory (vor allem in Deutschland?) after Gaza blnreview.de/events/educa...

CfA for our next summer school is now online on our website. Our Benjamin Chair Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lillian Cicerchia, Maeve Cooke & Massimiliano Tomba will join us to discuss concepts of history and human agency. More information and application form: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/summer_schoo...

Save the date: I am very excited to be part of this roundtable with some amazing colleagues — on February 16 at HU Berlin, Matteo Pasquinelli, @annanosthoff.bsky.social, @rainermuehlhoff.bsky.social and yours truly will discuss our perspectives on the «Critique of AI», moderated by Jacob Blumenfeld

Excited that my paper ‘Staatsräson as State Racism’ is part of this forthc. issue on ‘German Memory Politics at a Crossroads’ thanks to @joncatlin.bsky.social for including me along fantastic colleagues @danielloick.bsky.social, @vethompson.bsky.social & others! ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....

Learned so much from my exchange with Rosaura Martinez Ruiz on surplus populations and authoritarianism - the first of our transnational and transconceptual dialogues on the Emergencies of Authoritarianism @eoaproject.bsky.social

There’s a growing & deeply problematic tendency to use #genAI for political and historical education Take this example from Germany, which translates as: «Hey AI, who should I vote for.» What’s typical here is that AI is not only addressed as pseudo-person but also as a kind of impartial judge 1/

Has there ever been a bubble with so much reflexivity regarding its status as a bubble as this one? www.ft.com/content/6cc8...

Join us tonight (10/1) for the launch of Michel Foucault's 1953-54 book, newly published in English by @columbiaup.bsky.social, *Binswanger and Existential Analysis* at 7pm at @bookculture.com on 112th bet. Broadway and Amsterdam. We will discuss the early Foucault: cup.columbia.edu/book/binswan...

Jonathan Lear has died. I had the pleasure to work with him in Chicago a couple of years ago. We had fruitful disputes about philosophy and psychoanalysis as well as about the need to appreciate the silent presence of negativity in both. What a devastating loss.

Cool, so what happens when they graduate and their access ends. All this is doing is turning students into a guaranteed revenue stream for the company.

“The far-right AfD, now the 2nd largest party, is attempting to revive the stigmatisation of the disabled, on the basis of the populist fantasy that they are the product of incestuous unions between immigrants. Prejudice against disabled people & racial minorities is being whipped up once more.“

🌹 Hi there: I'm still looking for a job & short-term gigs 🌹 • Main research interests: financialisation studies, French philosophy/political phil, French econ history & francophone colonial hist & activism. • Journalism: French politics & activism & long-form on French thought & culture.

Job in feminist continental philosophy! uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/uqcare...

One more month to apply! #DigitalHumanities #JobAlert #PleaseShare

New co-authored piece out today in Philosophy, Politics and Critique. It's from a special issue on 'the random' with stellar contributors - check out the whole issue, edited by Ranjan Ghosh. www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...

Truly a libidinal economy.

The Weekly Read is "On Exhaustion: Toward a Post-Care Feminism" by Samantha Pinto and Jennifer C. Nash. The article was published in Dossier: Limits of Legibility—Questions of Blackness and Sexuality, a special issue of @differences.bsky.social (36:1). Read the article for free: buff.ly/XDrQAhF

‘Postliberalism’ is mainly books with titles like ‘The Fate of Civilisation and the Death of God at the End of the West’ by men with backgrounds as investment analysts

Disappointing to see NLR publish another piece by Streeck whose anti-immigration rhetoric, trivialization of the AfD & attacks on pro-refugee activism have helped move the discourse to the right. Neither he nor the Wagenknecht party he supports are on the left & the young know (& not bec. of TikTok)

RP2.18: New issue out now! Sita Balani on culture wars Verónica Gago on the 'fascistisation of social reproduction' Sophie Lewis on 'fag hags' Bill Cashmore on the closure of CRMEP Dossier on the life and work of Marina Vishmidt radicalphilosophy.com

Reminder: Diesen Donnerstag, 18-20 Uhr, diskutieren mehrere Autor:innen von "Ökonomie als Gesellschaftstheorie" (u.a. @tbiebricher.bsky.social) im Senatssaal der HU. Wir freuen uns über das Buch und auf die spannende Veranstaltung! www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/10.5771/9...

I have a new (open access) article in @theoryculturesociety.org 'Another age of anxiety: psychological distress and the 'asset economy'', on how the understanding of anxiety has changed, and some of the broader conditions of its recent resurgence

Applications open for the Melbourne Critical Theory Winter School 2025 on ‘Forms of Life’ with Claire Colebrook and Vanessa Lemm presiding. Monday 21 Jul to Friday 25 Jul. Masterclasses, reading groups, public lectures, and screenings. arts.unimelb.edu.au/school-of-cu...

Workshop w/ Forensic Architecture/Forensis: Counter-investigating German racist state violence and complicity Berlin, March 19, 2:30-6pm for info & registration: www.sfb-intervenierende-kuenste.de/en/veranstal...

[#CulturalStudies] A renewed critical theory of #capitalism that highlights the psyche and body as sites of desire, critique, and complicity.  https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5685-5/ @bengook.bsky.social #Psychoanalysis #Sexuality #CriticalTheory #Culture #Economy #Neoliberalism

Reminder: This Friday we will meet at the Grimm Zentrum Auditorium to discuss the paradoxical phenomenon of green capitalism with many interesting guests and speakers. Come early, stay late!

We invite submissions for the second Stuart Hall Essay Prize. The award aims to stimulate a new generation of thinkers who can offer original, lively and topical contributions to the lines of political, cultural and educational inquiry which Hall pursued. www.stuarthallfoundation.org/projects/the...

This week’s mail.