Description
A guide to the thinkers and the ideas that will shape the future What happened to the public intellectuals that used to challenge and inform us? Who is the Sartre or De Beauvoir of the internet age? General Intellects argues that we no longer have such singular figures, but we do have general intellects whose writing could, if read together, explain our times. Covering topics such as culture, politics, work, technology, and the Anthropocene, each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. McKenzie Wark’s distinctive readings are appreciations, but are also critical of how neoliberal universities militate against cooperative intellectual work to understand and change the world. The thinkers included are Amy Wendling, Kojin Karatani, Paolo Virno, Yann Moulier Boutang, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, Slavoj Žižek, Jodi Dean, Chantal Mouffe, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Azumo Hiroki, Paul B. Préciado, Wendy Chun, Timothy Morton, Quentin Meillassoux, Isabelle Stengers, and Donna Haraway.
About the Author
McKenzie Wark was a well known Australian public intellectual who in 2000 married a New Yorker and moved to NYC. He now teaches at the New School for Social Research. In 2004 he published A Hacker Manifesto, the first critical theory of intellectual property. This controversial book has since been translated into eight languages. In 2007 he published Gamer Theory, a critique of the co-option of the spirit of play and creativity by what he calls gamespace . This book was widely noted for the innovative collaborative internet version in which the author discussed the book with readers and amended it before its eventual book publication. Both books drew heavily on the work of the avant garde group the Situationist International (1957 -1972), and in 2007 Wark gave the Buell center evening lecture on them, which then became 50 Years of Recuperation: The Situationist International 1957-2007.
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