Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ali Rıza Taşkale

@alirizataskale.bsky.social

1.8K followers 240 following 580 posts

https://alirizataskale.com Marie Curie Fellow at Roskilde University @distinktionjournal.bsky.social special issue editor Recent pub: Reactionary futurism in Silicon Valley https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21624887.2025.2474781

alirizataskale.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · Aug 27

My new piece is up: Silicon Valley billionaires use science fiction to justify dystopia, AI overlords, space colonies, escape plans. I call this “science fiction materialized”. But radical science fiction offers blueprints for resistance + rebuilding and new worlds. untoldmag.org/silicon-vall...

How Silicon Valley Billionaires Use Sci-Fi to Rule – and How We Can Resist - Untold

Tech billionaires use science fiction to justify a dystopian future of AI rule and space colonization – but radical sci-fi still gives us tools to resist and rebuild.

untoldmag.org

2 6 21

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2h

Sherryl Vint shows how Silicon Valley blends economic power (platform capitalism, the gig economy, financialization) with cultural power in science-fictional rhetoric, undermining both material resources and our ability to imagine fair, collective futures.
The article can be read here:

Aspirational identity and class politics: identifying as capital in Silicon Valley

This paper examines how Silicon Valley distorts and remakes class relations, both structurally, through its reliance on venture capitalist funding, gig economy employment, and intangible assets, an...

www.tandfonline.com

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2h

The second article has just been published! The always brilliant Sherryl Vint argues that Silicon Valley’s core product is a “science-fictional ideology". It promotes an identity where one aims to be capital itself, ever-growing and immortal, erasing the working class & undermining solidarity.

1 3 9

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2h

Great piece on Peter Thiel’s off-the-record Antichrist lectures: a mix of Silicon Valley anxieties, pop culture, and self-reflection. Less theology, more self-fashioning; he’s both prophet and protagonist in his own apocalypse.
www.theguardian.com/technology/n...

Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon

Silicon Valley titan desperately tries to detach self from power in amateurish talks attempting to ape his favorite philosopher

www.theguardian.com

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2d

Excited to share that I’ve signed with @springernature.com for my book, Fictional Worlds and Financial Realities in Speculative Literature and Film. The book explores the critical intersections between speculative finance & speculative fiction, and I look forward to bringing it into the world soon!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 2d

Wonderful research day at the University of Essex - great discussions, networking, and the pleasure of giving a talk. So happy to be back in the UK after a decade!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks Mikkel!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks Anna!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks Dominique!

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve just received wonderful news here in London! My book proposal, Fictional Worlds and Financial Realities in Speculative Literature and Film, has been accepted for publication by Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture. The book will be out in July 2026 - I couldn’t be happier!

4 15

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 4d

The tech oligarchy today isn’t new. What’s new is its open rejection of democracy, replaced by a privatized techno-authoritarianism built on surveillance, monopoly, and “noble lies". This piece explains it well.
jacobin.com/2025/10/pete...

Peter Thiel, Would-Be Philosopher King, Takes on Democracy

Billionaire Peter Thiel insists that freedom and democracy are incompatible, and his portfolio of data mining and political bets puts that belief into practice. His is a program of authoritarian contr...

jacobin.com

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 5d

Whatever Dylan Riley writes merits close reading. Here he argues we’re entering a “post-mass culture”: not high or low, but after both, where class fragments even leisure, and culture becomes a mirror of inequality. Disney queues as political economy.
newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Dylan Riley, Contra Arendt — Sidecar

On civil society.

newleftreview.org

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Monica Marks @monicamarks.bsky.social · 6d

Greta Thunberg is held prisoner by Israel at a jail in the Negev. Read what Sweden’s embassy in Israel reports are the conditions of her detention ⬇️

Now just imagine: if Israel treats a world-famous Swedish activist this way, how badly are its prisons abusing Palestinians?

1/

12 290 430

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 9d

My essay on stupidology (originally published in N+1) is in today's Guardian www.theguardian.com/news/2025/oc...

A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0

If the first term of Donald Trump provoked anxiety over the fate of objective knowledge, the second has led to claims we live in a world-historical age of stupid, accelerated by big tech. But might th...

www.theguardian.com

5 27 66

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 8d

“Venture capitalists in clean tech are starting to say out loud what they’ve suspected for a while: China’s dominance has left key sectors in the West uninvestable.”

China Road Trip Exposes List of Uninvestable Assets in the West

Venture capitalists in clean tech are starting to say out loud what they’ve suspected for a while: China’s dominance has left key sectors in the West uninvestable.

www.bloomberg.com

2 18 72

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

dominique routhier @routhier.bsky.social · 11d

"What can oppose the decline of the west is not a resurrected culture but the utopia that is silently contained in the image of its decline."

Love this line by Adorno, as quoted in this truly brilliant essay by Jacob Blumenfeld:

curedquail.com/Managing-Dec...

Cured Quail

curedquail.com

5 9 34

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Danish Society for Marxist Studies @dkmarxsoc.bsky.social · 12d

New conference program just dropped!

Go check it out!

marxistiskestudier.com/wp-content/u...

3 20 47

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Dr. Elīna Reitere @elinareitere.bsky.social · 15d

Jānoliek pie lasāmvielas nedēļas nogalei.

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 16d

The article is open access, so enjoy reading! It is a vital read for anyone interested in the intersections of gender, labour, neoliberalism, and fascism. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Neoliberal capitalism and the political aesthetics of tradwife imagery

This article examines the political aesthetics of tradwife imagery, situating online tradwife communities within a socio-political landscape that intersects with, yet remains distinct from, explici...

www.tandfonline.com

1 1

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 15d

Final touches to slides before tomorrow’s long class on genealogy and degrowth - following Nietzsche and Foucault to understand the foundations of modern growth culture and imagine a slower, fairer future.

1 1 3

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 15d

I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids. She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital. (🎥: Elias Eliahu)

5.8K 14K 28K

Reposted by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Lisa Ehlin @lisaehlin.bsky.social · 16d

Känns som detta är up your alley @myrannosaurus.doomscroll.se

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 16d

Another article I commissioned for @distinktionjournal.bsky.social neoliberalism–fascism special issue is now out!
It examines the political aesthetics of tradwife imagery, using Nancy Fraser & Walter Benjamin to show how nostalgia for domesticity blends empowerment with neoliberal labour politics.

1 1 1

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 16d

The article is open access, so enjoy reading! It is a vital read for anyone interested in the intersections of gender, labour, neoliberalism, and fascism. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Neoliberal capitalism and the political aesthetics of tradwife imagery

www.tandfonline.com

2 3

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 16d

1 2 4

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 17d

European Sourcebook is also worth looking at. Good luck! wp.unil.ch/europeansour...

European Sourcebook of crime and criminal justice statistics

wp.unil.ch

1 4

Ali Rıza Taşkale @alirizataskale.bsky.social · 17d

UNODC and the World Bank statistics would be a good start.

1 2