Ben Gook
@bengook.bsky.social
Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne etc
Pinned
Ben Gook
@bengook.bsky.social
· Oct 28
Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times
What is a libidinal economy? How are we psychically hooked into the circuits of the capitalist economy? The contributors to this book question the relevance of a concept that began reappearing in crit...
www.degruyter.com
New book is out and free to download!
Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism.
www.degruyter.com/document/doi...
Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism.
www.degruyter.com/document/doi...
Reposted by Ben Gook
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 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
December 21, 2025 at 10:42 AM
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 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
Reposted by Ben Gook
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...
criticaltheoryinberlin.de/en/event/fou...
December 14, 2025 at 11:38 AM
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...
criticaltheoryinberlin.de/en/event/fou...
Reposted by Ben Gook
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...
datasociety.net/points/all-t...
December 3, 2025 at 10:10 PM
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...
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...
blnreview.de/events/educa...
Berlin Review · Education after Gaza—Critical Theory and the Present
Zeitschrift für Bücher und Ideen.
blnreview.de
November 23, 2025 at 10:32 PM
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...
blnreview.de/events/educa...
Reposted by Ben Gook
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...
More information and application form: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/summer_schoo...
November 21, 2025 at 5:10 PM
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...
More information and application form: criticaltheoryinberlin.de/summer_schoo...
Reposted by Ben Gook
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
Critique of AI - KTB
with Matteo Pasquinelli (Ca’ Foscari University Venice), Anna-Verena Nosthoff (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg), Roland Meyer (University of Zurich), Rainer Mulhoff (University of Osnabrück...
criticaltheoryinberlin.de
November 20, 2025 at 6:07 AM
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
Reposted by Ben Gook
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....
thanks to @joncatlin.bsky.social for including me along fantastic colleagues @danielloick.bsky.social, @vethompson.bsky.social & others!
ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....
New German Critique: Forthcoming Issues
Widely considered the top journal in its field, New German Critique is an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on twentieth- and twenty-first-century German studies.
ngc.arts.cornell.edu
November 22, 2025 at 1:16 PM
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....
thanks to @joncatlin.bsky.social for including me along fantastic colleagues @danielloick.bsky.social, @vethompson.bsky.social & others!
ngc.arts.cornell.edu/forthcoming....
Reposted by Ben Gook
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
@eoaproject.bsky.social
November 3, 2025 at 9:01 PM
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
@eoaproject.bsky.social
Reposted by Ben Gook
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
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Landtagswahl.ai
KI-generierte Bilder aus den Wahlprogrammen der Parteien zur Landtagswahl - Ausstellung und Podiumsdiskussion; Materialien für Schulklassen
www.landtagswahl.ai
October 23, 2025 at 11:37 AM
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
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1/
Reposted by Ben Gook
October 19, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Defund consultants www.afr.com/politics/fed...
More errors, ‘irrelevant citations’ in Deloitte’s revised AI report
Academics question how AI-generated “gobbledegook” can be justified after the fact by irrelevant citations, as the big four firm republishes its welfare report.
www.afr.com
October 15, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Defund consultants www.afr.com/politics/fed...
Reposted by Ben Gook
"Unwritten laws form the very fabric of society+ its ethical foundation. Every populism starts with breaking the unwritten rules.
Psychoanalysis was born at exactly the historical moment of the rise of new authorities. its mission demanded their dismantling."
www.e-flux.com/notes/505443...
Psychoanalysis was born at exactly the historical moment of the rise of new authorities. its mission demanded their dismantling."
www.e-flux.com/notes/505443...
Freud, Slovenia, and the Origins of Right-Wing Populism - Notes - e-flux
Mladen Dolar uncovers a series of curious historical encounters that set the stage for the world we know today.
www.e-flux.com
October 14, 2025 at 12:06 PM
"Unwritten laws form the very fabric of society+ its ethical foundation. Every populism starts with breaking the unwritten rules.
Psychoanalysis was born at exactly the historical moment of the rise of new authorities. its mission demanded their dismantling."
www.e-flux.com/notes/505443...
Psychoanalysis was born at exactly the historical moment of the rise of new authorities. its mission demanded their dismantling."
www.e-flux.com/notes/505443...
Reposted by Ben Gook
Has there ever been a bubble with so much reflexivity regarding its status as a bubble as this one? www.ft.com/content/6cc8...
America is now one big bet on AI
It’s seen as the magic fix for every threat to the US economy
www.ft.com
October 6, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Has there ever been a bubble with so much reflexivity regarding its status as a bubble as this one? www.ft.com/content/6cc8...
Reposted by Ben Gook
Reposted by Ben Gook
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...
Binswanger and Existential Analysis | Columbia University Press
In the early 1950s, the young Michel Foucault took a keen interest in the method of existential analysis—Daseinsanalyse—developed by the Swiss psychiatri... | CUP
cup.columbia.edu
October 1, 2025 at 9:11 PM
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...
Reposted by Ben Gook
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.
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.
September 23, 2025 at 7:40 AM
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.
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.
Reposted by Ben Gook
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.
Hard to overstate what a *huge* win this is for OpenAI in its strategy to spread its malign, brain- and planet-destroying tentacles all through the education sector. Oxford’s global standing will create a permission structure for many other schools to do likewise. “If Oxford’s doing it, then…”
September 23, 2025 at 6:32 PM
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.
Reposted by Ben Gook
“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.“
‘Prejudice against the disabled was still so widespread that in 1980 a Frankfurt court ordered the reimbursement of the cost of a hotel to a tourist who had been upset by the presence of a group of guests with cerebral palsy.’
Richard J. Evans on German eugenics: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Richard J. Evans on German eugenics: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Richard J. Evans · Alien to the Community: Eugenics in Germany
In Hitler’s mind, eugenics was part of Germany’s long-term preparation for victory in the struggle between races....
www.lrb.co.uk
September 14, 2025 at 10:15 AM
“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.“
Reposted by Ben Gook
🌹 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.
• 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.
September 8, 2025 at 8:59 AM
🌹 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.
• 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...
Lecturer in Feminist Philosophy (Continental Philosophy)
School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry , Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Full-time, permanent position Base salary will be in the range $114,824 to $136,048 + 17% Superannuatio...
uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com
September 9, 2025 at 7:31 AM
Job in feminist continental philosophy! uq.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/uqcare...
Reposted by Ben Gook
Attractive job offer at the University of Zurich:
Lecturer Teaching position in Digital Methods for the Study of Visual Cultural Data, 100%, permanent position
Please share widely!
#DigitalHumanitie #JobAlert
jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...
Lecturer Teaching position in Digital Methods for the Study of Visual Cultural Data, 100%, permanent position
Please share widely!
#DigitalHumanitie #JobAlert
jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...
UZH: Lecturer Teaching
The Art History Department (Program Directorate) in collaboration of the departments of Film Studies, Archaeology, Media and Communication, and Educational Sciences of the University of Zurich is seek...
jobs.uzh.ch
August 15, 2025 at 5:28 AM
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/...
Active Noise Control: Cybernetics, Information Theory, and the Financialization of Randomness | Philosophy, Politics and Critique
In the second half of the twentieth century, Claude Shannon’s 1948 definition of noise as the enemy of communication became hegemonic basis of polities, economies, emergent network technologies and th...
www.euppublishing.com
August 7, 2025 at 7:58 AM
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/...
Reposted by Ben Gook
Truly a libidinal economy.
Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...
July 31, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Truly a libidinal economy.
Reposted by Ben Gook
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
Read the article for free: buff.ly/XDrQAhF
July 26, 2025 at 1:00 PM
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
Read the article for free: buff.ly/XDrQAhF
Reposted by Ben Gook
‘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
June 14, 2025 at 5:28 PM
‘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