Jason Read
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jasonread.bsky.social
Jason Read
@jasonread.bsky.social
7.8K followers 3.8K following 4.7K posts
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, Author of The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work from Verso Books:
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2920-the-double-shift
More here:
http://www.unemployednegativity.com
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jasonread.bsky.social
This is my Winter Olympics
February 7, 2026 at 2:07 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
One of the things that the Coen's understood about Portis' novel is that it is Mattie's story not Roosters. She has taken on a task of vengeance because she knows if she does not no one else will.
February 7, 2026 at 1:37 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
That yesterday was the anniversary of Bad Brains first cassette is good enough reason to wear one of my favorite shirts
Image from Bad Brains first cassette of Capitol building being hit by lightning with BLM in place of Bad Brains
February 7, 2026 at 12:15 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
This image comes to mind every time I learn about some new AI tech. Globalization, and the global inequality, is just the real world version of a green screen.
Image from the making of music video of Matrix like characters being supported by "invisible" workers in green suits
February 6, 2026 at 5:01 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Reposted for William S. Burrough's birthday, perhaps one of my best strips done for SUNY Purchase's Load.
A strip of my old comic Wonder Bread Church Proposing a Grimace and Wilis TV show and a Wiliam S. Burrough's Saturday morning cartoon.
February 5, 2026 at 7:15 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Ultimate Frisbee
Bento (dog) with frisbee Bento (dog) with frisbee
February 5, 2026 at 3:06 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Bento and me
Me and Bento (dog) Me and Bento (dog)
February 4, 2026 at 12:21 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
Bento (dog) in skate park running up wall to catch ball in front of "Fuck the Police" grafitti.
February 3, 2026 at 6:00 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please." --Hannah Arendt, Interview with Roger Errara, 1973 “Experts fear that Americans are losing their ability to distinguish between fact and fiction — and that fewer people seem to care about the difference. The online churn that now accompanies any major news event obscures the common reference points that once helped guide the country forward. With technology, impudence and apathy all colliding at once, the shock to American attitudes toward reality — and the public consensus required by the democratic experiment — may be a permanent one, experts said. “In moments past, we thought that this online fever would break, and now it is a systemic feature rather than a bug,” said Graham Brookie, the senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies online communities. “This is just how it is right now — we’re all collectively navigating that for the worse.” --Stuart Thompson, Tiffany Hsu, and Steven Lynn Myers, “Chaos in Minneapolis Exposes an Internet at War With Truth,” The New York Times, February 3, 2026
February 3, 2026 at 2:52 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
It was warm enough to go for a long hike
Bento (dog) in woods with vest Bento (dog) in snowy woods with vest
February 2, 2026 at 3:46 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
The snow moon
Bento (dog) bathed in red light under full moon
February 2, 2026 at 2:43 AM
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February 1, 2026 at 3:39 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Pals
Me and Bento (dog) in front of construction equipment
January 31, 2026 at 10:01 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Portland's Service Workers strike predominantly took the form of some two hundred or so businesses, restaurants, bookstores, tattoo parlors, coffee shops announcing they were closed today, with dozens more saying that they would open and donate a portion of their profits to legal defense funds and immigrant defense groups. It is unclear how many of those businesses decided to close, or were compelled to when workers did not show up. People did show up in the streets, with one of the largest crowds every assembling in Monument Square during the middle of the day, as workers were joined by students walking out of schools. It is easy to be skeptical, to say that this is far from a general strike, however, an important connection was made between work and power. Opposition to a government policy, and agency, was connected to a refusal to go on working as normal. Moreover, the establishment of a strike fund, along with organizations providing support and protection to immigrant families, connects the refusal to work with the creation of alternative structures to meet needs. It was an important day, and a step toward a better world.
January 31, 2026 at 1:40 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Today’s mail
Ancora su Hegel o Spinoza List of contributors including Warren Montag, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, and me
January 30, 2026 at 11:04 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Instant replay
January 30, 2026 at 2:57 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
This is just a great photo from the local coverage in Portland, ME. This is a group of religious leaders who were arrested after holding a pray-in at Susan Collin's office to get her to defund ICE. The look on the face of the man on the right, really says "judge not lest ye be judged."
Police in elevator detaining religious leaders. The man of the right, Reverend Will Green, is looking directly at the photographer. All of the police are looking away.
January 29, 2026 at 1:32 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
Snow beard
Bento (dog) in snow
January 29, 2026 at 12:08 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
From Marx to Spinoza: Affect, Ideology, Materiality (an online seminar that Jeremy Gilbert, Andy Goffey, and I do) has two new sessions coming up.
culturepowerpolitics.org/from-marx-to...
13. Saturday February 21st 2026 17:00-19:00 GMT Spinoza in Post-Marxist Philosophy with Katja Diefenbach With respect to contemporary Marxism or Post-Marxism Spinoza is one philosopher, infinite interpretations: Louis Althusser, Antonio Negri, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Gilles Deleuze, and Alexandre Matheron all draw from Spinoza, but in fundamentally different ways. Althusser’s use of Spinoza to develop a theory of ideology as the imaginary representation of the relationship to their real relations is fundamentally different from Negri’s use of Spinoza to construct a theory of the multitude as the political subject, which is in turn different from Deleuze’s examination of the affective dimension of politics. Up until now no one has really examined these different interpretations in relation to each other, investigating how they emerge from tensions within Spinoza’s work. Katja Diefenbach’s Spinoza in Post-Marxist Philosophy is the first book to appear, at least in English, that examines the different and diverse strands of Spinozist Marxism, examining how they overlap and diverge from each other. 14. Monday March 16th 2026 17:00-19:00 GMT Spinoza’s Multitude, and Marxism’s with Michael Hardt Michael Hardt is known worldwide for his contributions to radical political philosophy, particularly with reference to the Autonomist Marxist and Deleuzian traditions, alone and in collaboration with the late Antonio Negri. In this seminar he will discuss the genesis of the idea of ‘multitude’ in Spinoza and its later significance in his own and others’ work. For each of these seminars, we will send the Zoom link for the seminar to the Culture, Power and Politics email list about an hour before the start, so please sign up to the list and check your spam filters if you would like to attend.
January 28, 2026 at 6:04 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
The Thing II: This Time It is Just a Dog
Bento (dog) and me walking at night
January 28, 2026 at 4:06 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Bento (dog) in snow
January 27, 2026 at 11:04 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
A slide from my book launch presentation almost two years ago.
“Work, and attachment to work, is both what holds current capitalism together at the level of the imagination and ideology, and what perpetually risks unraveling it at the level of affects and reality. Work is always pulling a double, always functioning both politically and economically, as the basis of our ideas and our practices; and often, that double shift is also a point of extreme tension and exhaustion. The critique of work is the precondition not just for economic transformation but for political transformation. It is possible for work to pull a double not just in our subjection, tying together our imagination and practices to the same ideal of wage labor, but in our liberation, creating new solidarities and new ways to imagine and live.” Jason Read The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work pg. 203 With images from Sorry to Bother You. First panel Cash (Lakeith Stanfield), Second Sal (Jermaine Fowler) and Squeeze (Steven Yeun). Dialogue "If you get shown a problem, but have no idea how to control it, then you just decide to get used to the problem."
January 27, 2026 at 2:29 AM
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January 26, 2026 at 8:30 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
If you don’t like snow get a dog. They will love it for you.
January 26, 2026 at 4:01 PM
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Just putting this up here
Dog wearing sweater
January 24, 2026 at 11:31 PM