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    Category: Gordon Hull

    • Big Data: From Human Capital to Fridge Capital

      By Gordon Hull In a new paper in Big Data and Society, Jathan Sadowski argues for a shift in how we conceive data.  Typically, it’s viewed as a commodity.  Better, Sadowski argues, to view it as capital.  Following Marx (who offers a basic formula for capital) and Bourdieu (who extends it to cultural and social…

    • From Marx to Foucault, via Althusser

      By Gordon Hull As is well-known, Foucault pretty-much detested orthodox Marxism and the PCF.  At the same time, his relation to Marx’s own thought, and that of Marx’s better commentators, is more complex.  One way to approach this topic is via primitive accumulation (recall here).  Another is by way of intermediaries.  Here I’d like to…

    • On the Neoliberal Subjectification of Children

      If you're raising kids now, this won't surprise you.  But it's still depressing.  Basically, the more income inequality a country has, the more intensive parenting is – the more kids are taught that "hard work" is important, and the less that they are taught that "imagination" is.  This holds true between countries (the U.S. and…

    • Biometeric Chicanery

      Let’s say the state passes a law that says that restaurants may not put worms in hamburgers, and that customers can sue those that do. Your kids eat at the local Annelids franchise on the way home from school, and you later discover that the burgers contain worms. You sue the restaurant, and in response,…

    • A Mysterious Scandal

      By Gordon Hull The Supreme Court just granted cert in an important trademark case, in re Brunetti.  The case concerns whether Eric Brunetti can get federal trademark registration for his FUCT line of clothing.  Although Brunetti can of course market the clothing in any case, and can claim common law trademark rights, federal registration confers…

    • A Note on Derrida and Law (and Drucilla Cornell)

      By Gordon Hull I pass along the following with minimal additional comment, as it fills in a historical detail that I’d not known.  It’s from Peter Goodrich, a very prominent critical legal theorist at Cardozo Law School, on “the role that Derrida played at Cardozo, and less expectedly the part played by the Law School…

    • On the Political Economy of Social Media: Dispossession of the Other

      By Gordon Hull   The Washington Post has a disturbing story about how “lies become truth in online America.”  It narrates the story of two individuals.  One spends his time in Maine, dishing out deliberately fake news stories designed to troll those on the right by saying completely absurd things and then watching them blindly…

    • The Internet of Prison People

      By Gordon Hull In what seems like a distant, more innocent time in surveillance (viz. 2003), Andy Clark was able  to use as an example in his Natural Born Cyborgs an implanted tracking chip for pets.  Does your cat tend to wander off?  Now you can know where Whiskers is at all times! (no doubt…

    • Becker, Irrationality and Neoliberal Biopower

      By Gordon Hull In Sleights of Reason, Mary Beth Mader makes the point that there is an ontological distinction between the members of a normalized “population” and the individuals they represent.  Mader is talking about statistics and bell curves; as she summarizes the part of her argument that’s relevant here, “statistical social measurement is ontologically…

    • New Paper on Foucault and Parrhesia

      By Gordon Hull I'm happy to announce (shamelessly!) that my article, "The Banality of Cynicism: Foucault and Limits of Authentic Parrhesia" is now out in Foucault Studies (open access). The abstract is: Foucault’s discussion of parrhēsia – frank speech – in his last two Collège de France lecture courses has led many to wonder if…