I really enjoy Byung Chul-Han have rec’d it somewhere on here before - I would start with The Burnout Society or Psychopolitics. He writes a lot about labor and mental health and data. some of the big ideas he’s proposed
- data and neoliberal economics/governments have transformed and expanded the effects and our understanding of capital and labor
- the fast paced, tech driven society we live in creates a landscape of psychiatric disorders. they aren’t caused by a deficit in our bodies and minds but an excess of positivity. the demand to succeed and fight failure and work efficiently might be burning us out or making us sick
- we are becoming self exploiters and class struggle is beginning to include the struggle against oneself to achieve and reinvent oneself
Apr 8, 2024
Related Recs
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A tight, quick read about the digital panopticon we all find ourselves in. Some really interesting work about outrage culture featured as well
Feb 7, 2024
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goes so incredibly hard. i‘m not finished with it yet, but it’s written in a very accessible way and every argument is logically laid out. i really enjoy reading stuff about mental health and anticapitalist critique so this is perfect. tbh reading about how mental illness is constructed as a concept was a really important part of my recovery. it’s always easier to think oh im this way because of the chemicals in my brain or because xyz event happened to me, but it was so affirming to me to read about how the way neoliberalism and capitalism in general makes us miserable lol (and what we can so about it!). and sure these things might seem a bit too radical at first but it’s actually all true imho
Mar 25, 2024
a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like
the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like
all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say
will definitely be revisiting
Mar 25, 2024
Top Recs from @aidanaguirre
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As often as possible
May 7, 2024
Jun 2, 2024
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The bastard child of the kitchen, the most misunderstood condiment
You might be underutilizing it, if you don’t like it I can’t help you
Apr 11, 2024