General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the 21st Century

Description

A guide to the thinkers and the ideas that will shape the future What happened to the public intellectuals that used to challenge and inform us? Who is the Sartre or De Beauvoir of the internet age? General Intellects argues that we no longer have such singular figures, but we do have general intellects whose writing could, if read together, explain our times. Covering topics such as culture, politics, work, technology, and the Anthropocene, each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. McKenzie Wark's distinctive readings are appreciations, but are also critical of how neoliberal universities militate against cooperative intellectual work to understand and change the world. The thinkers included are Amy Wendling, Kojin Karatani, Paolo Virno, Yann Moulier Boutang, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, Slavoj Zizek, Jodi Dean, Chantal Mouffe, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Azumo Hiroki, Paul B. Preciado, Wendy Chun, Timothy Morton, Quentin Meillassoux, Isabelle Stengers, and Donna Haraway.

McKenzie Wark is the author of A Hacker Manifesto, The Beach Beneath the Street, and Molecular Red among other books. He teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York City.

"A wonderful book ... informative and moving ... a great recovery of an instructive life and literary effort. The book makes the case for a kind of political vision and action we need to recognize and enact. A true pleasure to read." - Kim Stanley Robinson, [for Molecular Red] "A very imaginative, historically smart, politically generative thesis ... that I think we urgently need." - Donna Haraway, [for Molecular Red] "Wark is a fine aphorist ... Playful, angry, depressed, celebratory, this is a book for anyone not convinced that there is no alternative to the way we live now." - Observer, [For The Beach Beneath the Streets] "Brings to the task a necessary sympathy, an encyclopedic knowledge, and a certain stylistic irrepressibility" - Times Literary Supplement, [For The Beach Beneath the Streets]