In The Sonic Episteme I wrote about how feminist new materialism says that it’s recouping philosophy’s unjustly excluded other (matter), but what it actually does is double-down on old hierarchies and exclusions by reframing them in new terms. Because some…
In 1996 the US passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated radio ownership and established section 230 (which basically allows social media to exist by making companies not liable for content third-party users post online), the Personal Responsibility and…
I have written a lot about the fact that contemporary American popular culture (note that’s 5 links to 5 pieces) is increasingly shifting away from the political ontology that subtends both Western Enlightenment aesthetics (what Ranciere calls “the aesthetic regime…
My work on alt rock and the alt-right is focused very explicitly on an American context rooted in decades of right-wing backlash against a set of federal policies about employment and education opportunities referred to as “affirmative action.” Originating in…
AI has being but it does not exist – an existential approach to the difference between humans and AI
In the last few weeks Warner Music Group and Disney have partnered with AI firms, and this has left many to fret about “losing human creativity” to AI. We need to be very careful how we frame “human creativity”, because…
In mid-October 2025 author and journalist Talia Lavin argued “we should bring dadaism back as a response to The Horrors. It made sense during world war one.” In its original context, Dada used artistic expressions of nonsense to show how…
In October 2025, Taylor Swift released her 12th album, Life of A Showgirl. Largely a critical and popular flop, the main buzz it generated surrounded the Pixies-interpolating track “Actually Romantic.” As The BBC reports, “Actually Romantic is about an unnamed…
In their article about summer 2025’s lack of a zeitgeist-dominating “song of the summer,” NPR pointed out that one song, Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”, had dominated the Billboard Hot 100 with 10 weeks on the top of chart (and the longest…
My old friends and colleagues Leigh Johnson and Rick Lee invited me to chat about my recent work on right-wing masculinities on their philosophy podcast, Hotel Bar Sessions. I had a great time chatting, and invite everyone to listen!
In an earlier piece I argued that today’s right-wing masculinities use the performance of bad taste to demonstrate a virility undomesticated by anything so feminine as a sense of style, or worse, a wife. Aesthetic taste emerged in the enlightenment…
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