A R Taskale
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 12333 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | A R Taskale |
| NOMBRES | A R |
| APELLIDO | Taskale |
| FIRMA | TASKALE A R |
| AFILIACIONES | Roskilde University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1249-666X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 14 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 9 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 14 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2008 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
Making Finance Legible
This article is structured in two parts. The first part examines the centrality of speculation in contemporary financial capitalism and its implications for International Political Sociology (IPS). Under financialized accumulation, value derives less from material production than from projections of future worth, embedding uncertainty and precarity into everyday life. Yet IPS has paid limited attention to the (il)legibility of speculative finance…
Materialized Science Fiction
This article examines how Silicon Valley’s tech elite has transformed science fiction into a practical ideology of governance, what I call “materialized science fiction.” It argues that figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen systematically translate speculative imaginaries into real-world strategies that reshape global power structures. Through readings of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) and Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013…
Manufacturing the Leviathan
Is palantir a ‘superweapon' or a marketing masterclass? This article examines the emergence of a ‘nationalist-militarist' faction within the contemporary tech oligarchy through a critical reading of The Technological Republic (2025) by Palantir CEO Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska. I argue that the book operates as an ideological manifesto designed to re-legitimize Silicon Valley's entanglement with the U.S. national security state, framing th…
Subverting speculative urbanism
This article is divided into two parts. The first part foregrounds the logic of contemporary financial capitalism, emphasising the increasing role of ‘speculative urbanism’ in urban transformation. While the literature on the ‘financialisation of the city’ often highlights the commodity as the paradigmatic social form in urban settings, I argue that this perspective no longer fully captures the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. The second part…
The affective politics of reactionary futurism in Silicon Valley
This interventionist essay examines the affective politics of an ideology I term ‘reactionary futurism’ in Silicon Valley. The focus is on the emergence of this reactionary ideology among figures such as Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land. It argues that this affective ideology consists of three key components. First, it rejects the state, aiming to replace it with the corporation-as-state, where transactions, r…
Art of Dystopia
The concept of “boring dystopia,” a term coined by Mark Fisher, describes the banal and mildly coercive signs that are prevalent in contemporary neoliberal society. It is characterized by a pervasive sense of boredom, banality, and total alienation, which arises from the depletion of social connections caused by free-market fundamentalism and consumer culture. For the author, Edward Hopper’s paintings embody this sense of dystopia, as they depict…
The biopolitical economy of the Covid-19 pandemic and the possibilities for an affirmative biopolitics
The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Espo…
Avengers’ anti-Oedipal endgame
How do we deal with the inescapability of the political present? In making sense of an all too binding temporality such as the Anthropocene, we seem to find a standpoint in the crisis of the human agency. This political convenience is arguably what the Avengers’ endgame exposes: they survive their failing powers insofar as they ironize their agency. This article critically engages with our relationship to the seemingly inescapable anthropocentris…
Thanatopolitics and colonial logics in Blade Runner 2049
This article critically engages with Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, focusing on the relationship between colonial logics and biological engineering that understands the natural world as property. First, it discusses the connections between the film and the shifting status of biopolitics becoming thanatopolitics, prompted by advances in synthetic biology. It argues that the film's preoccupation with the reproductive capacity of its replican…
Crossing the European boundary
Caught between the seemingly contradictory imageries of particularity and universality, 'European identity' could in fact be presumed but as a shorthand for ontological anxiety. The ('euro-') centric ontology that it denotes is marked by an ongoing ambivalence that both recoils from and accepts the superfluousness of boundaries. The obverse of this ambivalent concern with boundaries, we suggest, are the narrative efforts to consign it to the sing…
In Pursuit of the Neoliberal Subject
The possibility that a critical approach is grounded in what it critically approaches is indeed a paradox only a few would acknowledge, and certainly not as loudly as Derrida once did: “we can pron
Global powers of horror
Margins of Nihilism/Nihilisms of the Margin
This article reviews Bülent Diken's recent book, Nihilism. In so doing, it focuses especially on the disjunctive synthesis between passive nihilism (post-politics, or contemporary society) and radical nihilism (the new terror). Finally, the article claims that Diken's project is to resuscitate the idea of revolution, to reinvent the revolutionary politics
Distant
This article attempts to interpret Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s award‐winning film Distant [Uzak] (2002) through a discussion of social and cultural theory. Distant subtly chronicles the nature of the “distance” between two as individuals, between them and the other people in their lives, between them and strangers in their neighborhood, and between them and their country. They are essentially lost souls with little hope of resolving their problems and wa…
Global powers of horror
The affective politics of reactionary futurism in Silicon Valley
This interventionist essay examines the affective politics of an ideology I term ‘reactionary futurism’ in Silicon Valley. The focus is on the emergence of this reactionary ideology among figures such as Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land. It argues that this affective ideology consists of three key components. First, it rejects the state, aiming to replace it with the corporation-as-state, where transactions, r…
Manufacturing the Leviathan
Is palantir a ‘superweapon' or a marketing masterclass? This article examines the emergence of a ‘nationalist-militarist' faction within the contemporary tech oligarchy through a critical reading of The Technological Republic (2025) by Palantir CEO Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska. I argue that the book operates as an ideological manifesto designed to re-legitimize Silicon Valley's entanglement with the U.S. national security state, framing th…
The biopolitical economy of the Covid-19 pandemic and the possibilities for an affirmative biopolitics
The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Espo…
Thanatopolitics and colonial logics in Blade Runner 2049
This article critically engages with Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, focusing on the relationship between colonial logics and biological engineering that understands the natural world as property. First, it discusses the connections between the film and the shifting status of biopolitics becoming thanatopolitics, prompted by advances in synthetic biology. It argues that the film's preoccupation with the reproductive capacity of its replican…
In Pursuit of the Neoliberal Subject
The possibility that a critical approach is grounded in what it critically approaches is indeed a paradox only a few would acknowledge, and certainly not as loudly as Derrida once did: “we can pron
Distant
This article attempts to interpret Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s award‐winning film Distant [Uzak] (2002) through a discussion of social and cultural theory. Distant subtly chronicles the nature of the “distance” between two as individuals, between them and the other people in their lives, between them and strangers in their neighborhood, and between them and their country. They are essentially lost souls with little hope of resolving their problems and wa…
Margins of Nihilism/Nihilisms of the Margin
This article reviews Bülent Diken's recent book, Nihilism. In so doing, it focuses especially on the disjunctive synthesis between passive nihilism (post-politics, or contemporary society) and radical nihilism (the new terror). Finally, the article claims that Diken's project is to resuscitate the idea of revolution, to reinvent the revolutionary politics
Global powers of horror
In Pursuit of the Neoliberal Subject
The possibility that a critical approach is grounded in what it critically approaches is indeed a paradox only a few would acknowledge, and certainly not as loudly as Derrida once did: “we can pron
Crossing the European boundary
Caught between the seemingly contradictory imageries of particularity and universality, 'European identity' could in fact be presumed but as a shorthand for ontological anxiety. The ('euro-') centric ontology that it denotes is marked by an ongoing ambivalence that both recoils from and accepts the superfluousness of boundaries. The obverse of this ambivalent concern with boundaries, we suggest, are the narrative efforts to consign it to the sing…
Thanatopolitics and colonial logics in Blade Runner 2049
This article critically engages with Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, focusing on the relationship between colonial logics and biological engineering that understands the natural world as property. First, it discusses the connections between the film and the shifting status of biopolitics becoming thanatopolitics, prompted by advances in synthetic biology. It argues that the film's preoccupation with the reproductive capacity of its replican…
The biopolitical economy of the Covid-19 pandemic and the possibilities for an affirmative biopolitics
The purpose of this article is in threefold. First, it focuses on the workings and operations of the biopolitical economy. Second, it explores how the pandemic has exposed the thanatopolitical tendency of neoliberal capitalism, particularly in the form of herd immunity. Herd immunity deploys death as one of the instruments, making plain that the valuation of life is based on its sacrificability to capital. The final part engages with Roberto Espo…
Avengers’ anti-Oedipal endgame
How do we deal with the inescapability of the political present? In making sense of an all too binding temporality such as the Anthropocene, we seem to find a standpoint in the crisis of the human agency. This political convenience is arguably what the Avengers’ endgame exposes: they survive their failing powers insofar as they ironize their agency. This article critically engages with our relationship to the seemingly inescapable anthropocentris…
Art of Dystopia
The concept of “boring dystopia,” a term coined by Mark Fisher, describes the banal and mildly coercive signs that are prevalent in contemporary neoliberal society. It is characterized by a pervasive sense of boredom, banality, and total alienation, which arises from the depletion of social connections caused by free-market fundamentalism and consumer culture. For the author, Edward Hopper’s paintings embody this sense of dystopia, as they depict…
Manufacturing the Leviathan
Is palantir a ‘superweapon' or a marketing masterclass? This article examines the emergence of a ‘nationalist-militarist' faction within the contemporary tech oligarchy through a critical reading of The Technological Republic (2025) by Palantir CEO Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska. I argue that the book operates as an ideological manifesto designed to re-legitimize Silicon Valley's entanglement with the U.S. national security state, framing th…
Subverting speculative urbanism
This article is divided into two parts. The first part foregrounds the logic of contemporary financial capitalism, emphasising the increasing role of ‘speculative urbanism’ in urban transformation. While the literature on the ‘financialisation of the city’ often highlights the commodity as the paradigmatic social form in urban settings, I argue that this perspective no longer fully captures the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. The second part…
The affective politics of reactionary futurism in Silicon Valley
This interventionist essay examines the affective politics of an ideology I term ‘reactionary futurism’ in Silicon Valley. The focus is on the emergence of this reactionary ideology among figures such as Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Nick Land. It argues that this affective ideology consists of three key components. First, it rejects the state, aiming to replace it with the corporation-as-state, where transactions, r…
Making Finance Legible
This article is structured in two parts. The first part examines the centrality of speculation in contemporary financial capitalism and its implications for International Political Sociology (IPS). Under financialized accumulation, value derives less from material production than from projections of future worth, embedding uncertainty and precarity into everyday life. Yet IPS has paid limited attention to the (il)legibility of speculative finance…
Materialized Science Fiction
This article examines how Silicon Valley’s tech elite has transformed science fiction into a practical ideology of governance, what I call “materialized science fiction.” It argues that figures such as Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen systematically translate speculative imaginaries into real-world strategies that reshape global power structures. Through readings of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) and Dave Eggers’s The Circle (2013…
Law (7 obras) · Political science (7 obras) · Politics (7 obras) · Sociology (7 obras) · Aesthetics (5 obras) · Art (5 obras) · Philosophy (5 obras) · Law (4 obras) · Capitalism (3 obras) · Epistemology (3 obras)