39. Dissociation (w/ McKenzie Wark)

We're so so so honored to be joined by McKenzie Wark, the writer, theorist, and unmissable figure in the development of critical thought around information, class, and embodiment. Her work barely needs an introduction, but it has shaped how we think about technology, identity, and shifting relations of power, all while questioning the conventions of theory and public writing itself. Her concept of vectorialism has been extremely important to our own thinking about capitalism.

This episode covers a huge range of Wark's evolving project, from her early work on the NetTime listserv and the legendary A Hacker Manifesto (2004), which mapped the shift from industrial capital to the information economy and coined the term vectoralist class, to the decisive personal turn in Reverse Cowgirl (2020), where theory stopped being about something and started being inside it. We talk about what she calls "auto-textual" writing, the body as both subject and medium, and the annihilation of subjectivity through sex, drugs, and dancing.

One line from this conversation won't leave us: maybe we're entering an era defined less by an aesthetic of alienation than by an aesthetic of dissociation. If alienation belonged to industrial capitalism, dissociation might be its post-digital heir.

Critical (critical) Wark:

• Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Harvard University Press, 2004.
• Wark, McKenzie. Gamer Theory. Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Wark, McKenzie. Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?. Verso, 2019.
• Wark, McKenzie. Reverse Cowgirl. Semiotext(e), 2020.
• Wark, McKenzie. Raving. Duke University Press, 2023.
• Wark, McKenzie, and Kathy Acker. I'm Very Into You: Correspondence 1995–1996. Semiotext(e), 2015.