Faked in China
Shanzhaiji both fulfill and threaten China’s brand ambitions on the world stage
The Uses of Orphans
The literary orphan belongs to no world except that of narrative opportunity, but some real orphans seek to change the world with rage
Making Again, Making Against
The "failed" counterfeit challenges the secure core of value itself, making the legitimacy of the “true” object suspect.
The Algorithm and the Watchtower
The form of power that "Big Data" employs is not so much panoptic as it is pan-analytic
The Shanzhai Lyric
Fashion made in China has begun to promote a poetry and language all its own
Skin Feeling
What it is to be encountered as a surface, to be constantly exposed as something you are not.
Lost in the Supermarket
All this global capitalist food infrastructure, and still nothing to eat. A review of Alexandra Kleeman's novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
Trans Historical Narratives
Juliet Jacques rewrites the coming-out story that anyone compelled to speak through their identity is demanded to repeat
The Lossless Self
Audio fidelity is more a matter of subjective emotion than empiricism. But what are we trying to be true to?
Political Currency
Chartalist history shows the fantasy of money and the market as outside the state to be a fraud
Do You Speak State?
International diplomacy looks like an invite-only club, but that hasn’t stopped some people from trying to join
Lying Like Cuttlefish
Fantasies of life-like machines decouple life from living. It is only from the position of being stuck in the world that we learn to engage with it anew
Wild Wild East
America has never stopped repeating stories about cowboys and Indians, even when the frontier is somewhere else
Craven Family Values
Wes Craven gentrified the exploitation genre, but by the end of his career he was priced out himself
Security Theater
What crisis actor conspiracy theorists believe to be fake implies a much more generous view of the real
Hall of Mirrors
A self is not true or false when it is illegible, uncontained