Tim Luke | Virginia Tech (original) (raw)
Papers by Tim Luke
Fast Capitalism, 2015
This brief statement is a meditation on mystification. At this moment, the United States of Ameri... more This brief statement is a meditation on mystification. At this moment, the United States of America is beset by crises, contradictions, and conflicts. It remains engaged in long-running undeclared wars. Voter turnout for many local, state, and national elections is abysmal. Corporations are officially recognized as legal persons with definite basic rights. Much of civil society escapes daily into the cybernetic haze of social media. The deep state has virtually everyone under some sort of surveillance. Now many members of the armed forces, once deployed overseas have been returning home after “the surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but remain wary of a recall to new deployments in Syria, Libya or Yemen. At this same conjuncture of events, however, an august group of academicians, artists, and activists recently joined a few other experts, while averting their eyes from these disasters, to write a national report about the declining condition of the arts and sciences that America’s citizens need to assess these disastrous events in their public and private lives.
Fast Capitalism, 2011
Two decades after the close of the Cold War, 2011 is an opportune time for reflections about the ... more Two decades after the close of the Cold War, 2011 is an opportune time for reflections about the present and recent past. Twenty years ago as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Christopher Lasch asserted in The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991), "it ought to be clear by now that neither fascism nor socialism represents the wave of the future.. .. None of this means that the future will be safe for democracy, only that the danger to democracy comes less from totalitarian or collectivist movements abroad than from the erosion of its psychological, cultural, and spiritual foundations from within" (Lasch, 1991: 24). At the same time, Lasch fretted about the growing "revolt of the elites" in which he saw a powerful, prestigious, and a privileged new class of wealthy professionaltechnical experts-emerging all across the U.S.A. and other developed Western economies-increasingly were making themselves and their embedded institutional networks at the top 5, 10 or even 20 percent of society independent of public services, decaying cities, and civic activities in their nation states. By 1995, Lasch argued with regard to the new class that "in effect, they have removed themselves from the common life.. . Many of them have ceased to see themselves as Americans in any important sense, implicated in America's destiny for better or worse" (Lasch, 1995: 45). On the one hand, with the growth of "the borderless global economy, money has lost its links to nationality," and, on the other hand, the mobile, cosmopolitan, and self-centered new class increasingly had "little inclination to make sacrifices or to accept responsibility" as their denationalized businesses, professions, and skills followed their money into the liquid modernity of globalism in which "the cosmopolitanism of the favored few, because it is uninformed by the practice of citizenship turns out to be a higher form of parochialism" (Lasch, 1995: 46, 47). Being proponents of more material progress in 1991, the new class did not seem at all enamored with "a return to a more frugal existence: such views fell outside the progressive consensus" (Lasch, 1991: 529). Things have changed, however, during the past two decades. The worried open acknowledgement of global climate change, excessive state borrowing, overextended public services, and rapid economic globalization have become secure articles of faith for many among this new class. Indeed, for their most successful factions among "the super-rich" (Brenner, 2002; Hacker and Pierson, 2010; and, Taibbi, 2010), there is a willing acceptance of frugality, impoverishment or dispossession, as long as these deprivations are endured by the many rather than them, while they affirm a renewed faith in the central importance of growing prosperity for the elite few (Kapur, Macleod, and Singh, 2005). These rhetorical concessions, then, are foundational principles among "the new global elite" (Freeland, 2011), which has become more evident in Lasch's "revolt" of talented and wealthy elites in richer and poor countries alike. This brief study of the U.S.A. in the twenty-first century examines aspects of the "more frugal existence" for the many, now known as "the 99 Percent" after the Occupy Wall Street occupation of Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, created by continuous economic upheaval. It also probes the consolidation of greater wealth among the privileged and/or talented elites, who are now identified as "the One Percent" at the top of today's twirling economic booms and busts.
Fast Capital ism, 2005
Fast capitalism is a 24/7 reality. Its statics and dynamics require social theorists to delve int... more Fast capitalism is a 24/7 reality. Its statics and dynamics require social theorists to delve into dromology, or disciplined discursive deliberations over the new modes of power and knowledge generated by speed itself. As one gains awareness of how speed shapes social practices, it is clear that social theory must consider the power of kinetics as a fundamental force in everyday life. Whether it is defined as "dromocracy" (Virilio 1986), "timespace compression" (Harvey 1989) or "fast capitalism" (Agger 1989), today's temporal terrains, as Virilio asserts, are embedded in "chrono-politics" through which "speed rules" over every aspect of life now being reformatted by "the dromocratic revolution" (Virilio and Lotringer 1983:43-51). These effects are both global and local in their scope and impact, although their impact on culture, economy, and society is not fully understood. Consequently, this analysis develops an alternative critical approach to "kinematics," or the study of practicecarrying motions considered in themselves, for understanding the unusual fixities of form coevolving with the rushing ephemeralities of global flows. "Since movement creates the event," as Virilio argues, "the real is kinedramatic"(1995:23). A theoretical appreciation of the kinedramatic also indicates that the currents of global exchange are generating cohesive structures of movement on a worldwide scale, or "kineformations," which could be understood as "global flowmations" (Luke and Ó Tuathail 1998). These actually existing new social formations in the fast capitalist world are held together within the compressed time-space of flowmationalized discourses and practices. Whether it is Nike, FedEx, British Air or Exxon, transnational capital sells speed as either its key service or as a critical quality of its products. Flowmationalization, in turn, expresses the kinedramatic events of globalization as the dominant operating logic of the post-1989 New World Order.
Fast Capitalism, 2018
Science should never fully rest upon settled consensus, even though intense conflicts at key conj... more Science should never fully rest upon settled consensus, even though intense conflicts at key conjunctures in many scientific research programs often trigger such demands. Proponents of the Anthropocene thesis in various disciplines and different countries are lobbying hard now to force a consensus about its actuality, believing that the dire changes associated with this new epoch will alarm inventors and industrialists enough to slow rapid economic development and destructive climate change. Other geoscientists, however, doubt they should declare this moment in time as the close of Holocene epoch, which demarcates the last 11,000 to 12,000 years of the current Quaternary period in geological time. Furthermore, they are reluctant to rule that the planet now is so fatally ensnared by rapid anthropogenic climate change that this new geological epoch of humanity's making, namely, "the Anthropocene" definitely exists. Such forced settlements do not adequately conform to the methodical practices of prevailing geoscience research; and, even if they did, few believe the declaration would make much difference in the workings of human life on Earth. At the same time, the suggestive powers of the Anthropocene concept for many other intellectuals, scientists, and writers beyond the sciences have become almost irresistible (Lidskog and Waterton, 2018: 25-46). Its rapid proliferation in many cultural and scientific networks through their everyday spoken and written communication is a rolling daily plebiscite that leans toward ignoring the old rules. Professor Jedediah Purdy at Duke University's law school, for example, opines that human beings do, in fact, now inhabit "a new nature" since "the Anthropocene adds nature to the list of things we can no longer regard as natural," which transforms, in turn, the management of this "new nature" into "a political question because the Anthropocene future is, unavoidably, a collective human project" (Purdy, 2018). Soaking in the heated froth spraying from such rhetorical whirlpools, other thinkers also find an expansive remit to speculate more concretely about the current moment "as if " the Anthropocene epoch has become a reality during "the Great Acceleration" of economic and technological change since 1945 (McNeill and Engelke, 2014: 1-5). There are groups of museum professionals, who are also have decided to sail on this rhetorical tide by steering their institutions into the largely uncharted waters of these controversies (Newell, Robin, and Wehner, 2016; and, Möllers, 2013). The catastrophic effects of rapid climate change are significant, and they do impact more than the taxonomic conventions of stratigraphers, geologists, or botanists about deep time. This study suggests nothing better exemplifies such add-on effects from these scientific debates than a few efforts by museums and other cultural institutions, first, to map new channels being cut by the currents churning up in debates about the Great Acceleration, and, second, to explore various rocks and ripples rising out of these discursive currents.
Fast Capitalism, 2009
Much of the “critical theory” being written in Western Marxist, Frankfurt School or new populist ... more Much of the “critical theory” being written in Western Marxist, Frankfurt School or new populist registers all across North America today must be tied back in some fashion to the lifework of Paul Piccone and the journal
Telos. Since Telos has continued developing and diversifying its discourses of critique after Piccone’s death in 2004, whatever multiple identities these new schools of critical theory have acquired since the end of the Cold War during 1991, and the advent of the War on Terror in 2001, also cannot be easily untied from ongoing developments with this unusual publication. Along with its multiple networks of radical writers and global audiences of loyal readers, Telos today still pushes hard to be ahead of the curve in critical theory, while staying attentive to its own eclectic
philosophical craft.
Quite unlike many other self-acclaimed radical publications, which spin thick webs of rhetoric about their
engaged political resistance, but then never open their pages to an ongoing expression of truly concrete critical differences, Telos has spent over 40 years of publishing many of the most electrifying, diverse, and controversial figures that one could read in one place. From many varied nationalities, classes, theoretical movements, religions,
ideological schools, cultures, and political perspectives, a wide array of people have worked with Telos at pivotal points in their intellectual lives (Luke 2005b). From these engagements, the nature of critical theory in the U.S.A. has been continuously transformed for over four decades. In this respect alone, and even though many might have disagreed with him and the journal’s writings, Paul Piccone and Telos have had left a discernible influence on North American cultural, political, and social critical theory that will not soon be forgotten (Luke 2005a).
Fast Capitalism, 2007
This reflection about that terrible day for Virginia Tech is difficult to write, but something mu... more This reflection about that terrible day for Virginia Tech is difficult to write, but something must be written. Universities work best when they are free, open, and untrammeled sites for intellectual growth, constant learning, and scholarly inquiry. This has been true at this university, and it remains the case in many places around the world. Because of April 16, there will be repeated, strong and understandable calls to abridge, if not, constrain these conditions, through expanded policing and constant surveillance. To admit they are understandable, however, is not to agree that they are acceptable. Indeed, they could lead to overcompensating police measures that no outstanding university should tolerate as well as create a far more restrictive academic setting for teaching and learning that I would not wish to experience. Careful consideration of the violent events of that day, therefore, must defend, fully and forthrightly, the place of every university to serve as a free and open site for scholarship and study. Here is my effort to meet that task. While I have had many people at the university read through this account, my observations about April 16, and this analysis of what occurred here on that day, as well as many of the days since that event, represent only my personal perspective on many of the contradictory issues involved rather than an official statement of any sort. Many official statements already have been issued from the President of the United States to the Governor of the Commonwealth to the President, Board of Visitors, and various faculty, staff, and student organizations here at the university. More official findings and statements will be forthcoming in the months to come; so this is just one study of the April 16 events and their aftermath during the last sixty days.
Fast Capitalism, 2013
This analysis is a cautious provisional exploration of one aspect of the new green economy. At be... more This analysis is a cautious provisional exploration of one aspect of the new green economy. At best, it serves as a prelude to more elaborate critiques of today’s growing economic inequalities, and their close ties industrial food system and its ecology. The nexus of human food with ecological degradation has been a leitmotif in the contemporary American environmental movement since at least 1962 when Rachel Carson traced some of the detrimental effects of DDT contamination in North America’s food chains. Consequently, efforts to trace the ties between “a vibrant food politics” that explores why “what we choose to eat” as well as how “the production, distribution, and consumption of food affords--as individuals, societies, and a species--both power and privilege over
others” (Lavin, 2011) is vital for a more complex economic critique of the present. In probing the economies and cultures of industrial food production today, it seems clear “that an increased attention to political economy is the sine qua non for a revived cultural studies” (Smith, 2011: 6). As an exploratory exercise in ecology as critique and self-critique, this study digs into the political economy of food to unearth a handful of its economic inequalities and how environmental activism both can assail and assuage them.
Fast Capitalism, 2021
Should the ethical, political and social currents in contemporary survivalist “prepper” cultures ... more Should the ethical, political and social currents in contemporary survivalist “prepper” cultures in the United States be dismissed simply as little more than the theory and practice of anti-statist, right-wing extremism? Known
right-wing extremist groups, like The Base, The Oath Keepers, or The Three Percenters, which have been tied to the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, clearly express prepper and survivalist themes in their rhetoric. Yet, are there many more folds in the largely “known unknown” features of “prepper cultures” that far beyond the activities of these three right-wing, self-styled militia groups?
Instead of fomenting insurrection against “the deep state” in Washington, DC, prepper cultures also increasingly link their followers to climate change adaptation as many devotees prepare to cope with a wide array of artificial and natural disasters (Pennington, 2014; Mattoon, 2016; and, Hollerman, 2016). Arguably, a “prepper” ethic is embedded deep in the possessive individualism of liberal society.
Fast Capitalism, 2020
Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and po... more Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and political gridlock, suggest "the public" and "the private" are different domains with the US than they were decades ago in 1969 when President Nixon entered office. The constitutional state, as a theory and set of practices in the USA in the Nixon era was put under tremendous strains, and it seems clear that those pressures fractured it. After Vietnam, stagflation, Watergate, and the transitional Ford Administration, has it ever been the same? The Reagan-Bush assault on the New Deal and Great Society as well as the essentially permanent mobilization for war in the Middle East since 1991 all should force us to conduct a radical checkup of the body politic, and ask if The Constitution is, in fact, the nation's benchmark for foundational law. This paper argues that major political and cultural shifts within the USA, as it has faced these new challenges since the 1970s that have been both domestic and global in nature, suggest that its 1787 Constitution no longer organically underpins the nation's dominant modes of the governance, principles of sovereignty, or notions of political legitimacy, as they have been expressed since 1969 or 2001 in the larger New World Order organized in Washington, D.C.
Fast Capitalism, 2016
In the contemporary capitalist global economy, as many of the authors in this issue of Fast Capit... more In the contemporary capitalist global economy, as many of the authors in this issue of Fast Capitalism assert, markets have been remade by neoliberal leaders and organizations to favor greater global finance, manufacturing, and trade over preserving the prosperity of entire national economies. Under the blows of the austerity that such policies bring, democratic political hopes and cultural traditions are suffering new crises and shocks. From the Brexit vote in Great Britain, a hard-line party crackdown in China, and low intensity warfare with Russia in Ukraine to a failed coup in Turkey, a severe presidential crisis in Brazil, and the ongoing fragmentation Syria in its brutal civil war, the struggles between ruling elites and restive mass publics are becoming more bitter and severe. In this respect, the United States plainly is no longer an exceptional country. Indeed, as the 2016 presidential primaries for the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States of America have unfolded both at home and around the world, the crass culture of "reality TV" with its heated celebrations of extraordinary individual wealth, cruel competitive gamesmanship, and vicious spectacles of personal debasement simply to gain a bigger audience and dominate daily discussion incredibly has colonized the presidential elections in the USA. The centerpiece of this development is the bizarrely successful bid by Donald J. Trump to win the Republican Party nomination, which he captured during July 2016 despite widespread dissatisfaction in the party with this outcome. Trump's unique rhetorical mix of individual put-downs, suspiciously sweeping negative generalizations, anti-establishment insults, and xenophobic calls to greatness quickly have, in turn, become his campaign's most distinctive feature. While his bombast has started to stall going into the general campaign in August 2016, if only because of Trump's resolve to run as a Washington outsider and champion of "America First" policies, his over-the-line approach to electioneering continues to excite many alienated voters. Many political pundits are arguing that Trump also is driving away most moderate voters, and he is flagging in almost all of the swing states. Nonetheless, it is still over two weeks before Labor Day, and many electoral campaigns find new focus and energy as Election Day draws near. Even so, one must return the decades before World War II to find equally extreme politicking in a major political party's campaign messaging and policy positioning. By praising Vladimir Putin's strong leadership, harping on President Obama's African heritage, ridiculing disabled reporters for their special needs, insulting female newscasters with sexist comments, doubting the geopolitical purposes of NATO, suggesting nuclear weapons would be used in the Middle East to defeat fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, hinting gun owners in defense of the Second Amendment "might do something" about Hilary Clinton to prevent her packing the Supreme Court with anti-gun justices, and claiming President Obama founded ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Trump has pressed harder on his strangely twisted appeal to the darkest fears of the GOP party faithful by taking his gloomy vision into the national campaign. He unfortunately won too many primary elections by appearing seriously to regard myths as facts, facts
Center for Social Concerns, 2003
Technological innovation and economic globalization have opened the world to business and industr... more Technological innovation and economic globalization have opened the world to business and industry, increased the power of the United States and its allies, and brought peace and prosperity to many parts of the planet. But not everyone has benefited from decades of sustained economic growth. A large pool of poor, frustrated, and angry people has formed that can be mobilized by extremists and criminals. Moreover, the infrastructure of the global market, which provides such great opportunities to entrepreneurs, is also readily accessible to terrorists, who can harness planet-spanning information, communication and transportation systems to highly destructive agendas. In this essay, Tim Luke suggests that the failures of world capitalism and the emergence of global terrorism are linked. He concludes that addressing the former is essential to neutralizing the latter.
tripleC, 2013
This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an opensou... more This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an opensource, electronic journal established by Ben Agger and Timothy Luke in 2005. It also presents thoughts on writing, reading and publishing in postmodern capitalism.
Telos, 2000
... religious fundamentalism, that enforce conformity. 45 Pop-ularizing these new online e-havio... more ... religious fundamentalism, that enforce conformity. 45 Pop-ularizing these new online e-haviors, however, fosters less face-to-face contact with others, causing lonely crowds to form in cyberspace. 46 Look-ing at the bright side ...
Telos, Dec 21, 2007
... Whether this inspiration is drawn from Abbey's Road, The Monkey Wrench Gang, A Fool'... more ... Whether this inspiration is drawn from Abbey's Road, The Monkey Wrench Gang, A Fool's Progress, Desert Solitaire, Good News, Down the River, Black Sun, or Hayduke Lives! ... 4 . Edward Abbey,Hayduke Lives! A Novel (Boston: Little Brown, 990). Page 16. 20 TiM LukE
The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, 2000
Page 1. Chapter 25: Technology and Culture in Online Education: Critical Reflections on a Decade ... more Page 1. Chapter 25: Technology and Culture in Online Education: Critical Reflections on a Decade of Distance Learning TIM W. LUKE Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA ...
Research in Political Sociology, 2002
POLITICS IN POSTMODERNITY: THE DIASPORA OF POLITICS AND THE HOMELESSNESS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ... more POLITICS IN POSTMODERNITY: THE DIASPORA OF POLITICS AND THE HOMELESSNESS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THEORY Ben Agger and Tim Luke ABSTRACT We examine the displacement of politics from the public sphere since antiquity, and the impact this has ...
Fast Capitalism, 2015
This brief statement is a meditation on mystification. At this moment, the United States of Ameri... more This brief statement is a meditation on mystification. At this moment, the United States of America is beset by crises, contradictions, and conflicts. It remains engaged in long-running undeclared wars. Voter turnout for many local, state, and national elections is abysmal. Corporations are officially recognized as legal persons with definite basic rights. Much of civil society escapes daily into the cybernetic haze of social media. The deep state has virtually everyone under some sort of surveillance. Now many members of the armed forces, once deployed overseas have been returning home after “the surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but remain wary of a recall to new deployments in Syria, Libya or Yemen. At this same conjuncture of events, however, an august group of academicians, artists, and activists recently joined a few other experts, while averting their eyes from these disasters, to write a national report about the declining condition of the arts and sciences that America’s citizens need to assess these disastrous events in their public and private lives.
Fast Capitalism, 2011
Two decades after the close of the Cold War, 2011 is an opportune time for reflections about the ... more Two decades after the close of the Cold War, 2011 is an opportune time for reflections about the present and recent past. Twenty years ago as the Soviet Union was crumbling, Christopher Lasch asserted in The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (1991), "it ought to be clear by now that neither fascism nor socialism represents the wave of the future.. .. None of this means that the future will be safe for democracy, only that the danger to democracy comes less from totalitarian or collectivist movements abroad than from the erosion of its psychological, cultural, and spiritual foundations from within" (Lasch, 1991: 24). At the same time, Lasch fretted about the growing "revolt of the elites" in which he saw a powerful, prestigious, and a privileged new class of wealthy professionaltechnical experts-emerging all across the U.S.A. and other developed Western economies-increasingly were making themselves and their embedded institutional networks at the top 5, 10 or even 20 percent of society independent of public services, decaying cities, and civic activities in their nation states. By 1995, Lasch argued with regard to the new class that "in effect, they have removed themselves from the common life.. . Many of them have ceased to see themselves as Americans in any important sense, implicated in America's destiny for better or worse" (Lasch, 1995: 45). On the one hand, with the growth of "the borderless global economy, money has lost its links to nationality," and, on the other hand, the mobile, cosmopolitan, and self-centered new class increasingly had "little inclination to make sacrifices or to accept responsibility" as their denationalized businesses, professions, and skills followed their money into the liquid modernity of globalism in which "the cosmopolitanism of the favored few, because it is uninformed by the practice of citizenship turns out to be a higher form of parochialism" (Lasch, 1995: 46, 47). Being proponents of more material progress in 1991, the new class did not seem at all enamored with "a return to a more frugal existence: such views fell outside the progressive consensus" (Lasch, 1991: 529). Things have changed, however, during the past two decades. The worried open acknowledgement of global climate change, excessive state borrowing, overextended public services, and rapid economic globalization have become secure articles of faith for many among this new class. Indeed, for their most successful factions among "the super-rich" (Brenner, 2002; Hacker and Pierson, 2010; and, Taibbi, 2010), there is a willing acceptance of frugality, impoverishment or dispossession, as long as these deprivations are endured by the many rather than them, while they affirm a renewed faith in the central importance of growing prosperity for the elite few (Kapur, Macleod, and Singh, 2005). These rhetorical concessions, then, are foundational principles among "the new global elite" (Freeland, 2011), which has become more evident in Lasch's "revolt" of talented and wealthy elites in richer and poor countries alike. This brief study of the U.S.A. in the twenty-first century examines aspects of the "more frugal existence" for the many, now known as "the 99 Percent" after the Occupy Wall Street occupation of Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, created by continuous economic upheaval. It also probes the consolidation of greater wealth among the privileged and/or talented elites, who are now identified as "the One Percent" at the top of today's twirling economic booms and busts.
Fast Capital ism, 2005
Fast capitalism is a 24/7 reality. Its statics and dynamics require social theorists to delve int... more Fast capitalism is a 24/7 reality. Its statics and dynamics require social theorists to delve into dromology, or disciplined discursive deliberations over the new modes of power and knowledge generated by speed itself. As one gains awareness of how speed shapes social practices, it is clear that social theory must consider the power of kinetics as a fundamental force in everyday life. Whether it is defined as "dromocracy" (Virilio 1986), "timespace compression" (Harvey 1989) or "fast capitalism" (Agger 1989), today's temporal terrains, as Virilio asserts, are embedded in "chrono-politics" through which "speed rules" over every aspect of life now being reformatted by "the dromocratic revolution" (Virilio and Lotringer 1983:43-51). These effects are both global and local in their scope and impact, although their impact on culture, economy, and society is not fully understood. Consequently, this analysis develops an alternative critical approach to "kinematics," or the study of practicecarrying motions considered in themselves, for understanding the unusual fixities of form coevolving with the rushing ephemeralities of global flows. "Since movement creates the event," as Virilio argues, "the real is kinedramatic"(1995:23). A theoretical appreciation of the kinedramatic also indicates that the currents of global exchange are generating cohesive structures of movement on a worldwide scale, or "kineformations," which could be understood as "global flowmations" (Luke and Ó Tuathail 1998). These actually existing new social formations in the fast capitalist world are held together within the compressed time-space of flowmationalized discourses and practices. Whether it is Nike, FedEx, British Air or Exxon, transnational capital sells speed as either its key service or as a critical quality of its products. Flowmationalization, in turn, expresses the kinedramatic events of globalization as the dominant operating logic of the post-1989 New World Order.
Fast Capitalism, 2018
Science should never fully rest upon settled consensus, even though intense conflicts at key conj... more Science should never fully rest upon settled consensus, even though intense conflicts at key conjunctures in many scientific research programs often trigger such demands. Proponents of the Anthropocene thesis in various disciplines and different countries are lobbying hard now to force a consensus about its actuality, believing that the dire changes associated with this new epoch will alarm inventors and industrialists enough to slow rapid economic development and destructive climate change. Other geoscientists, however, doubt they should declare this moment in time as the close of Holocene epoch, which demarcates the last 11,000 to 12,000 years of the current Quaternary period in geological time. Furthermore, they are reluctant to rule that the planet now is so fatally ensnared by rapid anthropogenic climate change that this new geological epoch of humanity's making, namely, "the Anthropocene" definitely exists. Such forced settlements do not adequately conform to the methodical practices of prevailing geoscience research; and, even if they did, few believe the declaration would make much difference in the workings of human life on Earth. At the same time, the suggestive powers of the Anthropocene concept for many other intellectuals, scientists, and writers beyond the sciences have become almost irresistible (Lidskog and Waterton, 2018: 25-46). Its rapid proliferation in many cultural and scientific networks through their everyday spoken and written communication is a rolling daily plebiscite that leans toward ignoring the old rules. Professor Jedediah Purdy at Duke University's law school, for example, opines that human beings do, in fact, now inhabit "a new nature" since "the Anthropocene adds nature to the list of things we can no longer regard as natural," which transforms, in turn, the management of this "new nature" into "a political question because the Anthropocene future is, unavoidably, a collective human project" (Purdy, 2018). Soaking in the heated froth spraying from such rhetorical whirlpools, other thinkers also find an expansive remit to speculate more concretely about the current moment "as if " the Anthropocene epoch has become a reality during "the Great Acceleration" of economic and technological change since 1945 (McNeill and Engelke, 2014: 1-5). There are groups of museum professionals, who are also have decided to sail on this rhetorical tide by steering their institutions into the largely uncharted waters of these controversies (Newell, Robin, and Wehner, 2016; and, Möllers, 2013). The catastrophic effects of rapid climate change are significant, and they do impact more than the taxonomic conventions of stratigraphers, geologists, or botanists about deep time. This study suggests nothing better exemplifies such add-on effects from these scientific debates than a few efforts by museums and other cultural institutions, first, to map new channels being cut by the currents churning up in debates about the Great Acceleration, and, second, to explore various rocks and ripples rising out of these discursive currents.
Fast Capitalism, 2009
Much of the “critical theory” being written in Western Marxist, Frankfurt School or new populist ... more Much of the “critical theory” being written in Western Marxist, Frankfurt School or new populist registers all across North America today must be tied back in some fashion to the lifework of Paul Piccone and the journal
Telos. Since Telos has continued developing and diversifying its discourses of critique after Piccone’s death in 2004, whatever multiple identities these new schools of critical theory have acquired since the end of the Cold War during 1991, and the advent of the War on Terror in 2001, also cannot be easily untied from ongoing developments with this unusual publication. Along with its multiple networks of radical writers and global audiences of loyal readers, Telos today still pushes hard to be ahead of the curve in critical theory, while staying attentive to its own eclectic
philosophical craft.
Quite unlike many other self-acclaimed radical publications, which spin thick webs of rhetoric about their
engaged political resistance, but then never open their pages to an ongoing expression of truly concrete critical differences, Telos has spent over 40 years of publishing many of the most electrifying, diverse, and controversial figures that one could read in one place. From many varied nationalities, classes, theoretical movements, religions,
ideological schools, cultures, and political perspectives, a wide array of people have worked with Telos at pivotal points in their intellectual lives (Luke 2005b). From these engagements, the nature of critical theory in the U.S.A. has been continuously transformed for over four decades. In this respect alone, and even though many might have disagreed with him and the journal’s writings, Paul Piccone and Telos have had left a discernible influence on North American cultural, political, and social critical theory that will not soon be forgotten (Luke 2005a).
Fast Capitalism, 2007
This reflection about that terrible day for Virginia Tech is difficult to write, but something mu... more This reflection about that terrible day for Virginia Tech is difficult to write, but something must be written. Universities work best when they are free, open, and untrammeled sites for intellectual growth, constant learning, and scholarly inquiry. This has been true at this university, and it remains the case in many places around the world. Because of April 16, there will be repeated, strong and understandable calls to abridge, if not, constrain these conditions, through expanded policing and constant surveillance. To admit they are understandable, however, is not to agree that they are acceptable. Indeed, they could lead to overcompensating police measures that no outstanding university should tolerate as well as create a far more restrictive academic setting for teaching and learning that I would not wish to experience. Careful consideration of the violent events of that day, therefore, must defend, fully and forthrightly, the place of every university to serve as a free and open site for scholarship and study. Here is my effort to meet that task. While I have had many people at the university read through this account, my observations about April 16, and this analysis of what occurred here on that day, as well as many of the days since that event, represent only my personal perspective on many of the contradictory issues involved rather than an official statement of any sort. Many official statements already have been issued from the President of the United States to the Governor of the Commonwealth to the President, Board of Visitors, and various faculty, staff, and student organizations here at the university. More official findings and statements will be forthcoming in the months to come; so this is just one study of the April 16 events and their aftermath during the last sixty days.
Fast Capitalism, 2013
This analysis is a cautious provisional exploration of one aspect of the new green economy. At be... more This analysis is a cautious provisional exploration of one aspect of the new green economy. At best, it serves as a prelude to more elaborate critiques of today’s growing economic inequalities, and their close ties industrial food system and its ecology. The nexus of human food with ecological degradation has been a leitmotif in the contemporary American environmental movement since at least 1962 when Rachel Carson traced some of the detrimental effects of DDT contamination in North America’s food chains. Consequently, efforts to trace the ties between “a vibrant food politics” that explores why “what we choose to eat” as well as how “the production, distribution, and consumption of food affords--as individuals, societies, and a species--both power and privilege over
others” (Lavin, 2011) is vital for a more complex economic critique of the present. In probing the economies and cultures of industrial food production today, it seems clear “that an increased attention to political economy is the sine qua non for a revived cultural studies” (Smith, 2011: 6). As an exploratory exercise in ecology as critique and self-critique, this study digs into the political economy of food to unearth a handful of its economic inequalities and how environmental activism both can assail and assuage them.
Fast Capitalism, 2021
Should the ethical, political and social currents in contemporary survivalist “prepper” cultures ... more Should the ethical, political and social currents in contemporary survivalist “prepper” cultures in the United States be dismissed simply as little more than the theory and practice of anti-statist, right-wing extremism? Known
right-wing extremist groups, like The Base, The Oath Keepers, or The Three Percenters, which have been tied to the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, clearly express prepper and survivalist themes in their rhetoric. Yet, are there many more folds in the largely “known unknown” features of “prepper cultures” that far beyond the activities of these three right-wing, self-styled militia groups?
Instead of fomenting insurrection against “the deep state” in Washington, DC, prepper cultures also increasingly link their followers to climate change adaptation as many devotees prepare to cope with a wide array of artificial and natural disasters (Pennington, 2014; Mattoon, 2016; and, Hollerman, 2016). Arguably, a “prepper” ethic is embedded deep in the possessive individualism of liberal society.
Fast Capitalism, 2020
Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and po... more Many developments, like greater domestic turmoil, economic dislocation, social immobility, and political gridlock, suggest "the public" and "the private" are different domains with the US than they were decades ago in 1969 when President Nixon entered office. The constitutional state, as a theory and set of practices in the USA in the Nixon era was put under tremendous strains, and it seems clear that those pressures fractured it. After Vietnam, stagflation, Watergate, and the transitional Ford Administration, has it ever been the same? The Reagan-Bush assault on the New Deal and Great Society as well as the essentially permanent mobilization for war in the Middle East since 1991 all should force us to conduct a radical checkup of the body politic, and ask if The Constitution is, in fact, the nation's benchmark for foundational law. This paper argues that major political and cultural shifts within the USA, as it has faced these new challenges since the 1970s that have been both domestic and global in nature, suggest that its 1787 Constitution no longer organically underpins the nation's dominant modes of the governance, principles of sovereignty, or notions of political legitimacy, as they have been expressed since 1969 or 2001 in the larger New World Order organized in Washington, D.C.
Fast Capitalism, 2016
In the contemporary capitalist global economy, as many of the authors in this issue of Fast Capit... more In the contemporary capitalist global economy, as many of the authors in this issue of Fast Capitalism assert, markets have been remade by neoliberal leaders and organizations to favor greater global finance, manufacturing, and trade over preserving the prosperity of entire national economies. Under the blows of the austerity that such policies bring, democratic political hopes and cultural traditions are suffering new crises and shocks. From the Brexit vote in Great Britain, a hard-line party crackdown in China, and low intensity warfare with Russia in Ukraine to a failed coup in Turkey, a severe presidential crisis in Brazil, and the ongoing fragmentation Syria in its brutal civil war, the struggles between ruling elites and restive mass publics are becoming more bitter and severe. In this respect, the United States plainly is no longer an exceptional country. Indeed, as the 2016 presidential primaries for the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States of America have unfolded both at home and around the world, the crass culture of "reality TV" with its heated celebrations of extraordinary individual wealth, cruel competitive gamesmanship, and vicious spectacles of personal debasement simply to gain a bigger audience and dominate daily discussion incredibly has colonized the presidential elections in the USA. The centerpiece of this development is the bizarrely successful bid by Donald J. Trump to win the Republican Party nomination, which he captured during July 2016 despite widespread dissatisfaction in the party with this outcome. Trump's unique rhetorical mix of individual put-downs, suspiciously sweeping negative generalizations, anti-establishment insults, and xenophobic calls to greatness quickly have, in turn, become his campaign's most distinctive feature. While his bombast has started to stall going into the general campaign in August 2016, if only because of Trump's resolve to run as a Washington outsider and champion of "America First" policies, his over-the-line approach to electioneering continues to excite many alienated voters. Many political pundits are arguing that Trump also is driving away most moderate voters, and he is flagging in almost all of the swing states. Nonetheless, it is still over two weeks before Labor Day, and many electoral campaigns find new focus and energy as Election Day draws near. Even so, one must return the decades before World War II to find equally extreme politicking in a major political party's campaign messaging and policy positioning. By praising Vladimir Putin's strong leadership, harping on President Obama's African heritage, ridiculing disabled reporters for their special needs, insulting female newscasters with sexist comments, doubting the geopolitical purposes of NATO, suggesting nuclear weapons would be used in the Middle East to defeat fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, hinting gun owners in defense of the Second Amendment "might do something" about Hilary Clinton to prevent her packing the Supreme Court with anti-gun justices, and claiming President Obama founded ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Trump has pressed harder on his strangely twisted appeal to the darkest fears of the GOP party faithful by taking his gloomy vision into the national campaign. He unfortunately won too many primary elections by appearing seriously to regard myths as facts, facts
Center for Social Concerns, 2003
Technological innovation and economic globalization have opened the world to business and industr... more Technological innovation and economic globalization have opened the world to business and industry, increased the power of the United States and its allies, and brought peace and prosperity to many parts of the planet. But not everyone has benefited from decades of sustained economic growth. A large pool of poor, frustrated, and angry people has formed that can be mobilized by extremists and criminals. Moreover, the infrastructure of the global market, which provides such great opportunities to entrepreneurs, is also readily accessible to terrorists, who can harness planet-spanning information, communication and transportation systems to highly destructive agendas. In this essay, Tim Luke suggests that the failures of world capitalism and the emergence of global terrorism are linked. He concludes that addressing the former is essential to neutralizing the latter.
tripleC, 2013
This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an opensou... more This paper is a reflection on the publication practice of the journal Fast Capitalism, an opensource, electronic journal established by Ben Agger and Timothy Luke in 2005. It also presents thoughts on writing, reading and publishing in postmodern capitalism.
Telos, 2000
... religious fundamentalism, that enforce conformity. 45 Pop-ularizing these new online e-havio... more ... religious fundamentalism, that enforce conformity. 45 Pop-ularizing these new online e-haviors, however, fosters less face-to-face contact with others, causing lonely crowds to form in cyberspace. 46 Look-ing at the bright side ...
Telos, Dec 21, 2007
... Whether this inspiration is drawn from Abbey's Road, The Monkey Wrench Gang, A Fool'... more ... Whether this inspiration is drawn from Abbey's Road, The Monkey Wrench Gang, A Fool's Progress, Desert Solitaire, Good News, Down the River, Black Sun, or Hayduke Lives! ... 4 . Edward Abbey,Hayduke Lives! A Novel (Boston: Little Brown, 990). Page 16. 20 TiM LukE
The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, 2000
Page 1. Chapter 25: Technology and Culture in Online Education: Critical Reflections on a Decade ... more Page 1. Chapter 25: Technology and Culture in Online Education: Critical Reflections on a Decade of Distance Learning TIM W. LUKE Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA ...
Research in Political Sociology, 2002
POLITICS IN POSTMODERNITY: THE DIASPORA OF POLITICS AND THE HOMELESSNESS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ... more POLITICS IN POSTMODERNITY: THE DIASPORA OF POLITICS AND THE HOMELESSNESS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL THEORY Ben Agger and Tim Luke ABSTRACT We examine the displacement of politics from the public sphere since antiquity, and the impact this has ...
Sustainable Development, 2021
Overuse of resources is accelerating current negative trends in climate change, ecosystem destruc... more Overuse of resources is accelerating current negative trends in climate change, ecosystem destruction, and biodiversity loss. The ultimate outcome is that contemporary human society is reaching or exceeding the limits of planetary boundaries. It is therefore imperative to articulate a new theoretical understanding of resources and the ethical, political, and environmental conditions of their use. In this article, we take a radical departure from treating resources as having fixed, essential and ready to exploit qualities, and offer a non-essentialist theory that considers that resources come into being as a result of social processes. We label this approach resourcification. This shift offers a new theoretical platform for developing a postsustainability understanding of the relationships of humans to humans, to other living creatures, and to the physical environment, one that is more suited to meeting the challenges of working with the sustainable development goals in the Anthropocene.