General Intellects: Twenty-Five Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century

A guide to the thinkers and the ideas that will shape the future

What happened to the public intellectuals that used to challenge and inform us? Who is the Sartre or De Beauvoir of the internet age? General Intellects argues that we no longer have such singular figures, but we do have general intellects whose writing could, if read together, explain our times. Covering topics such as culture, politics, work, technology, and the Anthropocene, each chapter is a concise account of an individual thinker, providing useful context and connections to the work of the others. McKenzie Wark’s distinctive readings are appreciations, but are also critical of how neoliberal universities militate against cooperative intellectual work to understand and change the world.

The thinkers included are Amy Wendling, Kojin Karatani, Paolo Virno, Yann Moulier Boutang, Maurizio Lazzarato, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Angela McRobbie, Paul Gilroy, Slavoj Žižek, Jodi Dean, Chantal Mouffe, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Azumo Hiroki, Paul B. Préciado, Wendy Chun, Timothy Morton, Quentin Meillassoux, Isabelle Stengers, and Donna Haraway.

• Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse?
• Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene
• A Hacker Manifesto
• Creation and Anarchy: The Work of Art and the Religion of Capitalism (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
• New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future
• Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime
• Trump
• Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
• Platform Capitalism (Theory Redux)
• A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (Forerunners: Ideas First)