Cybernetic Capitalism

In the era of cybernetic capitalism, managers have reimagined the workplace itself as a giant cybernetic machine, while neoliberal ideologues likened markets to information processors. It radically changed how our economy is governed, as technocrats scramble to design its algorithm. Today, the struggle over control of society’s code threatens to grow more violent, as Silicon Valley oligarchs collude with “conspiritualist” political movements. Following the publication of his new book Cybernetic Capitalism: A Critical Theory of the Incommunicable, philosopher Jan Overwijk further explores the complex politics of our time with media scholar Daniël de Zeeuw and cultural theorist and philosopher of science Iris van der Tuin. Poet Maxime Garcia Diaz will provide an online intermezzo Moderation: Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp. 

About the speakers 

Jan Overwijk is NWO Postdoctoral Fellow at Frankfurt’s Institut für Sozialforschung and assistant professor at the University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht. 

Daniël de Zeeuw is assistant professor in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on fringe subcultures online, and he has an interest in conspiracy theories. 

Iris van der Tuin is professor in Theory of Cultural Inquiry at Utrecht University. Furthermore, she is Utrecht University Dean of Interdisciplinary Education and vice-dean for undergraduate education in the Faculty of Humanities. 

Michael F. Miller teaches literature and literary theory at the University of Amsterdam. He is coeditor of Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism and Thinking Further: Fragments of Communicology from Vilém Flusser’s Bochum Lectures. He is currently completing a monograph titled Proximity by Proxy: Contemporary Literature and Social Media, and beginning work on a second book about AI, biopolitics, and cultural production.

Maxime Garcia Diaz is a poet. In 2019 she won the Dutch NK Poetry Slam. Her book of poetry Het is warm in de hivemind was awarded with the C. Buddingh’-prijs for best debut. Garcia Diaz currently partakes in the MFA in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her second book of poetry is forthcoming this year.  

Jasmijn Leeuwenkamp (moderator) is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam. Her project “Human Rights and the Anthropocene” rethinks human rights from a non-anthropocentric perspective.