Max Haiven (and company)

On this first episode of THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY we speak with Hugh Davies about alternate reality games and gaming and the paranoid world of conspiracism.

More information: https://weirdeconomies.com/podcasts/exploits-of-play

THE EXPLOITS OF PLAY is a 10-episode podcast about how games and play have moved from the margin to the centre of global capitalism. It is produced by Weird Economies and hosted by Max Haiven.

Dr. Hugh Davies is an artist, curator, and researcher. Working across digital media, academic scholarship, and creative practice, he explores the social, cultural, and political dimensions of art and technology. He’s written two books on game culture and ethnographies of play and is currently a research fellow with a focus on Chinese Platform Studies at RMIT in Melbourne.

Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018). Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

This essay, which explores histories of the corporation, race and (intellectual) property regimes, appeared in a catalogue published to accompany Danish artist Hannibal Andersen’s 2022 exhibition The Abstract Expression of Privatization. In that work, an installation and a large mural explored corporate claims to the ownership of certain colours. The full essay can be read here:https://maxhaiven.com/colour-corporations-and-other-fictions/

Amazon, a corporation that is by some estimates the world's largest private employer, has succeeded in part because of a kind of sci-fi storytelling that places the firm at the forefront of capitalism, technology and human achievement. But if it presents a utopian narrative of itself, its workers pay the price, many of them toiling in dystopian conditions to create a profit-driven future that will exclude or exploit them.

The Worker as Futurist Project supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write and publish short, speculative fiction about "the world after Amazon." It is undertaken in solidarity with workers' and communities' struggles around the world against a corporation whose wealth and power, today, rivals or exceeds that of many states. But beyond just fighting back, the Worker as Futurist project aims to reclaim the imagination of what the world might yet be if workers, rather than bosses, got to decide.

In this presentation, the project's initiator, Dr. Max Haiven (Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University) speaks at the 2023 Historical Materialism Conference (London) about the origins, inspirations, goals and progress of the project.

In particular, Haiven focuses on the project in the context of methodologies of "workers' inquiry" and militant inquiry more broadly, in which researchers play the role of facilitators creating space and time for an analysis of the changing nature of capitalism to emerge from those who experience its cutting edge directly: workers at firms like Amazon.

For more information about the project, visit: https://reimaginingvalue.ca/waf/

Steven Shaviro is a cultural critic and leading theorist of the social roles of science fiction and author of many books, including The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (2014) and Discognition (2016). His book on science fiction, Fluid Futures, will be published in 2024. In this interview, he helps us understand the history of science fiction and its potentials to critique dominant power relations.

*http://www.shaviro.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

In the thick of the pandemic, Montreal-based writer and organizer Mostafa Henaway worked at an Amazon fulfillment centre to learn how "essential" workers were made disposable in the name of corporate profits. In this episode, he shares stories and critical reflections on the sci-fi nature of Amazon's brand of capitalism, and the implications for workers' organizing and resistance. He concludes with vital thoughts on how this is connected to a broader story of imperialism that also encompasses the ongoing nightmare in Gaza.

Mostafa Henaway, a Canadian-born Egyptian, is a long-time community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, where he has been organizing for justice for immigrant/migrant workers for over two decades. He is also a researcher and PhD candidate at Concordia University. His book Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class was published in 2023.

* https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/essential-work-disposable-workers

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* http://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* http://workersspeculativesociety.org

* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Heike Geissler is a prominent German novelist and writer who lives and works in Leipzig, once a major city in communist  former "East Germany." Today, it is a major logistics hub for Amazon and site of the "reunified" country's first strike against the American corporation in 2013.

In her 2014 memoir Saisonarbeit (published in English in 2018 as Seasonal Associate), Geissler meditates on the months she spent working at an Amazon fulfillment centre in 2010 and what it tells us about work under capitalism today.

* https://www.heikegeissler.de/

* https://spectorbooks.com/de/buch/saisonarbeit

* https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900439/seasonal-associate/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

Since 2011, the poet Mark Nowak has been facilitating rank-and-file workers' writing through the Workers Writers School. In collaboration with PEN, trade unions and other organizations, the WSS's workshops "create a space for participants to re-imagine their working lives, nurture new literary voices directly from the global working class, and produce new tactics and imagine new futures for working class social change." On this episode, Mark joins us along with long-time participant Lorraine Garnett, who reads several of her poems and discusses the School's impact on her life.

https://www.workerwriters.org/

https://pen.org/worker-writers-school/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

How has writing been part of the coming-to-consciousness of the working class and our ability to imagine and fight for different futures? We speak with Jamie Woodcock, senior lecturer of management at the University of Essex about the history of Workers' Inquiry, a method where intellectuals and workers collaborate to learn about the changing nature of capitalism and his own project, Notes From Below, which supports workers to write about their experiences. We also discuss his initiative Red Futures, a magazine of Marxist and radical science fiction.

https://www.jamiewoodcock.net/

https://notesfrombelow.org/

https://www.redfuturesmag.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

Cory Doctorow is an essayist, novelist, activist, and public intellectual whose work focuses on themes of technology, intellectual property and the prospects for freedom in our digital age. Since the 1990s he’s been on the forefront of struggles for the rights of creators, including ongoing work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Today, he is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Locus, and many other publications. In this interview, we speak about his recent book (co-authored with Rebecca Giblin)Chokepoint Capitalism and the grave threats that Amazon and other huge corporations pose to creative freedom and the wellbeing of authors and the world. We also speak about his own career as a speculative fiction writer and the politics of the genre in an age when capitalism is getting pretty dystopian.

* https://craphound.com/

* https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca

Co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Canada and the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, Syrus Marcus Ware explores the importance of future imagining for Black, queer, trans, disability and collective liberation projects. He speaks to us about the importance of speculative fiction for social movement organizers and radical dreamers. Syrus is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University whose work in curation, painting, installation and performance has been widely exhibited in Canada and internationally. Their writing (fiction, non-fiction and academic) can be found in many leading and grassroots venues.

* https://www.syrusmarcusware.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative

* workersspeculativesociety.org

* reimaginingvalue.ca