Red's reads from 2022

I'm expecting a call from Buzzfeed any moment now

The screening of 2022 has come to an end. The credits have long since rolled past the starring cast, and rather than staring blankly at the credits for minor cameos and extras, I’d better idle into 2023 with a little listicle.

Here are some interesting picks from my year - not to be confused with a best of 2022. Each of these reads provided a unique enough perspective into some area of thought that perhaps you might consider reading one of them. In no particular order:

The Sexual Contract (1988): Carole Pateman

I’d seen this title brandished about in YouTube video essays and on university reading lists for a while. When I finally came across it while perusing those simultaneously terrifying and fascinating shelves that make up the philosophy section of my favourite bookshop, I could not resist. My initial excitement turned to a labour of intrigue when I realised the detail and precision of Pateman’s onslaught on social contract theory. Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Freud, Kant, and Hegel - each dealt with in kind. In all cases, she demonstrates how the social contract presumes a sexual contract, that is, male-sex right over women.

For anyone familiar with contract theory and looking to take on a theory-dense demonstration of how contract theory persisted patriarchy into the modern era, I recommend reading ‘The Sexual Contract’.

On the Suffering of the World (1850): Arthur Schopenhauer

The only essay on the list and a truly beautiful defence of the pessimistic position. A validation of suffering within the world and our nature. What ‘The Good Place’ took four seasons to gesture towards, Schopenhauer immaculately provides in this short essay. Suffering and misfortune are a general rule - without which life itself cannot exist.

Whether it is comparing the world to a penal colony or highlighting that we all aim to reach old age, where each passing day will be worse than the last, I could not let this one go. I’ve revisited this essay at various points in 2022.

Platform Capitalism (2017): Nick Srnicek

Srnicek builds his analysis of the platform model in three parts. First, he provides a materialist account of the 1970s Fordist era of production, through to the dot-com era of the 90s, and finally ends with the 2008 build-up and crisis. Srnicek then moves on to the direct question of describing platform capitalism by defining five platform types: advertising, cloud, industrial, product, and lean platforms. In the third and final part of the book, Srnicek outlines the broader consequences of these platforms on the future of capitalism, in particular, Srnicek considers the long-term viability of the ever-hyped lean platform going forward.

Platform Capitalism is an important read for anyone interested in the future of apps such as Uber, Airbnb, Deliveroo, and Taskrabbit. I found the author’s erudite descriptions of the balance between labour value/cost, the network effect’s tendency toward monopoly, and the historic context from which platform models originate a valuable contribution to 2022.

Against the Double Blackmail (2016): Slavoj Zizek

Starting with what must be the best book dedication of all time, “For Jela, till death (of our enemies, not ours)!”, Zizek aims at the ideological blackmail perpetrated by left-liberals and anti-immigrant populists on the refugee question. Zizek covers a lot of ground in this short book, but I take his primary thesis to be twofold. First, Zizek aims at those who neglect our commitment to ethical universalism and push for the west to raise the draw-bridges. Second, Zizek highlights the hypocrisy of the left liberals that disingenuous argue for open borders. Instead, Zizek demands that both sides recognise their complicity in the root causes of mass displacement. The reigning neoliberal system has destabilised entire geopolitical regions through coercive free-market trade agreements, military interventions, and damaging economic sanctions. Zizek proposes to move beyond simply respecting other cultures. Instead, we ought to offer a common struggle for a positive universal project.

My key takeaway from this book is that the geopolitical problems of today need to be situated in their historical reality. That reality is that all looming threats to humanity remain a question of the commons: ecology, biogenetics, and institutional decay.

Abolish Silicon Valley (2020): Wendy Liu

An autobiographical account of Liu’s journey from an exceptional software engineer whose sense of self-worth and identity oozed California ideology, to an anti-capitalist writer. Liu guides the reader through her formative schooling and university years which culminated in her achieving the software engineer dream: a job at Google. But after interning in Silicon Valley and founding her own company, the dissolution of the modern workplace sent her down a path that lead to a political awakening.

Encountering the story that prompted Liu to the declaration Abolish Silicon Valley resonated with my frustrations and lived experience in 2022. The software to socialism narrative might be just the thing you need if you’re feeling duped by a career that was meant to change the world but increasingly seems to be reinforcing its most regressive tendencies.

The Violence of Neoliberalism (2020): Victoria E. Collins and Dawn L. Rothe

From the rhetoric of self-defence to the commodification of anti-capitalist resistance itself, Collins and Rothe unmask the breadth and depth of the political project of neoliberalism. Their interrogation of neoliberalism in each distinctive strata of society highlights the banal forms of harm and violence experienced day-to-day.

There is so much to take from this book for anyone interested in criminology, sociology or political philosophy. Here are a couple of conceptual tools that stood out to me:

• Symbolic violence: harm or violence exercised through the complicit participation of the recipient.

• The condition of the stranger: a concept used to describe those members of neoliberal society that are socially dead. Those demarcated as ‘unworthy’ or ‘nonparticipating’ under neoliberalism, for example, refugees and the homeless.

What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (1974): Thomas Nagel

Certainly the most metaphysical selection on the list, and perhaps the least directly political text, but the best illustration of the so-called hard problem of consciousness I’ve encountered. Despite David Chalmers and Nick Bostrom seemingly dominating the conversation within AI circles, I don’t think that either can hold a candle to this seminal paper.

Nagel can simply but compellingly argue that physicalism is unsuited to the question of consciousness. Contra physicalism that privileges third-personal observations above all else, consciousness is essentially a first-personal phenomenon. This article has re-orientated my approach to metaphysics and has informed much of my recent thinking on animal liberation. Perhaps something for me to try and write on in 2023.

I’m currently reading Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani and taking recommendations for 2023, particularly if it’s political philosophy.

Happy new year!