KATIE KITAMURA on Language, Identity & the Search for Agency - Highlights

KATIE KITAMURA on Language, Identity & the Search for Agency - Highlights

Author of Audition · Intimacies · A Separation

I'm really interested in the formal aspect of characters who are channeling language, who are speaking the words of other people, and in characters who are aware of how little agency they actually have, who have passivity forced upon them, who perhaps even embrace their passivity to a certain extent but eventually seek out where they can enact their agency.

Art, Performance & the Illusion of Agency - KATIE KITAMURA on her new novel AUDITION

Art, Performance & the Illusion of Agency - KATIE KITAMURA on her new novel AUDITION

Author of Audition · Intimacies · A Separation

I'm really interested in the formal aspect of characters who are channeling language, who are speaking the words of other people, and in characters who are aware of how little agency they actually have, who have passivity forced upon them, who perhaps even embrace their passivity to a certain extent but eventually seek out where they can enact their agency.

Speaking Out of Place: VEENA DUBAL discusses how Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash…use algorithmic wage discrimination against their workers

Speaking Out of Place: VEENA DUBAL discusses how Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash…use algorithmic wage discrimination against their workers

on how Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and others use algorithmic wage discrimination against their workers

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with Professor Veena Dubal about how such companies have exported globally a technique of algorithmic wage discrimination that pays workers based on data to which they have no access. Owners dangle bonuses before workers but take away work from them as they draw close to achieving their targets; they use psychological tricks derived from video games to create a casino-like environment where the house always wins. Dubal urges us not to fall into the trap of competing against the house, but back to “good old-fashioned organizing.”

Speaking Out of Place: LIZA FEATHERSTONE on Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA)

Speaking Out of Place: LIZA FEATHERSTONE on Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA)

Journalist · Essayist · Author · Teacher
Columnist Jacobin Magazine · New Republic

We have passed the Build Public Renewables Act which mandates and requires the state's power authority the New York State Power Authority to build its own publicly funded renewables: renewable energy, wind, and solar. And this was a long, long hard hard-fought victory. And to say how it happened, we need to think back to the early Bernie days just after the Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. Obviously, people were very disappointed that Bernie Sanders didn't win, but a lot of people were also very politicized by that campaign and by that moment. And so a lot of people were joining DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). At the same time, a lot of young people were becoming very aware and very anxious, disturbed, and deeply depressed by the climate crisis.

SIRI HUSTVEDT

SIRI HUSTVEDT

Novelist and Essayist

The reason I think you should read in these other disciplines is because it will help you in your own work. Now I really mean that. I think what has happened with the fragmentation of disciplines is that when problems arise. ...the people working in the discipline are unable to see avenues out of the problem that they would easily see if they had worked through problems in other disciplines.