Why play games with conspiracies? (ephemera)
A reflection on creating and playing CLUE-ANON, a board game about why conspiracy theories are so fun... and so dangerous...
Amazon Workers’ Sci-Fi Writing Is Imagining a World After Amazon
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos often talks about humanity starting again on other planets. But a new project funding Amazon workers’ sci-fi writing is...
Care as Revenge, Revenge as Care: Two Riddles
This short text will appear in Thick Press‘s An Encyclopedia of Radical Helping, due out in 2024. 1. First: Under what conditions could care be...
From financialization to derivative fascisms (Social Text)
A slightly updated version of this article has been published in Social Text 155 (2023): https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-10383207 Abstract The last...
Climate Workers of the World Unite? (BG)
This text was commissioned by the Berliner Gazette for their 2023 project Allied Grounds. It is in English here and German here. Climate Workers of...
Sacrifice (Finance Aesthetics)
An edited version of the following text will be published in 2024 as part of Goldsmiths Press’s Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary, edited...
Board games as social media: Towards an enchanted inquiry of digital capitalism
In a world where most people feel caught in an unwinnable game, scholars should move beyond strategies of disenchantment and recognize the power of...
Clue-Anon, gaming conspiracy, and the anti-authoritarian imagination
An edited version of following text will appear later in 2023 as part of the Global Visual Handbook of Anti-Authoritarian Counterstrategies, published...
For the refusal of unpayable debts: An artists’ roundtable with Dele Adeyemo, Ahmed Isamaldin, Bahar Noorizadeh, and Gary Zhexi Zhang (JCE)
The following roundtable, presented here in preliminary, unedited form, will be published in a special issue of The Journal of Cultural Economy on the...
Anxiety and self-sabotage in the neoliberal university
In this chapter, we ask a series of speculative questions about the subterranean cultural politics of anxiety in the neoliberal university. What will...
Zero Credit: Countering the Dreams of Techno-Finance (TOPIA)
TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies has published its 45th issue, mostly made up of a section edited by Benjamin J. Anderson, Enda Brophy and...
An interview with Wu Ming 1 about the Qanon conspiracy fantasy, collective creativity, and the (ab)uses of enchantment (Theory, Culture, and Society)
An edited version of this interview will appear in a future issue of Theory, Culture, and Society. It is a transcribed and edited version of ... Read...
The fate of the artist at the end of capitalism’s cosmology
This essay was commissioned as the inaugural input to Gamechanger, a Berlin-based platform to “explore contemporary mindsets and cultures of...
An ‘anxiety epidemic’ in the financialized university: Critical questions and unexpected resistance (Cultural Politics)
This article, written be me and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, has appeared in the 18th volume of the journal Cultural Politics. Financialization is...
Dreaming together: Artists mobilizing collective dreaming methods for the radical imagination (Capacious)
The following article will appear in the online, open-access Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry later in 2022 in a slightly different...
Dangerous Play in an age of Technofinance (TOPIA)
The following text, which has not yet been copyedited or proofed, was co-authored by Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and is...
CBC interview on Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire and other interviews and reviews
Last month, my book Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire was published by Pluto Books. Since then a number of interviews and reviews have come ... Read more...
Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers (LA Review of Books)
This essay was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books on May 7, 2022. Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers By Max ... Read more...
The Sacrificial Altar of Extractive Capitalism: Notes on Abolition and Transition (Mediapart/Berliner Gazette)
This text, published in English on Mediapart, is a contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s “After Extractivism” text series; its German version is...
A reflection on the radical imagination: From finance to social movements to games (Junkyard)
A reflection on how I came to be fascinated by the power of the imagination for The Junkyard: A scholarly blog devoted to the study of imagination...
Far from Ukraine, Putin’s War Worsens Palm Oil Crisis (Boston Review)
A piece in Boston Review about the imperial history of palm oil, from the transatlantic slave trade to the invasion of Ukraine...
“Revenge Politics, Revenge Economy, Revenge Culture” dossier (Social Text Periscope)
Text, the venerable journal of critical theory, has published a dossier of short pieces on revenge in their online annex, Periscope...
Notes towards a theory of risk management as human sacrifice (and vice versa) (Schemas of Uncertainty)
An essay on racial capitalism, empire and the gory capitalist cosmology...
Recasting the future with Amazon workers (Routledge Handbook of Creative Futures)
An essay for the Routledge International Handbook for Creative Futures about how we can work with Amazon workers to envision radical alternatives...
Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (excerpt)
mystified human sacrifice, hidden in plain sight. The stories I tell in Palm Oil trace this system’s contours and seek answers in its past...
Entangled Legacies: Race, finance and inequality (Manchester University Press)
Manchester University Press 2023: a collection edited by Paul Gilbert, Clea Bourne, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie for newcomers and specialists...
I Dream of DeFi: A Conversation (Flash Art)
Original –> https://flash—art.com/2021/01/defi-decentralization-crypto-art/ I Dream of DeFi. A Conversation with Ruth Catlow, Max...
Financialization and failure: Lessons from the anxious university (Routledge International Handbook of Failure)
The following is the uncorrected text for a chapter in the forthcoming Routledge International Handbook of Failure: Critical Perspectives from...
Debt and Financialization of Childhood (Oxford Bibliographies)
The following text is a not-yet copy-edited draft of Max Haiven. 2022 (in production). “Debt and Financialization of Childhood” in Oxford...
Our age of uprisings (ROAR Magazine)
I’m very pleased to have contributed a framing article to the ROAR Magazine special issue MOBILIZE!, Published on 15 December 2021. The original...
“Is Marx still a threat?” Extrablatt (Arts of the Working Class)
In February of 2022, the German Historical Museum in Berlin will open an exhibition on “Karl Marx and Capitalism.” They asked the...
Whither Harmony Square?: Conspiracy Games in Late Capitalism (LA Review of Books)
The following piece by Conspiracy Games and Countergames reseachers Max Haiven, A. T. Kingsmith and Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou was printed in the Los...
A sci-fi reading/film group for Amazon workers (Sociological Review blog)
I am very pleased to be working with Graeme Webb and Xenia Benivolski on a new project that is piloting a methodology for using science ... Read more...
Should Artists ‘Take the Money and Run’? (Art Review)
The following is a preliminary version of the text published on October 6, 2021 in ArtReview:...
A review of J. Lorand Matory’s The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud and the Gods Black People Make (Journal of Cultural Economy)
This review of Review: J. Lorand Matory’s The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud and the Gods Black People Make will appear later this year in the ... Read...
Money and art: The worst of friends, the best of enemies
The following essay appears in English and Romanian a special issue (#48/49) of the highly-regarded Romanian journal ARTA, edited by the artist Dan...
Revenge Against Revenge: Biden’s Revenge Politics and “The Cure at Troy” (LA Review of Books)
This essay first appeared on March 8, 2021 in The Los Angeles Review of Books:...
Was the GameStop frenzy an artwork? (Hyperallergic)
This essay originally appeared in HyperAllergic –> https://hyperallergic.com/624288/was-the-gamestop-frenzy-an-artwork/ Was the GameStop...
The GameStop saga is not the revenge against finance we deserve (Novara)
My essay “The GameStop Saga Is Not the Revenge Against Finance We Deserve” has been published by Truthout here:...
The power, potential and peril of the GameStop affair (ROAR Magazine)
ROAR Magazine has published my essay “The power, potential and peril of the GameStop affair” –>...
Settler Capitalist Multiculturalism, Indigenous Refusal, and the Spectre of Bankruptcy: Rebecca Belmore’s Gone Indian
Haiven, Max. 2020. “Settler Capitalist Multiculturalism, Indigenous Refusal, and the Spectre of Bankruptcy: Rebecca Belmore’s Gone...
Our Wrecks of the Medusa: A Dialogue
Phanuel Antwi and I prepared this dialogue for publication by Ramallah’s AM Qattan Foundation in their ebook Isolation, Separation and...
Unraveling capitalism’s revenge: An interview (ROAR Magazine)
The following interview, conducted by Liam Hough, appeared in ROAR 0n 26 November 2020:...
Empires of Pain: A Story of Racism, Opioids and Revenge (graphic novel)
It is my great pleasure to present “Empires of Pain: A story of Racism, Opioids and Revenge,” a short 15-page web-comic I produced along...
Orcas are not taking nature’s revenge, but we should (ROAR Magazine)
My essay on endangered whales attacking boats in the Strait of Gibraltar has been published by ROAR Magazine here and below. Here is also an ... Read...
Thirteen Theses Toward a Materialist Theory of Revenge Capitalism
My short essay, “Thirteen Theses Toward a Materialist Theory of Revenge Capitalism,” has appeared in a new edited collection: Challenging...
Revenge Capitalism conversation with Marc Garrett (video)
I spoke with scholar and Furtherfield co-founder and co-director Marc Garrett as part of RadicalxChange‘s 2020 online conference. We discuss...
“Revenge Spending” Won’t Get Us Out of a Crisis of Racial Capitalism (Novara)
Novara has published a short essay “‘Revenge Spending’ Won’t Get Us Out of a Crisis of Racial Capitalism” Like the commodification of...
Rising up against white revenge (ROAR Magazine)
ROAR Magazine has published a short essay I wrote “Rising up against white revenge.” The current uprisings reveal that America is haunted...
Revenge Fantasy or Avenging Imaginary? (e-flux)
E-Flux has published an edited excerpt from my book Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable...
Capital’s Vengeful Utopia: Unpayable Debts from Above and Below (L’Internationale)
L’Internationale, the joint online and print publishing initiative of seven major European art institutions, has published a new essay...
Capitalism as Revenge :: Revenge Against Capitalism An Interview with Max Haiven (Socialism and Democracy)
The journal Socialism and Democracy has published an edited transcript of a interview with me by C. S. Soong of KPFA’s long-form interview show...
No artist left alive (Arts of the Working Class)
My short, provocative essay “No Artist Left Alive” has appeared in the 11th issue of the Berlin-based broadsheet Arts of the Working...
Beyond capitalist authoritarianism, the radical imagination
My short essay “Beyond capitalist authoritarianism, the radical imagination” appears in the collection We Resist: Defending the Common...
No return to normal: For a post-pandemic liberation
Original at: https://roarmag.org/essays/no-return-to-normal-for-a-post-pandemic-liberation/ Spanish translation:...
Culture and Financialization: Four Approaches
Citation Haiven, Max. 2020. “Culture and Financialization: Four Approaches.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Financialization, edited by...
Preparing for Millions to Bury their Smartphones
By Krystian Woznicki An interview with the art collective The University of the Phoenix about responding to the climate crisis with a global secret...
From anxiety to revolt? Against the financialized university
Original: https://roarmag.org/essays/from-anxiety-to-revolt-against-the-financialized-university/ From anxiety to revolt? Against the financialized...
Art, Money and Financialization: Six Radical Money Artists on Either Side of 1973
Citation Haiven, Max. 2019. “Art, Money and Financialization: Six Radical Money Artists on Either Side of 1973.” In A Cultural History of Money: The...
Interview with Max Haiven: Art after Money, Money after Art
Geert Lovink and I had a conversation about my book Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization in the context of...
The Art of Unpayable Debts
Citation Haiven, Max. 2019. “The Art of Unpayable Debts.” In The Sociology of Debt, edited by Mark Featherstone. London: Policy. Abstract This chapter...
Digital/Debt/Empire interventions series
In the lead up to the Digital/Debt/Empire gathering in April 2019 Public Seminar, the online platform of the New School for Social Research, hosted a...
Currencies of Exodus: The Hidden Ledger of Proletarian Money Sabotage
Citation Haiven, Max. 2019. “Currencies of the Undercommons: The Hidden Ledger of Proletarian Money Sabotage.” In State Machines: Reflections and...
The Colonial Secrets of Canada’s Most Racist City
This essay, published in ROAR Magazine, explores the deep colonial roots of anti-Indigenous racist violence in the city of Thunder Bay. Original:...
Our Opium Wars: Our Opium Wars The Ghosts of Empire in the Prescription Opioid Nightmare
Citation Haiven, Max. 2019. “Our Opium Wars: The Ghosts of Empire in the Prescription Opioid Nightmare.” Third Text 32 (5-6): 662-669...
Book review: Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization by Max Haven (Roxanne Dubois)
Original: https://cpress.org/arts-culture/news-item-64/ Book review: Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization by...
The Politics of AI-driven Financialization
The Berliner Gazette‘s Krystian Woznicki interviewed Max Haiven as part of their 2018 thematic track AMBIENT REVOLTS. Originally published in...
Book review: Art After Money, Money After Art (Georgios Papadopoulos)
A PDF of the review can be downloaded here...
Representing (and Being Represented in) Financialization’s Derivative Sociality
Citation Haiven, Max. 2018. “Representing (and Being Represented in) Financialization’s Derivative Sociality.” In Screening Economies: Money Matters...
Counterspeculations scholarly audiotour of the City of London
In May of 2018 my colleague Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and I organized a collaborative walking tour of the City of London historical financial...
Art after Money (Open Democracy)
This essay was originally published on Open Democracy on 10 October 2018. Art after money Max Haiven Banksy’s prank on the art market rhymes with...
What is the Fate of Creativity Under Capitalism?
This essay originally appeared on the blog of Pluto Press in September of 2018. What is the Fate of Creativity Under Capitalism? Max Haiven I ... Read...
Political Economy at Art School
This article was originally published in Canadian Art in September of 2018. Political Economy at Art School Max Haiven Why we can’t—and...
Colonial Debts, Extractive Nostalgias, Imperial Insolvencies intervention series
In September 2018 the UK-based scholarly online platform Discover Society published a short selection of texts edited by Clea Bourne, Paul Gilbert...
RYBN: Psychogeographies of the Financial Imaginary
As part of the Counterspecualtions tour of the City of London I organized with Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou I conducted this interview with the French...
The Crypt of Art, the Decryption of Money, the Encrypted Common and the Problem of Cryptocurrencies
Citation Haiven, Max. 2018. “The Crypt of Art, the Decryption of Money, the Encrypted Common and the Problem of Cryptocurrencies.” In Moneylab Reader...
The Uses of Financial Literacy
Citation Haiven, Max. 2017. “The Uses of Financial Literacy: Financialization, the Radical Imagination, and the Unpayable Debts of...
Financialization, precarity and reactionary authoritarianism (ROAR)
Original: https://roarmag.org/essays/haiven-cultures-financialization-excerpt/ The following is an excerpt from Max Haiven’s 2014 book Cultures of...
“Confronting Financialization Demands a Radical Cultural Politics” in Public Seminar
Original: https://publicseminar.org/2017/09/confronting-financialization-demands-a-radical-cultural-politics/ The following is a synoptic excerpt from...
Wars on social reproduction: On feminism, the commons, and joyful militancy (interview with Silvia Federici)
An interview with the legendary feminist theorist and organizer Silvia Federici as part of the collection What Moves Us: The Lives and times of the...
Be Prepared to Win: Indigenous Struggles and the Radical Imagination (Interview with Sherry Pictou))
I interviewed my friend and colleague Sherry Pictou for a collection that Alex Khasnabish and I edited titled What Moves Us: The Lives and Times...
Participatory Art within, against and beyond Financialization
Citation Haiven, Max. 2018. “Participatory Art within, against and beyond Financialization: Benign Pessimism, Tactical Parasitics and the Encrypted...
A Utopia for Money
This essay touches on themes covered in more detail in my book Art After Money, Money After Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization...
Commons as Actuality, Ethos and Horizon
Citation Haiven, Max. 2017. “Commons as Actuality, Ethos and Horizon.” In Educational Commons in Theory and Practice, edited by Alex Means, Graham...
Beyond the Violence of Colonial Civility: The Art of Raven Davis
Citation Haiven, Max. 2017. “Beyond the Violence of Colonial Civility: The Art of Raven Davis.” In The Art of Civil Action, edited by Pascal Gielen...
Struggles for a collective counter-accounting
A review essay on Miranda Joseph’s Debt to Society:Accounting for Life under Capitalism published in Dialogues in Human Geography 6(3). In her...
Ghosts and Vagabonds
Citation Haiven, Max. 2016. “Ghosts and Vagabonds.” In The Vancouver Carts: Photographs by Kelly Wood, 113–20. London: Black Dog. Abstract This short...
The Commons Against Neoliberalism, the Commons of Neoliberalism, the Commons Beyond Neoliberalism
Citation Haiven, Max. 2016. “The Commons Against Neoliberalism, the Commons of Neoliberalism, the Commons Beyond Neoliberalism.” In The Handbook of...
Outside but Along-Side: Stumbling with Social Movements as Academic Activists
Citation Khasnabish, Alex, and Max Haiven. 2015. “Outside but Along-Side: Stumbling with Social Movements as Academic Activists.” Studies in Social...
Art and Money: Three Aesthetic Strategies in an Age of Financialisation
Citation Haiven, Max. 2015. “Art and Money: Three Aesthetic Strategies in an Age of Financialisation.” Finance and Society 1 (1): 38–60...
Money as a Medium of the Imagination: Art and the Currencies of Cooperation
Citation Haiven, Max. 2015. “Money as a Medium of the Imagination: Art and the Currencies of Cooperation.” In Moneylab Reader: An Intervention in...
An excerpt from the introduction of Cultures of Financialization (2014)
An excerpt from the introduction to my 2014 book Cultures of Financialization: Fictitious Capital in Popular Culture and Everyday Life. This book is a...
The Financialized Imagination – TOPIA 30/31 (2014)
In 2014 I, along with Jody Berland, edited a special double issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies on “The Financialized...
The Creative and the Derivative: Historicizing Creativity under Post-Bretton Woods Financialization (2014)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2014. “The Creative and the Derivative: Historicizing Creativity under Post-Bretton Woods Financialization.” Radical History...
The Dammed of the Earth: Reading the Mega-Dam for the Political Unconscious of Globalization (2013)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2013. “The Dammed of the Earth: Reading the Mega-Dam for the Political Unconscious of Globalization.” In Thinking with Water...
Between Success and Failure: Dwelling with Social Movements in the Hiatus
Citation Haiven, Max, and Alex Khasnabish. 2013. “Between Success and Failure: Dwelling with Social Movements in the Hiatus.” Interface: A Journal for...
Walmart, Finance, and the Cultural Politics of Securitization (2013)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2013. “Walmart, Finance, and the Cultural Politics of Securitization.” Cultural Politics 9 (2): 239-262...
Networks, Finance Capital and the Fate of the Novel (interview with Hari Kunzru)
This interview was first published in the journal Wasafiri. Hari Kunzru (b. 1969) is a British-born author, journalist and essayist who lives and...
Finance Depends on Resistance, Finance Is Resistance, and, Anyway, Resistance Is Futile (2013)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2013. “Finance Depends on Resistance, Finance Is Resistance, and, Anyway, Resistance Is Futile.” Mediations 26 (1–2): 85–106...
The Metaphoric Wealth of Finance: Or, Capitalism with a Différance (2013)
Citation Haiven, Max, 2013. “The Metaphoric Wealth of Finance: Or, Capitalism with a Différance.” In The Economy as Cultural System: Theory...
Convoking the Radical Imagination : Social Movement Research, Dialogic Methodologies, and Scholarly Vocations (2012)
Citation Khasnabish, Alex, and Max Haiven. 2012. “Convoking the Radical Imagination : Social Movement Research, Dialogic Methodologies, and Scholarly...
“Halifax Nocturne versus (?) The Spectacle of Neoliberal Civics” 2012
Citation Haiven, Max. 2012. “Halifax Nocturne versus (?) The Spectacle of Neoliberal Civics.” PUBLIC: Art, Culture, Ideas 45 (July): 79–93...
“Can Pikachu Save Fannie Mae? Value, Finance and Imagination in the New Pokeconomy” (2012)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2012. “Can Pikachu Save Fannie Mae? Value, Finance and Imagination in the New Pokeconomy.” Cultural Studies 26 (4): 516–541...
Finance as Capital’s Imagination?: Reimagining Value and Culture in an Age of Fictitious Capital and Crisis
Citation Haiven, Max. 2011. “Finance as Capital’s Imagination?: Reimagining Value and Culture in an Age of Fictitious Capital and Crisis.” Social Text...
“Are Your Children Old Enough to Learn About May ’68?: Recalling the Radical Event, Refracting Utopia, and Commoning Memory” (2011)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2011. “Are Your Children Old Enough to Learn About May ’68?: Recalling the Radical Event, Refracting Utopia, and Commoning...
What is the Radical Imagination? (2011)
In 2011 Alex Khasnabish and I edited a special issue of Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action (volume 4, issue 2) on ... Read...
Food(&)Sovereignty (2009)
In 2009 Scott Stoneman and I edited a special issue of the online, open-access journal Politics and Culture on the topic of...
“The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of Imagination” (2010)
Citation Haiven, Max. 2010. “The Financial Crisis as a Crisis of Imagination.” Cultural Logic 30...
“Privatizing Resistance: AdBusters and the Culture of Neoliberalism” (2007)
Citaiton Haiven, Max. 2007. “Privatizing Resistance: AdBusters and the Culture of Neoliberalism.” The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural...
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