A new essay in The Ideas Letter on how the politics of the face has grown more fractious, in context of smartphones, face-covering bans, facial recognition algorithms, ICE agents and protest culture.
‘Facial recognitions’
‘A critique of pure stupidity: understanding Trump 2.0’
The Guardian has published an edited version of my N+1 essay on stupidity and Trumpism as a Long Read.
‘Repeal the 20th century’
I’ve reviewed When the Clock Broke by John Ganz for the latest London Review of Books, asking how the rise of Trump might change what we consider to be a ‘model case’ of a crisis, and its correlates in the UK.
‘Stupidology’
I have a (currently paywalled) piece in the new N+1, examining the charge of ‘stupidity’ that has been leveled so frequently against the Trump administration, and asking what are the background conditions of a ‘stupid’ age.
‘TV meets fruit machine’
An essay in London Review of Books on ‘Faragist TikTok’, which explores the discontents of the algorithmic public sphere.
‘Bonfire of the bureaucrats’
I have written the cover story for this week’s New Statesman, an essay on the new wave of anti-bureaucratic sentiment sweeping states around the world.
‘Another Age of Anxiety’
New (open access) article in Theory Culture & Society, on the genealogy of modern ‘anxiety’, the post-2008 surge in ‘anxiety disorders’, and their connection to the ‘asset economy’. This accompanies a previous article on similar themes, ‘Owning Towards Death’, that was published last year.
‘Owning towards death’
I have a new, open access article published in Finance & Society, on the legitimation crisis of contemporary wealth-based capitalism and the existential unease that results.
‘A crisis in credibility’
Article in London Review of Books on Labour’s economic dilemmas and the recent budget.
‘Stay home: mapping the new domestic regime’
I have a new open access paper in Economy & Society, co-authored with Sahil Dutta and Nick Taylor, on the rising centrality of ‘home’ to current political, economic and governmental problems.
‘How the Tories pushed universities to the brink of disaster’
Long Read for The Guardian, as part of a series on 14 years of Conservative rule, on the crisis facing universities and its political roots.
‘Fever dream’
Essay in London Review of Books reflecting on 14 years of Tory rule
‘Generation anxiety’
Review essay on Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, published in London Review of Books.
‘The petit bourgeois insurrection’
Review essay on Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution, published in The New Statesman
‘Reaction value: affective reflex in the digital public sphere’
A new academic article published in Distinktion, of which a preprint is available here (or there are apparently free downloads here for the first 50 people who click on the link). This is a theoretical development of the themes I explored in my LRB Winter Lecture last year.
William Davies 