For Episode 8 of the BLACK MIRROR REFLECTIONS podcast, I am joined by Dr. Jason Read to talk about “The Waldo Moment” (Season 2, Episode 3 of Black Mirror), which first premiered in 2013 and has been, in retrospect, one of the most unfortunately prescient episodes of the series so far.
This was my first “real” conversation with Jason Read, despite having known him through friends-of-friends for many years. I am soooo happy that we finally connected for an actual– okay, “virtual”– conversation for this podcast, because I’ve been a fan of Jason’s blog Unemployed Negativity for a while now. I’ve always appreciated the skill with which he draws out the philosophical implications of pop culture products in his blog essays, and I knew he would be a fantastic guest for BMR!
If you haven’t done so already, you should definitely check out Jason’s blog. You can also follow him on Twitter at @Unemployedneg!
Jason Read is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, where he regularly teaches courses in social and political philosophy, continental philosophy, philosophy of history, feminist philosophy, and philosophical anthropology. Jason is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY 2003) and The Politics of Transindividuality (Brill 2015/Haymarket 2016) and a forthcoming collection of essays entitled The Production of Subjectivity: Between Marxism and Post-Structuralism. He is also currently completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Double Shift: The
Ideology and Economy of Work.
- Brogan Morris, “Black Mirror: The Unexpected Foresight of ‘The Waldo Moment'”
- David Kyle Johnson, “Black Mirror and the 2020 Election: The Waldo Moment”
- Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny
- Jennifer Wright, “Why Incels Hate Women”
- Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
- Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware, “Incels: America’s Newest Domestic Threat”
- Greg Littmann, “The Waldo Moment and Political Discourse: What’s Wrong with Disrespect in Politics?”