Several months ago, I listened to a podcast on Quinn Slobodian’s most recent book Hayek’s Bastards (2025), in which he referred to the scripts and narratives used to orientate oneself in the world as forming the ‘supply-side’ of political populism. Whilst the ‘demand-side’ considers the nebulous factors that lure voters towards populist figures, the ‘supply-side’,Continue reading “Whose Myth are You: Mythocracy by Yves Citton”
Tag Archives: Outlaw Appropriation
The Double Shift & Dope Thief
In The Double Shift (2024), Jason Read explores the stranglehold work has over life – the bodily, practical experiences of everyday existence – and consciousness – the mental forms of representation used to make sense of those experiences. For many of us, work is not only the sole (legitimate) means of sustaining our material needsContinue reading “The Double Shift & Dope Thief”
Lines of Flight?
By chance I recently finished two novels in which the commodity, that elementary form of the capitalist mode of production, acquires a voice and personality. They approach this personification of things, however, from diametrically opposed perspectives and interests. Commodities in Valerie Werder’s auto fictional novel Thieves (2023) are the object of the appetites of theContinue reading “Lines of Flight?”
Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation (Reloaded)
Note: I received some very constructive (but also chastening) feedback on the below. Ordinarily, I don’t think it is particularly good practice to post a version of an article that has been declined for structural and stylistic reasons. However, I can feel that my enthusiasm for the broader project of outlaw appropriation has begun toContinue reading “Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation (Reloaded)”
Of Transclasses and Outlaws
In Transclasses, Chantal Jaquet supplements work on social reproduction theory by considering exceptions to the rule, counterexamples where habitual models of identification are rejected, instances of what Jaquet calls ‘social non-reproduction’. With reference to social class – the subject of Jaquet’s text – non-reproduction relates to situations where individuals leave their familial class and crossoverContinue reading “Of Transclasses and Outlaws”
Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation and Anchorage (2021)
In Mute Compulsion (2023), Soren Mau questions how capital has managed to ‘sustain its grip on social life’, how, despite its catastrophic volatility, it has been able to persist from the 15th century through to the present. Critics on the left have generally theorized capitalism’s continuity through a combination of violence and ideology – andContinue reading “Rough Notes on Outlaw Appropriation and Anchorage (2021)”
Epics of Magical Appropriation
Refusing and Remythologising Labour in Outlaw Literature The following was presented at the 19th Annual Historical Materialism Conference in London (10 – 13 November, 2022). Reflecting on his youthful involvement with a delinquent gang calling itself ‘The Club of Midnight Gentlemen’, the narrator of Roberto Arlt’s novel The Mad Toy (1926) fondly recalls that moneyContinue reading “Epics of Magical Appropriation”
Thomas Travers 