Scorched Earth Tales aims a relentless spotlight on the disastrous terminal stage of global capitalism. Jonathan Crary, author of 24/7, surveys not only intensifying economic immiseration, state violence, and environmental unraveling, but, equally important, the wrecking of long-standing forms of shared experience and social cohesion. The few remaining spaces of interdependence and mutual support are increasingly, threatened by financialization, privatization and absorption into digital platforms.
Compounding this is the massive growth of technologies such as eye tracking, iris scanning, and face, voice and emotion recognition. At stake is not simply surveillance but the fate of what makes possible an interhuman life world: the voice, the face and the gaze. Capitalism now requires their capture and nonstop utilization online, weakening of one's capacity for caring or empathy. Refusing these imperatives is essential for holding on to a world in common and for the transition to post-capitalist ways of living together cooperatively. Jonathan Crary is Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University and is a founding editor of Zone Books. His publications include Techniques of the Observer, Suspensions of Perception and 24/7.
