https://grantbollmer.com Grant Bollmer Sat, 14 Oct 2023 04:42:01 +0000 https://grantbollmer.com en https://grantbollmer.com/Main-page Thu, 17 Jun 2021 18:27:19 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/Main-page grant bollmer <img width="800" height="1200" width_o="800" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/081d95c428c7571a2c2e9e37bea5788a572dd9a4e865b3da0c22a6989cd0d643/pid_36787.jpg" data-mid="193662689" border="0" data-rotation="-7.5" alt="Cover of The Influencer Factory" data-caption="Cover of The Influencer Factory" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/081d95c428c7571a2c2e9e37bea5788a572dd9a4e865b3da0c22a6989cd0d643/pid_36787.jpg" /> THE INFLUENCER FACTORY: A MARXIST THEORY OF CORPORATE PERSONHOOD ON YOUTUBE (COAUTHORED WITH KATHERINE GUINNESS)&nbsp; “Influencers...achieve wealth, fame, and luxury by imagining themselves and acting not as individuals but as if their existence is equivalent to that of a vertically integrated corporation, a context in which rights and abilities are denied human citizens and transferred to corporate entities...” Read more... APRIL 2024 <img width="656" height="988" width_o="656" height_o="988" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7a8014d8818903317cbf5741d29829c029cdef886e31d1d323d2d2e63ad7d1f3/influenser-fabriki-front-book.jpg" data-mid="249021537" border="0" data-rotation="-2.5" alt="Cover of the Azerbaijani translation of The Influencer Factory" data-caption="Cover of the Azerbaijani translation of The Influencer Factory" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/656/i/7a8014d8818903317cbf5741d29829c029cdef886e31d1d323d2d2e63ad7d1f3/influenser-fabriki-front-book.jpg" /> İNFLUENSER FABRİKİ Azerbaijani translation of The Influencer Factory Translated by&nbsp;Fəridə Qocayeva MAY 2024 <img width="1650" height="2550" width_o="1650" height_o="2550" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cfe10c1c1b7ee6d5f23a9dc98fbc46eb2165e6d618db34c3058510290dfeb25a/Bollmer.jpg" data-mid="166520781" border="0" data-rotation="7.5" alt="Cover of The Affect Lab" data-caption="Cover of The Affect Lab" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cfe10c1c1b7ee6d5f23a9dc98fbc46eb2165e6d618db34c3058510290dfeb25a/Bollmer.jpg" /> THE AFFECT LAB: THE HISTORY AND LIMITS OF MEASURING EMOTION “Knowledge of the affects exists only as bodies are processed through a medium. Yet techniques of observation, inscription, and identification serve to invent that which is observed, inscribed, identified. The techniques of the Affect Lab precede and produce the affects they identify.” Read more... AUG 2023 <img width="360" height="556" width_o="360" height_o="556" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0b37c14a3be137b0d7f780ed85dd6262778e440cb187863c4206d388f39632b3/9781501337093.jpg" data-mid="172686262" border="0" data-rotation="-2.5" alt="Cover of Materialist Media Theory" data-caption="Cover of Materialist Media Theory" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/360/i/0b37c14a3be137b0d7f780ed85dd6262778e440cb187863c4206d388f39632b3/9781501337093.jpg" /> MATERIALIST MEDIA THEORY: AN INTRODUCTION “Media determine our reality, and any politics of media must begin by foregrounding media's materiality.” Read more... SEPT 2019 <img width="600" height="888" width_o="600" height_o="888" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6c4c6ffc849687508bde63ed87b147c44701f50b98af82f953931d5f8b02de07/L-1565.jpg" data-mid="217989543" border="0" data-rotation="2.5" alt="Cover of Korean Edition of Materialist Media Theory" data-caption="Cover of Korean Edition of Materialist Media Theory" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/600/i/6c4c6ffc849687508bde63ed87b147c44701f50b98af82f953931d5f8b02de07/L-1565.jpg" /> 신유물론과 유물론:&nbsp;미디어의 물질성에 대하여 [New Materialism and Materialism: On the Materiality of Media]Korean translation of Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction Translated by&nbsp;Kim Soo-cheol MAY 2024 <img width="629" height="1000" width_o="629" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f571fc9de97d0e993a211155a0287a0fe4843971a1b4d523be17f178cab3e80f/71l-kk-XEJL._AC_UF1000-1000_QL80_.jpg" data-mid="172686374" border="0" data-rotation="5" alt="Cover of Theorizing Digital Cultures" data-caption="Cover of Theorizing Digital Cultures" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/629/i/f571fc9de97d0e993a211155a0287a0fe4843971a1b4d523be17f178cab3e80f/71l-kk-XEJL._AC_UF1000-1000_QL80_.jpg" /> THEORIZING DIGITAL CULTURES “[D]igital media—in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions—affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment.” Read more... SEPT 2018 <img width="835" height="1081" width_o="835" height_o="1081" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a819b04be650bfe4cbbf51d04d985112247d53ff218fcb23637ffb45bc4810bb/CoverPage-A-Front.png" data-mid="249280327" border="0" data-rotation="-7.5" alt="Cover of the Persian translation of Theorizing Digital Cultures" data-caption="Cover of the Persian translation of Theorizing Digital Cultures" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/835/i/a819b04be650bfe4cbbf51d04d985112247d53ff218fcb23637ffb45bc4810bb/CoverPage-A-Front.png" /> تظريبيوازى فرخك لى وكيّيل. Persian translation of Theorizing Digital CulturesTranslated by Amirreza Safdartourehei JUNE 2026 <img width="568" height="890" width_o="568" height_o="890" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3e1f32fc9e1f7434c373472092546a3cfaf4113a43377de3fba17f7eeae49b38/9781501316159.jpg" data-mid="172686468" border="0" data-rotation="-2.5" alt="Cover of Inhuman Networks" data-caption="Cover of Inhuman Networks" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/568/i/3e1f32fc9e1f7434c373472092546a3cfaf4113a43377de3fba17f7eeae49b38/9781501316159.jpg" /> INHUMAN NETWORKS “[C]ontemporary network culture unintentionally repeats debates over the limits of Western modernity to provide an idealized future where ‘the human’ is interchangeable with abstract, flowing data connected through well-managed, distributed networks.” Read more... AUG 2016 <img width="800" height="1126" width_o="800" height_o="1126" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ee71f3372cade3790cd6b0336e13b2fe67d4618e9ea049edbff7e1fb0d114ef5/product_pages.jpeg" data-mid="241568853" border="0" data-rotation="5" alt="Cover of De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures" data-caption="Cover of De Gruyter Handbook of Digital Cultures" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/ee71f3372cade3790cd6b0336e13b2fe67d4618e9ea049edbff7e1fb0d114ef5/product_pages.jpeg" /> DE GRUYTER HANDBOOK OF DIGITAL CULTURES “The chapters in this handbook come from different intellectual traditions, carrydifferent theoretical, methodological, and political goals, and think of the ‘digital’ as a mutable and evolving category. But, it is in our view that we must inherently embrace this multiplicity and mutability to even grasp what’s at stake when it comes to our present.” SEPT 2025 Read more... <img width="555" height="795" width_o="555" height_o="795" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5ac7541ebf4b7da1114aaa56e375b5092b0ff270b58b7ab8303309d1624b6f61/tpar20.v026.i01.jpeg" data-mid="172686584" border="0" data-rotation="5" alt="Cover of Parallax special issue &quot;Networked Liminality&quot;" data-caption="Cover of Parallax special issue &quot;Networked Liminality&quot;" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/555/i/5ac7541ebf4b7da1114aaa56e375b5092b0ff270b58b7ab8303309d1624b6f61/tpar20.v026.i01.jpeg" /> NETWORKED LIMINALITY “Rather than networked connectivity, networked liminality allows us to foreground the thresholds, oppositions, processes, and movements that make up networked subjectivity.“ Read more... SEPT 2020 JOURNAL ARTICLES Academic content, peer-reviewed for your perusal. Read more... BOOK CHAPTERS Can be otherwise prohibitively expensive to access. Read More... OTHER WRITINGS Occassional pieces, invited posts, magazine articles. Read More...&nbsp; https://grantbollmer.com/THE-INFLUENCER-FACTORY Sat, 14 Oct 2023 04:42:01 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/THE-INFLUENCER-FACTORY The Influencer Factory: A Marxist Theory of Corporate Personhood on YouTube (coauthored with Katherine Guinness) ︎return home <img width="800" height="1200" width_o="800" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9050cace5ea17e26275f3a3338a8a6f2a1554df31ec0545ae080bb35236ae483/pid_36787.jpg" data-mid="193662906" border="0" data-scale="80" data-rotation="5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/800/i/9050cace5ea17e26275f3a3338a8a6f2a1554df31ec0545ae080bb35236ae483/pid_36787.jpg" /> Publisher: Stanford University Press APRIL 2024 248 PAGES FROM $28.00 Hardcover ISBN: 9781503637924 Paperback ISBN: 9781503638792 Buy it from the publisher, or from Amazon. Click here to see our discussion of the book on The Page 99 Test. The ideas from this book have been discussed by artists Lizzy Deacon and Ika Schwander in an interview for Émergent Magazine. The novelist and digital media strategist Andrew Ladd has discussed our book at length in a fantastic post on his blog. Influencers are more than social media personalities who attract attention for brands, argue Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. They are figures of a new transformation in capitalism, in which the logic of the self is indistinguishable from the logic of the corporation. Influencers are emblematic of what Bollmer and Guinness call the "Corpocene:" a moment in capitalism in which individuals achieve the status of living, breathing, talking corporations. Behind the veneer of leisure and indulgence, most influencers are laboring daily, usually for pittance wages, to manufacture a commodity called "the self"—a raw material for brands to use—with the dream of becoming corporations in human form by owning and investing in the products they sell. Refuting the theory that digital labor and economies are immaterial, Bollmer and Guinness search influencer content for evidence of the material infrastructure of capitalism. Each chapter looks to what literally appears in the backgrounds of videos and images: the houses, cars, warehouses, and spaces of the market that point back to the manufacturing and circulation of consumer goods. Demonstrating the material reality of producing the self as a commodity, The Influencer Factory makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of contemporary economic life. "Don't read this book if you want to learn how to become an influencer. Do read this book if you're concerned about 'the self' being reduced to a mere product circulating on an endless social media reel. As Bollmer and Guinness convincingly demonstrate, influencer culture is only about celebrity and entertainment on the surface. The real story here concerns the reorganization of capital in the 21st century, and this is a story we all need to understand as it is ultimately about how workers who once made products have become products." —Kate Eichhorn, The New School "A dazzling and organic application of cultural theory, The Influencer Factory is a lively and provocative read for anyone invested in understanding how a new, expansive, and important sector of our cultural economy works." —Michael Palm, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "At the intersection of authenticity, identity, and commerce, we find Bollmer and Guinness engaged in next-gen platform capitalism studies. The Influencer Factory nimbly combines digital media theory and political economy, with attention to the labor and infrastructure behind the corporate self." —Alexandra Juhasz, Brooklyn College CUNY "This compelling book gives voice to the often-invisible work of influencers. From the house and car to market and warehouse, The Influencer Factory puts influencers, their work and what they reflect about contemporary media culture into context—historically, socially, and culturally." —Larissa Hjorth, RMIT University, Melbourne“I can’t remember the last time a book blew my mind quite so completely. I feel like this is how nineteenth century proletarians must have felt reading Marx: like it just perfectly describes every last tiny indignity of working life, even the ones you’d never fully noticed before.”—Andrew Ladd, digital media strategist and novelist, author of NYPL Young Lions Award finalist &nbsp;What Ends https://grantbollmer.com/THE-AFFECT-LAB Wed, 22 Mar 2023 20:48:18 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/THE-AFFECT-LAB The Affect Lab:&nbsp;The History and Limits of Measuring Emotion ︎return home <img width="1650" height="2550" width_o="1650" height_o="2550" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a858000f2e36906f020893119e5b63b09ba2b9ec6468433914835f7d570648b1/Bollmer.jpg" data-mid="172729233" border="0" data-scale="55" data-rotation="5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a858000f2e36906f020893119e5b63b09ba2b9ec6468433914835f7d570648b1/Bollmer.jpg" /> Publisher: University of Minnesota Press $28.00 paper ISBN 978-1-5179-1546-9 $112.00 cloth ISBN 978-1-5179-1545-2 290 pages 45 b&amp;w photos 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 August 2023 Buy it from the publisher, or from Amazon.OPEN ACCESS EDITION AVAILABLE on University of Minnesota Press’s Manifold Platform. Reviews can be found in&nbsp;The British Journal for the History of Science, Choice,&nbsp;The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences,&nbsp;Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, and This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory Examines how our understanding of emotion is shaped by the devices we use to measure itSince the late nineteenth century, psychologists have used technological forms of media to measure and analyze emotion. In The Affect Lab, Grant Bollmer examines the use of measurement tools such as electrical shocks, photography, video, and the electroencephalograph to argue that research on emotions has confused the physiology of emotion with the tools that define its inscription. Bollmer shows that the psychological definitions of emotion have long been directly shaped by the physical qualities of the devices used in laboratory research. To investigate these devices, The Affect Lab examines four technologies related to the history of psychology in North America: spiritualist toys at Harvard University, serial photography in early American psychological laboratories, experiments on "psychopaths" performed with an instrument called an Offner Dynograph, and the development of the "electropsychometer," or "E-Meter," by Volney Mathison and L. Ron Hubbard. Challenging the large body of humanities research surrounding affect theory, The Affect Lab identifies an understudied problem in formulations of affect: how affect itself is a construction inseparable from the techniques and devices used to identify and measure it. Ultimately, Bollmer offers a new critique of affect and affect theory, demonstrating how deferrals to psychology and neuroscience in contemporary theory and philosophy neglect the material of experimental, scientific research. A Choice Editor’s Pick, June 2024 “Moving compellingly through a series of instruments drawn from the histories of experimental psychology, psychiatric photography, and spiritualism, Grant Bollmer provides an important materialist rebuke to the liberatory strain in affect theory, which frequently treats affect as ‘an eternal truth of the body rather than a momentary fragment.’” — David Parisi, author of Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing “The Affect Lab argues that beneath affect theory lies media. Far from being natural or biological—and, most fundamentally, far from being universal—affect is the product of the concrete technical operations that are necessary to access it in the first place. By challenging affect theory to examine its own technical basis, The Affect Lab will reboot the field for our times and, in the process, fundamentally change our views of how affect operates and the roles it plays in lived experience.” — Mark B. N. Hansen, author of Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media “This book is one of the best histories of technology in the field of psychological research to date... Summing Up: Highly recommended.” &nbsp; — M. Uebel, Choice “Where the book shines is in the case studies. With vivid detail, each of these invites the reader into a fascinating moment in the history of the science of emotion...&nbsp;Bollmer’s book offers a far-reaching and engaging study of four moments in the history of the emotions. It highlights as yet underappreciated connections between traditions of spiritualism, aesthetics, education, therapy and measurement. It is not a comprehensive survey – but it is not meant to be. This is, in some ways, a strength of the work insofar as it opens up space for further investigation. This book will be of interest to anyone working in the history and philosophy of the human sciences, and especially to anyone curious about how measurement shapes our lives.” — Riana Betzler, &nbsp;The British Journal for the History of Science “The Affect Lab makes an incisive critique of affect theorists who take affect as primordial and biological, and of cultural studies scholars and pop psychology writers who treat science as given and ignore its history. Bollmer seeks to make such authors aware of the material and context-dependent aspects of the sciences they so prize, that the technologies do not simply reflect reality but are ‘theories materialized’...&nbsp;Bollmer’s book offers a salutary reminder that that inner life is fundamentally unknowable.— Nadine Weidman, &nbsp;Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences “As a whole...the work builds to a thoughtful and compelling case to take seriously the ways we measure in our construction of what we think affect and emotion is, and the somewhat provocatively chosen examples provide an entertaining and enjoyable entry point to the very human origins of how we think about who we are.” —Katie Barclay, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences https://grantbollmer.com/MATERIALIST-MEDIA-THEORY-AN-INTRODUCTION Thu, 17 Jun 2021 18:27:18 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/MATERIALIST-MEDIA-THEORY-AN-INTRODUCTION Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction ︎return home <img width="360" height="556" width_o="360" height_o="556" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/582bdb1d13c8dc05c1c8fd6977647966c7fab16f24727a606f236595fc4e84d5/9781501337093.jpg" data-mid="172729078" border="0" data-scale="56" data-rotation="2.5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/360/i/582bdb1d13c8dc05c1c8fd6977647966c7fab16f24727a606f236595fc4e84d5/9781501337093.jpg" /> Published:09-19-2019Format:PaperbackEdition:1stExtent:208ISBN:9781501337116Imprint:Bloomsbury AcademicDimensions:5 1/2" x 8 1/2"Buy it from the publisher, or from Amazon. Reviews can be found in Leonardo, MEDIENwissenschaft, Neural, and Critical Studies in Media Communication. Our technologies rely on an ever-expanding infrastructure of wires, routers, servers, and hard drives-a proliferation of devices that reshape human interaction and experience prior to conscious knowledge. Understanding these technologies requires an approach that foregrounds media as an agent that collaborates in the production of the world beyond content or representation. Materialist Media Theory provides an accessible, synthetic account of the cutting edge of the theoretical humanities, examining a range of approaches to media's physical, infrastructural role in shaping culture, space, time, cognition, and life itself.More than a mere introduction, Materialist Media Theory provides a critical intervention into matter and media, of interest to students and researchers in media studies, communication, cultural studies, visual culture, and beyond. Media determine our reality, and any politics of media must begin by foregrounding the media's materiality.“Materialist Media Theory is much more than just an introduction. Instead, Bollmer's book is an attempt, and a very successful one, to reshape the domain of media studies by defending a special take on the major issues and stakes of the field as well as by critically rereading a large number of its foundational and contemporary thinkers.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;Leonardo Reviews “The book will be especially useful for those interested in media theory. Nonspecialists will appreciate the survey of the major ideas in media theory and the compelling description of the interconnections between scholars. Advanced scholars will find the book helpful context for recent works in this field, for example, Daniel Reynolds's Media in Mind (2019). Summing Up: Recommended.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;CHOICE “Grant Bollmer's Materialist Media Theory is a deceptive book: on the surface, it appears to draw a straightforward map of materialist media studies. Through Bollmer's accessible style and relatable case studies, he takes what is a rather abstract concept and makes its implications for the study of media refreshingly concrete and tangible. But beneath this surface, something far more complex is afoot, as Bollmer establishes the core tenets of a materialist approach to media, while subjecting these foundational theories to a rigorous and sustained skepticism. What emerges is an intellectually ambitious and politically urgent manifesto for the methodological and analytical utility of a materialist media studies.” – &nbsp;David Parisi, Associate Professor of Emerging Media, College of Charleston, USA, and author of Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (2018) “Grant Bollmer's Materialist Media Theory is a crystal clear pathway into and a direct response to how 20th- and 21st-century media studies is defined by a distinctly materialist turn. He provides us with succinct yet sophisticated introductions to some of the most opaque theories about the so-called hard materialisms built into our everyday technologes. At the same time, Bollmer always counter-balances his overviews with interventionist reminders of how social, cultural, and political power establishes and perpetuates itself through the material structures of these same technologies. He performs the best kind of pragmatic criticism insofar as he continually reminds us that matter and materiality don't simply extend from technologies to their human users; instead, humans and media technologies are bound together by way of complex assemblages of material forces bouncing back and forth between the one and the other. In short, if you've ever wondered about the place of people and politics in materialist media theory, this book is a must-read.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;Lori Emerson, Associate Professor and Director of the Media Archaeology Lab at University of Colorado Boulder, USA https://grantbollmer.com/THEORIZING-DIGITAL-CULTURES Thu, 17 Jun 2021 18:27:18 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/THEORIZING-DIGITAL-CULTURES Theorizing Digital Cultures ︎return home <img width="629" height="1000" width_o="629" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9278cc6d09f86ae417baf86e55aad8dbb548dc78dbf9ccd9608953891e7e23f3/71l-kk-XEJL._AC_UF1000-1000_QL80_.jpg" data-mid="172728996" border="0" data-scale="45" data-rotation="-7.5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/629/i/9278cc6d09f86ae417baf86e55aad8dbb548dc78dbf9ccd9608953891e7e23f3/71l-kk-XEJL._AC_UF1000-1000_QL80_.jpg" /> Published:September 2018Format:PaperbackEdition:1stExtent:264ISBN:9781473966932Imprint:SAGE Publications Buy it from the publisher or from Amazon. Reviews can be found in the American Book Review and in [sic] - A Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation. The rapid development of digital technologies continues to have far reaching effects on our daily lives. This book explains how digital media—in providing the material and infrastructure for a host of practices and interactions—affect identities, bodies, social relations, artistic practices, and the environment. Theorizing Digital Cultures: Shows students the importance of theory for understanding digital cultures and presents key theories in an easy-to-understand way Considers the key topics of cybernetics, online identities, aesthetics and ecologies Explores the power relations between individuals and groups that are produced by digital technologies Enhances understanding through applied examples, including YouTube personalities, Facebook’s ‘like’ button and holographic performers Clearly structured and written in an accessible style, this is the book students need to get to grips with the key theoretical approaches in the field. It is essential reading for students and researchers of digital culture and digital society throughout the social sciences.“Digital media have changed everything. Grant Bollmer shows why we must think through this change, and how to think with and about it.” Sean Cubitt, Goldsmiths, University of London “At last, a clear and brilliant guide to the digital world, as both a virtual and material zone. Bravo!” Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside “A theoretically rich and grounded text full of brand new insights into technology. Theorizing Digital Cultures lays out exactly how the relationship between digital media and culture is political. In doing so it sets a much needed example for both students and scholars on how to engage theories of media and culture in order to make sense of our emerging technological realities.” Sarah Sharma,University of Toronto https://grantbollmer.com/INHUMAN-NETWORKS Thu, 17 Jun 2021 18:27:19 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/INHUMAN-NETWORKS Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection ︎return home <img width="568" height="890" width_o="568" height_o="890" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c275a382c1796791142fe611d8159ff542e1e240bb8a9757b087cdc593c18ef3/9781501316159.jpg" data-mid="172729119" border="0" data-scale="57" data-rotation="-12.5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/568/i/c275a382c1796791142fe611d8159ff542e1e240bb8a9757b087cdc593c18ef3/9781501316159.jpg" /> Published:08-11-2016Format:HardbackEdition:1stExtent:304ISBN:9781501316159Imprint:Bloomsbury AcademicIllustrations:20 bw illusDimensions:6" x 9" Buy it from the publisher or from Amazon (these links are to the paperback version). Reviews have been published by NECSUS, MEDIENwissenschaft, Screen Bodies, and the International Journal of Communication (which published three separate reviews). Social media's connectivity is often thought to be a manifestation of human nature buried until now, revealed only through the diverse technologies of the participatory internet. Rather than embrace this view, Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection argues that the human nature revealed by social media imagines network technology and data as models for behavior online. Covering a wide range of historical and interdisciplinary subjects, Grant Bollmer examines the emergence of “the network” as a model for relation in the 1700s and 1800s and follows it through marginal, often forgotten articulations of technology, biology, economics, and the social. From this history, Bollmer examines contemporary controversies surrounding social media, extending out to the influence of network models on issues of critical theory, politics, popular science, and neoliberalism. By moving through the past and present of network media, Inhuman Networks demonstrates how contemporary network culture unintentionally repeats debates over the limits of Western modernity to provide an idealized future where “the human” is interchangeable with abstract, flowing data connected through well-managed, distributed networks.“Part an archaeology of connectivity, part critical analysis of contemporary culture, Inhuman Networks offers an inspiring take for media studies. Grant Bollmer's rich, multi-layered book shows that social media does not just mediate but performs a subtle yet effective moral code: the networks prescribe senses of the self, community, value and direction. The so-called human exists only if it routes.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;Jussi Parikka, Winchester School of Art, UK author of Digital Contagions (2007) and Insect Media (2010) “Bollmer's Inhuman Networks represents the best of the cultural studies tradition of taking the object seriously, learning everything one can about it, putting it into historical and cultural contexts, and then rigorously critiquing it. Combining media archaeology and genealogy, Bollmer crafts critiques of the admonition to connect or be considered inhuman. However, he also challenges misguided calls for total refusal of connection, instead insisting we humans re-engage with practices of collectivity and commonality.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;Robert W. Gehl, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Utah, USA, and author of Reverse Engineering Social Media “Bollmer's Inhuman Networks issues a bold and welcome critique of social media's culture of connectivity. This accessible, provocative analysis of the “network” concept is shaped by network theorists predating the network society: anatomists deciphering the flow of bodily fluids, railroad conglomerates arguing about rail gauge, defenders of branch banking, and conspiracy theorists. Bollmer deftly shows how the conjunction of these early modern discourses of the network combine with contemporary digital technologies to forge “nodal citizenship,” a reduction of the human to an information node in a broader technological network. A must-read for anyone interested in communication, media studies, cultural theory, and political economy.” –&nbsp;&nbsp;Damien Smith Pfister, Department of Communication, University of Maryland, USA and author of Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics “Inhuman Networks masterfully exposes the stunted understandings and logical fallacies undergirding widespread economic and cultural assertions that unless we are connected through social media we are less than human. Bollmer convincingly argues that enlightenment understandings of “human nature” are being supplanted by neoliberal and normative narratives of networked communications as the way to finally achieve full humanity. Yet this is a disempowered form of “humanity” constituted through capital and data alone and ultimately less important than the inhuman(e) routers through which individuals “connect” in empowered and irrelevant ways.” –Ken Hillis, Professor of Media and Technology Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill USA “As social media becomes more pervasive in many people's lives globally, the complex entanglement of the human and inhuman across practices, cultures, flows and networks are yet to being fully understood. Grant Bollmer's Inhuman Networks: Social Media and the Archaeology of Connection offers a thorough and thought-provoking discussion of how we might re-imagine social media beyond a human-centric model bolstered by problematic metaphors around connection. From metaphors such as “networks” to “contagion”, Bollmer takes us on a fascinating journey in and around the messy relationality between technology, desire and humans. This book puts the complex human and beyond-human dimensions of social media in context historically and conceptually in ways that are both poetic and inspiring.” – Larissa Hjorth, RMIT Distinguished Professor School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia &nbsp; https://grantbollmer.com/NETWORKED-LIMINALITY Thu, 17 Jun 2021 20:37:01 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/NETWORKED-LIMINALITY Networked Liminality parallax, volume 26, number 1 (2020), edited byYiğit Soncul and Grant Bollmer ︎return home <img width="555" height="795" width_o="555" height_o="795" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9309931fc0ad6a9033dadab95a67629303b80d539dd498a52fc320363881ad7d/tpar20.v026.i01.jpeg" data-mid="172729155" border="0" data-scale="57" data-rotation="5" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/555/i/9309931fc0ad6a9033dadab95a67629303b80d539dd498a52fc320363881ad7d/tpar20.v026.i01.jpeg" /> “Networked Liminality” is a special issue of the journal parallax I co-edited with Yiğit Soncul, a Lecturer at the University of Winchester in the United Kingdom. As we state in the introduction to the issue, the idea of “networked liminality” is explicitly there to oppose “networked connectivity:” In spite of any assumed ‘smooth’ or ‘frictionless’ connections attributed to their form, networks are inherently uneven... This issue of parallax [is inspired by calls to] look for, examine, and theorise how networks produce subjects who only partially connect, liminal subjects that do not abide by normative demands of connectivity. This issue focuses on the liminal spaces and figures that enact the multiple subjectivities associated with networks. These figures help us imagine political conflicts that undermine the seeming flatness of networked relation, looking to liminality - rather than a more simplistic fetishizing of connectivity - as a potential space over which networked power is maintained, contested, undermined, and enacted. In thinking through these “liminalities,” this issue contains contribitions from renowned and emerging researchers and theorists who live at the border of digital culture and contemporary art: Sean Cubitt, Ingrid Hoelzl, Tony Sampson, Tero Karppi, Jim Hodge, Katherine Guinness, Alex Anikina, Philip Glahn and Cary Levine, and Mihaela Brebenel. The introduction of the special issue can be found here, and the entire issue can be found here. https://grantbollmer.com/JOURNAL-ARTICLES Thu, 17 Jun 2021 20:37:24 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/JOURNAL-ARTICLES Journal Articles︎return home Below is a list of academic journal articles I’ve written, along with links to digital copies of these articles, where available. Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. 2024. “Das personifizierte Kapital. Zwei Gesichter der Influencer-Kultur&nbsp;[The Personification of Capital: The Two Faces of Influencer Culture],” translated by Katherine Bird and Wolfgang Hübner, WestEnd: Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung 21:1, 29-39. [link] Grant Bollmer and Adam Suddarth. 2022. “Embodied Parallelism and Immersion in Virtual Reality Gaming,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 28:2, 579–594. [link] Yiğit Soncul and Grant Bollmer. 2020. “Networked Liminality,” parallax 26:1, 1–8. [link] Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. 2020. “Empathy and Nausea: Virtual Reality and Jordan Wolfson’s Real Violence,” Journal of Visual Culture 19:1, 28 – 46. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2019 “Networks Before the Internet,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 59:1, 142 – 148. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2019. “Books of Faces: Cultural Techniques of Basic Emotions,” NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies 8:1, 125 – 150. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2019. “The Kinesthetic Index: Videogames and the Body of Motion Capture,” InVisible Culture 30. [link] Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. 2018. “‘Do You Really Want to Live Forever?’ Animism, Death, and Digital Images,” Cultural Studies Review 24:2, 79 – 96. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2018. “The Feeling of Connection, or, Complex Narratives and the Aesthetics of Truth,” Frame: Journal of Literary Studies 31:2, 53–70. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2017. “Empathy Machines,” Media International Australia 165, 63 – 76. [link] Grant Bollmer and Katherine Guinness. 2017. “Phenomenology for the Selfie,” Cultural Politics 13:2, 156 – 176. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2016. “Infrastructural Temporalities: Facebook and The Differential Time of Data Management,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 30:1, 20 – 31. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2015. “Technological Materiality and Assumptions About ‘Active’ Human Agency,” Digital Culture &amp; Society 1:1, 95 – 110. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2015. “Fragile Storage, Digital Futures,” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 2:1, 66 – 72. [link] Katherine Guinness and Grant Bollmer. 2015. “Marina Abramović Doesn’t Feel Like You,” Feral Feminisms 3, 40 – 55. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2014. “Pathologies of Affect: The ‘New Wounded’ and the Politics of Ontology,” Cultural Studies 28:2, 298 – 326. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2013. “Millions Now Living Will Never Die: Cultural Anxieties About the Afterlife of Information,” The Information Society 29:3, 142 – 151. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2012. “Demanding Connectivity: The Performance of ‘True’ Identity and the Politics of Social Media,” JOMEC Journal 1. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2011. “Community as a Financial Network: Mortgages, Citizenship, and Connectivity,” Democratic Communiqué 24, 39 – 56. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2011. “Virtuality in Systems of Memory: Toward an Ontology of Collective Memory, Ritual, and the Technological,” Memory Studies 4:4, 450 – 464. [link] https://grantbollmer.com/BOOK-CHAPTERS Thu, 17 Jun 2021 21:48:28 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/BOOK-CHAPTERS Book Chapters︎return home Below is a list of my chapters in academic books, along with links to digital copies of these articles, where available. Some of the copies linked here may be uncorrected proofs. Book chapters may otherwise be quite obscure or expensive. Chapters noted by an asterisk [*] were coauthored with former students. Grant Bollmer. 2024. “Absurd Temporalities,” Contemporary Absurdities, Existential Crises, and Visual Art, Charlotte Kent and Katherine Guinness, editors. Bristol: Intellect Books. Grant Bollmer. 2021. “Counter-Selfies and the Real Subsumption of Society,” Visual Culture Approaches to the Selfie, ed. Derek Conrad Murray, editor. New York: Routledge, 20–39. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2021. “Mimetic Sameness,” Critical Meme Reader: Global Mutations of the Viral Image, INC Reader #15, Chloë Arkenbout, Jack Wilson, and Daniel de Zeeuw, editors. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 154–164. [link] [*] Dina Abdel-Mageed and Grant Bollmer. 2021. “E-Sheikhs: How Online Islamic Discourse Can Reproduce Authoritarian Power Structures,” New Media Discourses, Culture and Politics after the Arab Spring: Case Studies from Egypt and Beyond, Aziz Douai and Eid Mohamed, editors. London: I. B. Tauris, 83–101. Grant Bollmer. 2021. “Facial Obfuscation and Bare Life: Politicizing Dystopia in Black Mirror,” Digital Dystopia: The Moral Uncanny of Netflix’s Black Mirror, ed. Margaret Gibson and Clarissa Carden. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 99 – 119. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2020. “Selfies and Dronies as Relational Political Practices,” Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art, ed. Larissa Hjorth, Adriana de Souza e Silva, and Klare Lanson. London: Routledge, 183 – 192. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2020. “From Immersion to Empathy: The Legacy of Einfühlung in Digital Art and Videogames,” Shifting Interfaces: An Anthology of Presence, Empathy, and Agency in 21st Century Media Arts, Hava Aldouby, ed. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 18 – 30. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2018. “Software Intimacies (Social Media and the Unbearability of Death),” Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media, Amy Shields Dobson, Brady Robards, and Nic Carah, editors. Palgrave MacMillan, 45 – 58. [link] [*] Grant Bollmer and Chris Rodley. 2017. “Speculations on the Sociality of Socialbots,” Socialbots and their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality, Robert W. Gehl and Maria P. Bakardjieva, editors. New York: Routledge, 147 – 163. [link] Grant Bollmer. 2015. “Technobiological Traffic: Networks, Bodies, and the Management of Vitality,” Traffic: Media as Infrastructures and Cultural Practices, Marion Näser-Lather and Christoph Neubert, editors. Leiden: Brill, 117 – 135. [link] https://grantbollmer.com/OTHER-WRITINGS Thu, 17 Jun 2021 21:48:31 +0000 Grant Bollmer https://grantbollmer.com/OTHER-WRITINGS Other Writings︎return home This is a list of other writings I’ve done, beginning with articles written for a popular audience and then other, occasional academic writings (such as reviews or reports). Popular Writings Katherine Guinness, Grant Bollmer, and Tom Doig. 2024. “Billionaires are Building Bunkers and Buying Islands. But are they Prepping for the Apocalypse – or Pioneering a New Feudalism?” The Conversation (AU), 1 March. Grant Bollmer. 2020. “Culture and Anarchy, from Matthew Arnold to the Internet,” In Media Res, 13 February. Grant Bollmer. 2019. “Emotion Detection and the Mimetic Faculty,” MediaCommons Field Guide, 8 April. Grant Bollmer. 2019. “The Automation of Empathy,” esse: Arts and Opinions 95, Winter, 30 – 34. Grant Bollmer. 2018. “Will Silicon Valley’s New Company Towns End Up as Failed Utopias?” The Conversation (US), 31 May. (Reprinted by Salon, Fast Company, U.S. News and World Report, and CityMetric, among others.) Grant Bollmer. 2014. “Who is to Blame When iCloud is ‘Hacked’—You or Apple?” The Conversation (AU), 3 September. Book Reviews Grant Bollmer. 2018. A review of Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah’s The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: A History of Information in Modern Economics, Journal of Cultural Economy 11:2, 169-172. Grant Bollmer. 2017. A review of Stuart Cunningham, Terry Flew, and Adam Swift’s Media Economics, Communication Research and Practice 3:4, 386 – 388. Grant Bollmer. 2014. “Big Data, Small Media” (Review of Polity’s Digital Media and Society Series), Cultural Studies Review 20:2, 266 – 277. Grant Bollmer. 2013. A review of McKenzie Wark’s Telesthesia: Communication, Culture &amp; Class, Media International Australia 147, 177. Grant Bollmer. 2010. “Review Essay: Not Understanding the Network? A Review of Four Contemporary Works” (Review of Phillip Armstrong’s Reticulations, Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker’s The Exploit, and Brian Rotman’s Becoming Beside Ourselves), The Communication Review 13:3, 243 – 260. Research Report Grant Bollmer. 2019. “The Hubbard Professional Mark Super VII Quantum E- Meter: Notes on the Media Archaeology of Scientology and Technological Metaphysics,” MALware Technical Report, Media Archaeology Lab, University of Colorado, Boulder. Encyclopedia Articles Grant Bollmer. 2014. “Avatars” and “Second Life,” Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics, Kerric Harvey, editor. Los Angeles: SAGE, 96 – 98, 1114 – 1115.