Books by David Golumbia
The "first comprehensive account of Bitcoin's underlying right-wing politics" argues that far-rig... more The "first comprehensive account of Bitcoin's underlying right-wing politics" argues that far-right political theory is not just widespread in the communities around Bitcoin, but is built into the software design of Bitcoin, and that Bitcoin and the blockchain serve as surprisingly effective tools for spreading economic and political ideas that until very recently were thought to have been altogether discredited.
Essays in Peer-Reviewed Journals by David Golumbia
boundary 2, 2021
The history of philology provides an exceptionally rich vein for locating what Derrida came to ca... more The history of philology provides an exceptionally rich vein for locating what Derrida came to call deconstructions: nodes or pseudo-events in the development of discourse where it appears that foundations collapse, only to be rebuilt in forms that may or may not have changed. The history of philology engages language, the sciences (especially evolutionary biology), and race, all of which are evidenced in the work of the German philologist Wilhelm von Humboldt. The relationships among these discourses have been repeatedly subject to deconstruction, sometimes so as to enhance appreciation of human diversity, and at other times against it. Understanding the history of philology is critical to understanding our present, but there remains significant work to do to reconstruct its liberatory aspects in the service of a more egalitarian future.
boundary 2, 2017
The question of the militarization of language emerges from the politics surrounding cryptography... more The question of the militarization of language emerges from the politics surrounding cryptography, or the use of encryption in contemporary networked digital technology, and the intersection of encryption with the politics of language. Ultimately, cryptographic politics aims to embody at a foundational level a theory of language that some recent philosophers, including Charles Taylor and Philip Pettit, locate partly in the writings of Thomas Hobbes. As in Hobbes's political theory, this theory of language is closely tied to the conception of political sovereignty as necessarily absolute and as the only available alternative to absolute sovereignty being a state of nature (or more accurately what Pettit 2008 calls a “second state of nature,” one in which language plays a key role). In that state of nature, the only possible political relation is what Hobbes calls a war of “all against all.” While Hobbes intended that image as a justification for the quasi-absolute power of the political sovereign, those who most vigorously pursue cryptographic politics appear bent on realizing it as a welcome sociopolitical goal. To reject that vision, we need to adopt a different picture of language and of sovereignty itself, a less individualistic picture that incorporates a more robust sense of shared and community responsibility and that entails serious questions about the political consequences of the cryptographic program.
Open Access (OA) is the movement to make academic research available without charge, typically vi... more Open Access (OA) is the movement to make academic research available without charge, typically via digital networks. Like many cyberlibertarian causes OA is roundly celebrated by advocates from across the political spectrum. Yet like many of those causes, OA's lack of clear grounding in an identifiable political framework means that it may well not only fail to serve the political goals of some of its supporters, and may in fact work against them. In particular, OA is difficult to reconcile with Marxist accounts of labor, and on its face appears not to advance but to actively mitigate against achievement of Marxist goals for the emancipation of labor. In part this stems from a widespread misunderstanding of Marx's own attitude toward intellectual work, which to Marx was not categorically different from other forms of labor, though was in danger of becoming so precisely through the denial of the value of the end products of intellectual work. This dynamic is particularly visible in the humanities, where OA advocacy routinely includes disparagement of academic labor, and of the value produced by that labor.
Almost from its inception, one of the most notable features of Noam Chomsky’s “revolution in ling... more Almost from its inception, one of the most notable features of Noam Chomsky’s “revolution in linguistics” has been his insistence that linguistics, or at least the most interesting and important aspects of linguistics, must be understood as a part of natural science. Its status as natural science is frequently posited as a critical distinction between Chomskyan linguistics and all (or almost all) other approaches to the subject. While much attention has been directed to the way Chomsky’s definitions of language and linguistics structure his research program, Chomsky’s conception of science has been subject to much less scrutiny, and turns out to be both very specific and controversial. Chomskyan science rules out, rather than in, many practices associated with contemporary scientific investigation, particularly direct empirical investigation of ordinary social and mental phenomena. Instead, Chomsky has long explicitly endorsed what he calls “Cartesian rationalism,” a view that proceeds from just those Aristotelian precepts to which modern science is typically understood to have developed in opposition. Chomsky’s project resembles and in many ways follows in lock-step that of Edmund Husserl, the first major figure to discuss “universal grammar” and to name it as such; while Chomsky rarely discusses Husserl, Chomsky’s attempts to erect a science by ruling out metaphysics are notably Husserlian, in that they continually return to metaphysical propositions that are not recognized as such, and in that this continual return in the name of science is typically marked by the name of Descartes.
The theoretical movements known as Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology depend on the... more The theoretical movements known as Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology depend on the “critique of correlationism” offered by the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux in his 2009 After Finitude. There Meillassoux claims to have shown that Kant and all philosophers following him committed a grave and unseen philosophical error that he calls “correlationism,” in failing to see that humans can have access to absolute knowledge. Meillassoux’s demonstration fails to deliver on this promise by equivocating on just the key argumentative points that philosophers from Kant onward have worked to clarify with precise language and argument, and by ignoring tremendous amounts of countervailing textual evidence. Far from blindly committing the correlationist “error,” much of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy takes the issues Meillasoux raises as central ones for any philosophical investigation, with a significant number of philosophers and theorists adopting the realist position Meillassoux claims has been eliminated.
Language Sciences, Jan 1, 2010
Noam Chomsky's most recent research paradigm, the Minimalist Program (MP), overtly proclaims cont... more Noam Chomsky's most recent research paradigm, the Minimalist Program (MP), overtly proclaims continuity with earlier phases of transformational-generative linguistics. Despite its (limited) use of terminology from these earlier phases and its continued focus on many of the same issues with which Chomsky and his followers have always been concerned, at a conceptual level MP represents a dramatic break with earlier generative theories. MP adopts many of the assumptions and goals of the linguistic research projects that emerged before, alongside, and contrary to Chomsky's own, the ones which have come in the linguistic literature to be called functionalism. While this shift has had significant consequences in linguistics, in part driving convergences between functionalist and formalist approaches, its consequences have yet to be fully realized in fields like philosophy and cognitive science that have based many foundational assumptions on just those aspects of generativism now challenged by Chomsky's own theory. generative frameworks. Granted these continuities, though, MP diverges in significant ways from other formulations of generative linguistics. Indeed, surprisingly, but as Chomsky has recently stated explicitly, MP is not directly a search for the nature of Universal Grammar (UG), the hallmark of his pre-MP programs, but instead ''approaches UG from below" , searching for those aspects of the language faculty that come into being by dint of ''virtual conceptual necessity" (of which Postal , among others, is highly skeptical) and other non-linguistic factors, and thereby revealing the contents of UG largely by determining what is left over when these non-linguistic factors are ruled out.
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Apr 3, 2014
In 2003, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak published Death of a Discipline, an exhortation to create “an... more In 2003, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak published Death of a Discipline, an exhortation to create “an inclusive comparative literature,” one that “takes the languages of the Southern Hemisphere as active cultural media rather than as objects of cultural study.” To many literary scholars such a development seemed welcome and even likely. Instead, ten years later, an entirely different transformation has taken place via the development of the Digital Humanities (DH), in which the close study of literature and the languages in which it is embedded have themselves been demoted, in favor of “distant reading” and other forms of quantitative and large-scale analyses, and whose language politics have regressed rather than progressed from the state Spivak described. DH advertises itself as an unexceptionable application of computational techniques to literary scholarship, yet its advent has accompanied an almost complete reorientation of literary studies as a field—a virtual death of the vision described by Spivak. The advent of DH is quite unlike the ones accompanying the introduction of computers into other disciplines, whose basic precepts have remained largely intact in the face of digitization. DH’s paradoxical use of the adjective “digital” to describe only a fraction of research methods that engage with digital technology creates a tension that must be resolved: either by the DH label being reabsorbed into literary studies, or by literary scholarship itself being fundamentally altered, a goal which DH has already in part achieved.
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Jul 17, 2013
Despite the proliferation of critical studies of communication, the meanings of the words “commun... more Despite the proliferation of critical studies of communication, the meanings of the words “communication” and “critical” remain deeply contested. Attending to the history of the use of these terms inside and outside of the academy offers a broader perspective on some of the most pressing issues confronting scholars of communication today.
Social Semiotics
The development of High-Frequency Trading (HFT)—automated trading of stocks, as well as bonds, op... more The development of High-Frequency Trading (HFT)—automated trading of stocks, as well as bonds, options, and other investment instruments—provides a signal example of the political effects of computerization on a discrete social sphere. Despite the widespread rhetoric that computerization inherently democratizes, the consequences of the introduction of HFT are widely acknowledged to be new concentrations of wealth and power, opacity rather than transparency of information flows, and structural resistance to democratic oversight and control. Even as computerized tools undoubtedly provide individual investors with more power relative to what they had before, they also provide powerful actors with relatively more power as well, in some cases effectively excluding the majority of individuals from insight or meaningful participation whatsoever, especially with regard to the political impacts of market activities. Reports on recent financial crises, and the 2011 film Margin Call provide narrow windows into the operations of HFT and the challenges it poses to democracy; these in turn raise significant problems for the view that computerization inherently democratizes.
New Literary History, Jan 1, 2009
Language & Communication, Jan 1, 2004
Among the many concepts developed by generative grammarians, nonconfigurationality stands out as ... more Among the many concepts developed by generative grammarians, nonconfigurationality stands out as especially provocative. Attributed to Kenneth Hale, and made famous through its invocation in Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding [The Pisa Lectures (1981) Foris, Dordrecht], nonconfigurationality names a fundamental distinction in language structure, one that closely follows the rise of modernity itself. Recent generative work reveals a great deal about the position of modern subjectivity with regard to the interpretation of nonmodern languages. Analysis of this work helps to show some of the links between structural patterns in language, conceptual ideologies, and cultural interpretation. #
differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2003
Postmodern Culture, Sep 11, 2001
The Philosophical Forum, Jan 1, 1999
Cultural Critique, Jan 1, 1997
Postmodern Culture, Sep 1, 1996
Oxford Literary Review, Jan 1, 1999
Cultural Critique, Jan 1, 1995
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Books by David Golumbia
Essays in Peer-Reviewed Journals by David Golumbia
The first section makes the case that many aspects of American legal culture pave the way to a public sphere in which corporations have far more meaningful political agency and capacity for planning than citizens or even political parties. The second section introduces the setting of M.T. Anderson’s Feed, a dystopian novel with surprisingly rich insight into the habits of mind and character that would naturally thrive in an automated public sphere (and kaleidoscopic personalized feeds) even more dominated by for-profit corporations than our own. We conclude by reflecting on the fragility of opportunities for autonomous self-creation when communications are increasingly monitored, shaped, and monetized for profit.
There are many causes for this, but one that can be identified and addressed is fairly straightforward once it’s identified: neoliberalism has two meanings. Of course it has many more than two meanings, but it has two important, current, distinct, somewhat related meanings, and they get invoked in close enough proximity to each other so as to sometimes cause serious confusion.