Our guest for Episode 27 is author and critic Mike Watson. His next book Hungry Ghosts in the Machine: Digital Capitalism and the Search for Self sees Mike explore addiction and digital identity, memes, streaming, ego death and more, drawing on the ideas of Theodor Adorno, Mark Fisher, Nietzsche, Rick Roderick and Susan Sontag.
Mike is also the co-founder and editor behind Revol Press, a new independent, author-led publishing imprint set up this year with fellow author Daniel Melo. I worked with Mike as an editor on my book for Revol, which was an amazing experience.
Mike’s previous books include:
We discussed The Memeing of Mark Fisher back in Season 1. He’s written for Jacobin, Art Review and many other places.
Reading recommendations
As mentioned above, Mike’s been on Strange Exiles before, where we talked about his book on Mark Fisher. You can listen to that episode here.
Mike’s new book is out on September 27 from Revol Press. He writes:
Hungry Ghosts in the Machine will discuss the ways in which social and other digital media utilize nostalgia to heighten anxiety, depression and alienation then offer fleeting cures that ultimately lead to a cycle of longing and, at most, only temporary satiation.
It will finally be stated that wellbeing and spiritual practice freed of the compulsive aspect of social media use might form a useful role in a wider movement aimed at fostering healthy communities.
One of the people whose work Mike discusses in the book is the addiction specialist Gabor Maté, and his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Maté has spoken about the book fairly extensively. You can check out interviews with him from Joe Polish and Joe Rogan, and a conversation he had with another friend of the pod, Darren McGarvey.
I sourced the origin of the term ‘ghost in the machine’ to Gilbert Ryle, who was making use of Descartes’ theory of mind-body dualism. We also briefly mentioned Ghost in the Shell, the seminal Manga which was one of the films I wrote about in my recent essay on cyberpunk classics. I also mentioned Daniel Dennett’s theory of the ‘benign user illusion’ - here’s a good 5-minute explainer on user illusion from Dennett himself.
The internet theory site from the early 2000s that Mike mentions was ctheory.net (not CNet, as we both assumed during the chat). All trace of it seems to have been scrubbed from the internet, not even the Wayback Machine would let me look at it, so if anyone knows of an archive or backup site, please get in touch. The Internet Archive does, however, contain a lot of Baudrillard.
We spent a bit of time talking about the Frankfurt School. Mike mentioned in particular Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, and he recommends three books for anyone new to these philosophers and their contemporaries. Simon Jarvis’ introductory text Adorno: A Critical Introduction is a good place to start, before you tackle Eros and Civilisation by Herbert Marcuse, and Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno (links go to archived PDFs of each book). He also briefly mentions The Dialectic of Enlightenment, which Adorno co-wrote with Max Horkheimer. Another great introduction is Mike’s recent defence of the Frankfurt School for Jacobin.
We finished up by talking about Revol Press, and in particular, their search for new and unusual theory and other texts at around the 30,000 word mark. As their website says:
Our goal is to revive countercultural dreaming, emphasizing quality over edgy content and hot takes, putting out considered yet incisive reflections in a timely manner.
We aim to support established writers and discover new talent, prioritizing fair royalties, ongoing dialogue, and an emphasis on quality essays and books that promote formal and theoretical innovation as part of a community.
Reckon you have something to submit? Find out more at the Revol site.
Up next…
Thanks for joining me for another episode of Strange Exiles! Episode 28 is one I’ve been hinting at for a while… stay tuned, it’ll be epic.
In the meantime, if you’re in Edinburgh, you can catch me reading from my new book The Darkest Timeline at Lighthouse Books on 25 August at 1pm. There’ll be a short Q&A, a signing, and I’m down to hang out after.
Thanks for listening! Take care of each other.
-Bram, Glasgow, August 2024
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Episode 27: Mike Watson - Ghost Machines