I talked to my trans mom about it, and she was like, “Well, just come to the rave.” It became a regular thing.Ĭakes: That’s so nice. But there was still this sort of low-lying dysphoria and nothing worked. Then I came out as a trans woman, and that fixed a lot of things in my life. I was raising kids here in Jackson Heights. Wark: Just imagine it in an Australian accent! I always liked dancing, but I wasn’t going to anything like that. There was a Sydney scene called doof, rather than techno, because it’s the sound of the bass.Ĭakes: Oh like, “doof doof doof.” I love that. I wasn’t a hardcore raver, but it was something I’d done in the ‘90s. McKenzie Wark: It was a little bit accidental. Pauli Cakes: How did you become involved in the New York rave scene? Taking over a stoop in Jackson Heights, Queens, Wark met up with DJ, rave activator, and community organizer Pauli Cakes for CULTURED to celebrate the release, discuss their shared interests, and to posit the inherent queerness of uninhibited dancing. Readers are prompted to sift through chapters with titles like “Xeno-Euphoria” and “Ketamie Femmunism” to learn about the underground world she has come to inhabit (names and venues kept anonymous, of course). Capturing the evolving, informal, and unwieldy queer and trans rave scenes of New York, the work probes Wark’s time spent offline: hours on end spent dancing in fog-filled rooms or semi-legal outposts across the city. But the Australian scholar, who has previously published The Hacker Manifesto and Capital Is Dead, might have taken on her greatest challenge yet in her latest book, Raving, releasing this week. McKenzie Wark is known for her deep dives into the ever-shifting digital landscape. Drawing on the writings of a surprising range of classic and contemporary theorists, Wark offers an illuminating overview of the contemporary condition and the emerging class forces that control-and contest-it.Portrait of McKenzie Wark. So how do we find a way out? Capital Is Dead offers not only the theoretical tools to analyze this new world, but ways to change it. The new ruling class uses the powers of information to route around any obstacle labor and social movements put up. While techno-utopian apologists still celebrate these innovations as an improvement on capitalism, for workers-and the planet-it’s worse.

Even Walmart and Nike can now dominate the entire production chain through the ownership of not much more than brands, patents, copyrights, and logistical systems.

And it’s not just tech companies like Amazon and Google. Through the ownership and control of information, this emergent class dominates not only labour but capital as traditionally understood as well. In this radical and visionary new book, McKenzie Wark argues that information has empowered a new kind of ruling class.

Capital is dead mckenzie wark