A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment.
In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Game, and much of reality TV are cultural reflections of a society of relentless, lonely competition, where each of us must become a player: a savvy risk-taker, a miniature corporation of one. But in a gamed economy we players feel played, and new forms of fascism promise harsh justice and revenge. This book theorizes the connections between the financialization of the capitalist economy, the gamification of our lives, and the rising threat of a uniquely twenty-first century form of fascistic politics.
From vicious online swarmings to the QAnon conspiracy fantasy, from the siege of the US Capitol to the abuse of “free speech,” The Player and the Played analyzes the “playgrom” as a new form of extremist violence. Max Haiven explores how “derivative fascisms” both repeat and reinvent the terrors of the past in a financialized form. How have we learned to love the cheats who have power but loathe the cheats without it? It unpacks the worldbuilding (and world-destroying) urge of Silicon Valley. And it poses the urgent question: What is the antifascist game?
As part of my research on Georges Dumézil and Émile Benveniste, I’ve been tracing their quite different experiences in the Second World War. Both lost their teaching positions under Vichy, although for very different reasons – Dumézil because he had once been a freemason; Benveniste because he was Jewish. Dumézil got his positions back, and taught through the rest of the war in Paris. Benveniste was a soldier, prisoner, escapee, refugee and eventually a librarian in Switzerland, before returning to Paris after the Liberation. There is a wealth of material in the archives which has shed new light on these stories, especially that of Benveniste. They will be discussed in detail in my book on their parallel lives and careers.
Here’s something which adds a little to Benveniste’s story, which remains speculative and not something I’d publish about in a more formal way, so it perhaps finds a home here.
The document is in the papers of German and Jewish Intellectual Émigré Collections, held at the University of Albany, State University of New York. It suggests that Benveniste may have considered a move to the United States, or more likely that friends were exploring this as a possibility for him. The document is in the American Council for Émigrés in the Professions Records, and comes from the papers of Else Staudinger, who helped refugees fleeing Europe. The American Council for Émigrés in the Professions was founded in 1945, by Staudinger and New School director Alvin Johnson, but both of them were important in supporting escaping scholars from Europe much earlier. Johnson was important in the story of the École Libre des Hautes Études, in which many French and Belgian academics in exile taught, alongside other refugees from Europe – I’ve written about some of what Roman Jakobson and Alexandre Koyré taught there in previous pieces in this series.
The document at SUNY Albany is a one-page cv of Benveniste, with the details typed onto a form with existing headings. It lists his posts at the Collège de France and the Sorbonne (i.e. the École Pratique des Hautes Études, which was based at the Sorbonne). It curiously gives his field as Sanskrit, when Iranian and Comparative Grammar were his main fields, and the representative publication as The Persian Religion, perhaps because that was his one book in English at the time. It is undated. It does give the names of some references, and the posts they currently held: Roman Jakobson at the New School; G. Cohen at Yale, and Jean Wahl at Mt. Holyoke. These help with dating the document: Gustave Cohen, formerly of the Sorbonne, was teaching at Yale from 1941; Jakobson arrived in the United States in 1941 and began his École Libre teaching in fall 1942, after doing some work in the New York Public Library; Jean Wahl also began teaching at Mount Holyoke in fall 1942. The institutional affiliations of the referees therefore suggest the document dates from late 1942 or after.
Wahl’s story is fascinating in itself. He was arrested and interned in the Drancy camp north of Paris, as was Benveniste’s brother. Wahl escaped and made it to the United States – a story recently dramatized in W.C. Hackett, Outside the Gates. Benveniste’s brother was sent on a transport to the east, and was murdered in Auschwitz.
Benveniste’s address in this document is given as c/o Prof. Minard, Faculté de Lettres, University of Lyon. This is Armand Minard, a Sanskrit specialist and student of Benveniste’s colleague Louis Renou, and like Benveniste and Renou, of Antoine Meillet.(Georges-Jean Pinault’s work situates Minard well in this French linguistic lineage.) Benveniste had moved to Lyon in the ‘unoccupied zone’ after escaping from a German work camp on 21 November 1941. After the southern parts of France were invaded by the Germans and Italians in late 1942, he decided to leave France. He applied for a Swiss visa in Lyon on 18 December 1942, and left the city the same day. He spent some time in Les Houches near Chamonix in Haute Savoie, then under Italian occupation. He crossed into Switzerland in April 1943, so it again seems likely this document dates from late 1942, or possibly early 1943.
The document is from Staudinger’s files, box 1, folder 122. Staudinger went on to be executive secretary of the American Council for Émigrés in the Professions. Some of the ACEP records are at the New School; some others are at the University of Oregon, mostly a series of annual reports. Unfortunately, neither provides further information on the possibility relating to Benveniste.
It is unlikely the form was completed by Benveniste himself, given the entries on Sanskrit and the Sorbonne, so it was probably completed by someone on his behalf, perhaps one of the people named as a possible reference. By 1942 it would have been exceptionally difficult for someone to get out of Occupied Europe, especially a Jewish escaped prisoner of war. One of the last of the boats out of Marseille, which took Claude Lévi-Strauss, Victor Serge, André Breton and others out of France to Martinique was in Spring 1941. (Eric Jennings is good on these stories.) Jakobson took a different route from Scandinavia – a remarkable story in itself. It certainly makes sense that Benveniste or his friends would have explored options elsewhere.
The prospect of Benveniste entering the United States is an interesting footnote to the story of his evasion of the German forces. By the time the form was completed an Atlantic route would have been closed off. Fortunately, he found another route to safety, and was able to return to Paris after the liberation, taking up his teaching posts at the Collège de France and the EPHE again. After the war, Minard would join Benveniste in teaching comparative grammar at the EPHE.
After a long neglect, Wahl is finally receiving some attention in the anglophone world, and as well as some translations a decade ago – Transcendence and the Concrete and Human Existence and Transcendence – his The Idea of the Instant in Descartes’s Philosophy recently appeared. To connect to another recent post in this series, he was another French reader of T.S. Eliot. Even though he did translate other poetry, including some by Eliot, he was not planning to translate Four Quartets, but to write a refutation. In the end, he seems to have only published a short poem, “On Reading the Four Quartets”.
References
Eric Jennings, “Last Exit from Vichy France: The Martinique Escape Route and the Ambiguities of Emigration”, The Journal of Modern History 74 (2), 2002, 289-324.
Eric T. Jennings, “‘The Best Avenue of Escape’: The French Caribbean Route as Expulsion, Rescue, Trial, and Encounter”, French Politics, Culture & Society 30 (2), 2012, 33-52.
Eric T. Jennings, Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
W.C. Hackett, Outside the Gates, Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2021.
Georges-Jean Pinault, “Armand Minard (1906-1998)”, EPHE Section des sciences historiques et philologiques: Livret-Annuaire 13, 1997-98, 31-33.
This is the 78th post of a weekly series, posted every Sunday throughout 2025, and continuing into a second year. The posts are short essays with indications of further reading and sources. They are not as formal as something I’d try to publish more conventionally, but are hopefully worthwhile as short sketches of histories and ideas. They are usually tangential to my main writing focus, a home for spare parts, asides, dead-ends and possible futures. I hope there is some interest in them. They are provisional and suggestions are welcome. A few, usually shorter, pieces in a similar style have been posted mid-week. I’m not sure I’ll keep to a weekly rhythm throughout 2026, but there will be at least a few more pieces.
The full chronological list of ‘Sunday histories’ is here, with a thematic ordering here.
Scott B. Ritner argues that the antifascist philosopher and mystic Simone Weil’s critical writings about the social crises of the mid-twentieth century, especially fascism, are particularly instructive for today. Now, as then, liberal democratic capitalist states are under threat from authoritarian leaders and fascist movements. Situating Weil and her work in the tradition of pessimistic critical theory, Ritner reveals how Weil’s work can be understood as participating in an ongoing project critique of capitalist and liberal, neoliberal, and fascist modes of domination. This novel interpretation of Weil’s work argues for reading her combined anarchist, Marxian, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and Platonic approaches to political thought holistically alongside her mystical Christianity and Judaism as a singular antifascist project in which pessimism is given political prominence. Taking up Weil’s critiques of the State, the organization of labor, the use and effects of violence, and the ideology of revolution, Ritner mobilizes Weil’s idiosyncratic antifascist politics towards a conceptual framework he calls “revolutionary pessimism”—defined as root-and-branch political action without expectation. As Ritner persuades, the revolutionary pessimism perceivable in Weil’s writing can reorient antifascism from a defensive political posture to an offensive posture of generative permanent revolt.
When the pursuit of knowledge is eclipsed by money and power, what remains of higher learning?
What is a university for? Is it a sanctuary for disciplined study, or has it become something else entirely? In After the University, Chad Wellmon traces the long and often uneasy relationship between higher learning and the institutions that claim to protect it. Moving from the guilds of medieval Paris and the knowledge factories of Enlightenment-era Göttingen to the research empires of Berlin and Berkeley, Wellmon shows how the modern university has repeatedly reshaped itself to serve shifting social and political demands.
Across centuries, the goods of disciplined study—the joy of reading, the virtues of intellectual rigor, and the possibility of self-formation—have been overshadowed by the pursuit of external rewards such as money, prestige, and power. Part institutional history and part philosophical reflection, After the University examines how today’s institutions defend themselves not in the name of learning but in the language of productivity, innovation, and economic utility. Drawing on his experiences as a scholar, teacher, administrator, and witness to crises such as white supremacist marches and the COVID-19 pandemic, Wellmon illustrates how universities justify themselves through the outputs of graduates, research discoveries, and workforce training while leaving unmentioned the very practices that once defined them.
Despite this transformation, Wellmon argues that the university’s current state of turmoil exposes a new, enticing possibility: recognizing the practices of disciplined study as goods worth valuing in and of themselves rather than simply as means to other ends. With insight and urgency, After the University asks whether our institutions can still nurture intellectual desire—or whether we must find new homes for the life of the mind.
Après Leçons de ténèbres, le nouveau cours de Didier Fassin au Collège de France.
À l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Michel Foucault, cet ouvrage analyse l’empreinte laissée par son œuvre, dans le champ intellectuel comme dans l’espace social. Didier Fassin en retrace les lignes de force, en les replaçant dans leur contexte d’émergence et dans leurs usages actuels.
What happens when European politics goes digital? Behind the scenes in European Union institutions, a quiet transformation is reshaping the way power works. Based on long-term ethnographic research, this book follows diplomats, civil servants, spokespersons, and interpreters through the corridors, meeting rooms, cafés, and smartphone screens of Brussels’ European Quarter. Against the backdrop of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s war on Ukraine, it reveals how digital technologies have become inseparable from the practice of international politics—reshaping trust, tact, and authority in unexpected ways. Far from a tale of technological revolution, The Brussels Bubble exposes digitalisation as a messy, human negotiation about what diplomacy and Europe itself mean today. Combining vivid narrative with sharp theoretical insight, it offers a rare, inside view of how global governance, technology, and human interaction intertwine at the heart of European power. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Drawing on behind-the-scenes access to Brussels during defining crises, this book offers an unparalleled, first-hand view of how EU diplomats navigate technological change and human challenges under intense political and geopolitical pressure
Reconceptualizes international politics and global governance as practices transformed by crises, connectivity, and digital infrastructures – revealing how trust, authority, and secrecy evolve in a world where the EU emerges as a digitally and politically constituted site of power
Blends ethnographic observation with storytelling, theory, and reflection – moving fluidly between Brussels meeting rooms to online negotiations and personal encounters, offering an engaging, relatable lens on how digitalization and politics intertwine in contemporary Europe
This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core
Statelessness often results from discriminatory policies or legal gaps, while citizenship revocation is typically used as a counterterrorism measure. Both processes strip individuals – particularly from minoritized groups – of legal status and access to essential social services, leaving them vulnerable to exclusion, exploitation, and human rights abuses.
With contributions from scholars in political science, international law, and sociology, this unique collection presents case studies of policies that reinforce statelessness; it connects legal doctrines with real-world impacts and critically balances the tensions between security imperatives and human dignity. Statelessness and Citizenship Revocation in Europe calls for policy changes that position citizenship as an essential human right. Offering both rigorous multidisciplinary academic analysis and practical recommendations to address statelessness in contemporary Europe, this book is an essential resource for scholars, policymakers, and advocates.
Uniquely addresses both citizenship revocation and statelessness within a European context from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Offers contemporary, real-world case studies with actionable reform recommendations.
Truthers, birthers, flat-Earthers, the deep state, crisis actors, chemtrails, the Epstein files, Pizzagate, the Plandemic—it seems as though there’s a conspiracy theory for every situation. But what exactly is a conspiracy theory? And why is the term used to describe beliefs that are so very unlike theories (at least in the scientific sense of the word)? In this erudite and original book, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg answers these questions not by formulating a definition but by tracing a genealogy. He uncovers two crucial strands of contemporary conspiracy theorizing on the threshold of modernity: on the one hand, political analysis as realized by Niccolò Machiavelli in such works as The Prince and, on the other, apocalyptic prophecy as channeled by the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola.
The French Revolution, the antisemitic hoax known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Nuremberg Trials number among the subsequent episodes that progressively entangled these strands before finally knotting them into the twentieth-century concept of conspiracy theory. Alternative labels were also offered, most strikingly by the historian Richard Hofstadter, whose engagement with American right-wing politics in the 1950s and 1960s inspired his notion of the paranoid style. As McKenzie-McHarg shows, Hofstadter’s coinage, with its psychological bent, contributed to personalizing our understanding of conspiracy theory, thus yielding a specific type of person that, for better or worse, has become all too familiar to us today: the conspiracy theorist.
Proceeding from The Prince through The Protocols to the paranoid style and then beyond to QAnon, The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory sheds new light on a complex and troubling phenomenon.
Entre 1975 et 1977, Jacques Derrida s’engage dans un séminaire énigmatique, voire obscur au premier abord, intitulé La Chose. Ce séminaire se révèle pourtant l’un des plus fascinants de son œuvre : il se situe au carrefour de plusieurs de ses textes les plus audacieux, La Dissémination, Glas, La Vérité en peinture et La Carte postale. Déjà, il mobilise la lecture des corpus philosophiques, littéraires et psychanalytiques que Derrida ne cessera d’approfondir dans les décennies suivantes. Chaque année d’enseignement est consacrée à une analyse à la fois parallèle et alternée où le philosophe fait se croiser l’œuvre de Heidegger avec celles de Ponge (1975), de Blanchot (1976) et de Freud (1977). La Chose permet ainsi de redécouvrir ces textes en montrant toute l’attention que le philosophe accorde à cette chose non humaine – un apport philosophique essentiel pour les grandes questions d’écologie, de matérialisme et d’éthique qui sont les nôtres aujourd’hui. Derrida avait un jour formulé le souhait de réunir ces séminaires et ses notes sur la thématique de « Donner le temps » (1977-1978). Ce vœu est maintenant exaucé en publiant dans ce volume la sixième séance inédite de Donner le temps II, où il soulignait le lien étroit reliant la chose et le don car, selon Derrida, « le don est peut-être l’affaire de la chose, la chose affaire du don »
This book brings a selection of the influential writings of Marc Bloch into the English language, largely for the very first time. Chronologically arranged to trace the developmental arc of Bloch’s historical philosophy, the translations in The Selected Writings of Marc Bloch offer an illuminating insight into the theories of a pioneer historian and original founder of the renowned Annales school of French social history.
The carefully curated translations in this volume reveal Bloch’s thoughts on questions that historical studies has grappled with since the birth of the discipline. Why should history exist at all? What value does it have? What exactly is a science of history? What is the actual role of the historian in historical studies?
This collection presents Bloch’s precise understanding of the contours of the discipline of history, defined by the abuttal and transgression of its borders by other subjects. Consequently, it provides a theoretical underpinning for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary concepts via historical studies, pulling into its fold diverse themes such as customs, agriculture, economics, nutrition, technology, manners, art, fashion, and countless other topics explored by Bloch himself in the process.
