iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I know you want to talk about it as "cognitive dissonance," as "schizophrenia" on the part of technologists--but actually it's a law of capital: Marx, Volume 1, chapter 15.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Hi Ezra. Why is AI accelerating at the same time its accelerators are warning about existential threat--is that your question? The answer is capital. I have the answer you're looking for. It's capital. www.nytimes.com/video/opinio...

nytimes.com

Video: Opinion | ‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

David Robinson, who wrote OpenAI’s safety protocols, resigned last week over safety concerns.

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andy hines @andyhines.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

These paragraphs on professional monopolization and the authorization of expertise through connection to ruling class patronage explains more about the transformation of higher education than most writing on the subject does these days. from Ehrenreich and English's Witches, Midwives, and Nurses

The “regulars” were still in no condition to make another bid for medical monopoly. For one thing, they still couldn’t claim to have any uniquely effective methods or special body of knowledge. Besides, an occupational group doesn’t gain a professional monopoly on the basis of technical superiority alone. A recognized profession is not just a group of self-proclaimed experts; it is a group which has authority in the law to select its own members and regulate their practice, i.e., to monopolize a certain field without outside interference. How does a particular group gain full professional status? In the words of sociologist Elliot Freidson:

A profession attains and maintains its position by virtue of the protection and patronage of some elite segment of society which has been persuaded that there is some special value in its work.

In other words, professions are the creation of a ruling class. To become the medical profession, the “regular” doctors needed, above all, ruling class patronage.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Just found out that Ed Miliband is indeed the son of Ralph Miliband, and now I'm sad. (Why is it so hard to make a Marxist son?)

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

"But then the question arose: who was to save us from Western civilization?" (postcolonial Lukács)

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Deidre Lynch @drbibliomane.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I got tired of waiting for the journalists at @theharvardcrimson.bsky.social to cover this (it IS summer), but this is to say that ALL the staff members in Women & Gender Studies here were laid off last week, on the top of the cutting of 5 lecturer positions in the program last year.+

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I like this! Thank you. I'd like to outline & start a chapter!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

When the order of justice collapses in the state, it collapses in the heart too. (Coetzee)

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

This was an excellent conversation, partly because you offered him the vocabulary of labor and capital, and after some reluctance he ended up accepting it.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

"What an art! You have struck yourself out in the very sentence in which I behold you. An art whose chief concern is to become artless."

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

I'll look up the Balasubramanian reference, thanks! Perhaps this is my chance to say that Globalists helped me figure out how a third-world text from the 50s was connected to a neoliberal text from the 80s. It's an essay that will be in print soon, and it is indebted to you! :)

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

I should say (correcting my earlier reply) thank you for introducing me to not just to that Hayek collection, but the Hoover Institution (I used their search function to find the Friedman document). And now that I know what Condoleezza Rice is up to, I'm about to throw up my dinner.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Oh my goodness, thank you for introducing me to this important collection (& thank you for your work). I had no idea I could access Milton Friedman's "Memo to the Indian Government" digitally. Filled with waves of wonder & disgust--hence, ick!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

My partner & I would have liked to have attended this time, but October is so hard for North American academics to schedule a flight across the Atlantic! Can the society be persuaded to move their conference to another month (May would be much better), at least once? Just curious!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Daniel Kraus's horror novel wins the Pulitzer. Evidently: a break-up in the post-45 genre system synchronized with the eclipse of the US imperial hegemony in 2026. Literary categories are analogous to political categories, as Jameson taught us in M&F. Living in his light years after his passing.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

When you hear the French Revolution in the poetry of Wordsworth. Iykyk.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

But yeah, I feel you, it’s not elite capture—more so fascist capture.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

What’s your count of progressive south asians though?

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Love these—would love to hear one day what you do with Cooper

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Jason Read @jasonread.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

I remember a professor once saying there are a long list of people from the nineteenth century who are only remembered because Marx criticized them so ruthlessly

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Congrats! Very excited to pick it up!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

"Studies show that overreliance on these digital tools causes cognitive decline, but if current events are any indication, nobody’s making much of a contribution anyway. Go ahead and use A.I. however you like." So good.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

gen x taught me that uncombed (even greasy) hair is cool—will always be my defense for looking the way I do.

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Corbin Hiday @chiday.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

My book, Probable Exhaustion, posits that literary texts of the long 19th c help us trace how a conception of progress welded to infinite growth and development is unthinkable outside of the threat of exhaustion. Will be out with @cornellupress.bsky.social Jan 15, 2027

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Your prompt makes me think of 24/7, but I'm sure you already thought of that.

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Sarah Brouillette @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

I am interested in the role of exhaustion in the history of capitalism (and of critique of capitalism) if you have any recs immediately at hand, buddies.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Big agree. My main reaction: ‘this would have been a better conversation if that guy was smarter. But man, he was just dumb.’

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

But what about the falling rate of prophets?

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Chapter 1, Volume 1, as an anatomy of commodity lust.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website against-a-i.com

against-a-i.com

AGAINST AI -

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Ah--can't wait! You're amazing!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Back on twitter, if only for a bit: x.com/involocution

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Mikkel Krause Frantzen @mikkelkfrantzen.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Thrilled (and a bit surprised) to have just signed a contract with Forlaget Grønningen 1 for a new Danish climate book for readers aged ≈ 11–16. Part non-fiction (letters), part fiction (a crime story). I can’t share the title or details yet, but it will be wild & cute & involve a kidnapping!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Syllabus suggestions for a "Theory of the Novel" course? Graduate level. I want to blow them away.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

I see ‘postcolonial literature’ didn’t make the cut

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Wonderful & thanks! I'll get that information for you right away. The talk is from 14:15 to 16:00 on Tuesday Dec 16. I'll get back to you about the room!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

So pleased to be presenting at a few Scandinavian universities next week, including Copenhagen, Linnaeus and U of Southern Denmark. Thanks to @mikkelkfrantzen.bsky.social & @lnuccon.bsky.social for hosting! artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/calendar/202...

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Yes! You rock, Brent. I'll DM you :)

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

I ask bc Toronto was not this Marxy when I was around. Glad to see things have changed!

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Dec 2: rocked the baby / wrote a page / finished a chapter #acadecawriteathon

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

awesome! Who at Toronto organized this??

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Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

This is the importance of buying the books we write and teach from university presses. The same administrations that don’t care about the humanities would be just as happy to have academic publishing handled by these companies. We can save our own publishing ecosystem- but we have to do it.

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Jap-Nanak Kaur Makkar @jmakr.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

If your institution would be willing to host a free talk from my book project, I'd love to swing by. In most cases, I can pay for accommodation and travel myself.

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