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Thomas Dekeyser

@thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social
811 followers 380 following 103 posts

Geographer at Uni of Southampton. Research: refusal, tech, cities. Book: Techno-Negative (Uni of Minnesota Press). Films: Breached/Machines in Flames. thomasdekeyser.com // Buy 📖 www.upress.umn.edu/9781517917739/te…

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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
It's so tragic. Cleary a piece of writing that I know many many years was spent on, only to be made almost entirely inaccessible to anyone.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Spoke to NPR about why the "AI agents going rogue" narrative misses the actual threats AI is posing: environmental, military, social, etc. Also: why the "look how powerful the AI is" plays into the hands of the AI companies benefiting from presenting AI in that way. www.npr.org/2026/09/13/n...
npr.org
Could AI kill us all? Professor weighs in on former Anthropic employee's claim
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe asks University of Southampton's Thomas Dekeyser about worries AI is becoming fatally out of control.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Rather excited about this 💫 From January onwards, I will start a five year research project investigating how AI is altering the nature and features of authoritarianism. The project will trace AI tech across four countries & domains. More info about the project, and team hiring plans, coming soon.
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MNG - University Presses @mngupbooks.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
@thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social shows how people have long recognized and resisted the machine as a violent, sometimes deadly force Visit our stand in person at #RGSIBG26 or find us online ⬇️ mngbookshop.co.uk/rgs-2026/ @uminnpress.bsky.social @rgs.org
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
For RGS attendees: there is an 'Author Meets Critics' session coming up Thursday for 'Techno-Negative' to talk tech refusal, abolitionism,... Thanks to @casey-lynch.bsky.social & those who kindly agreed to comment @davidjbissell.bsky.social @sophiamaalsen.bsky.social @hannahmorgann.bsky.social
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The book is available for free here. Many thanks to the editors for inviting me to contribute to such a brilliant theoretical and poetic collection of texts. edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-cultura...
edinburghuniversitypress.com
Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe
Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I've always wanted to write something on one of my favourite writers, Clarice Lispector. Now out: chapter on her 'negative' conception of love & the impersonal. Part of the new open-access book 'Cultural Geographies of Love and Catastrophe' by @ajsecor.bsky.social @mikkojorge.bsky.social P Harrison
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
For those attending the RGS conference this week: do join us for a double session on 'Pessimist Geographies', starting at 9am on Friday.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Sorry to hear about the accident! Sounds awful. The Lime app does require you to do a test sometimes (maybe only in the evenings on specific days?) before you can begin to ride the bike. It tests your reaction speed, asking you tap whenever a specific visual appears on screen.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
thinking about this after having just found out that the person who hired the Uni of Ghent race realist is someone I used to hang out with and is now a eugenicist??
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
If ‘race realists’ could be beaten purely by 'debating' them, they would have never made a comeback in the first place after having been discredited - for centuries - through rigorous academic debate. We can learn from Deleuze & Guattari: fascism spreads by way of affect and desire, not ideology.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
We need to do more to counter the basic narrative equating technological change with 'progress'. New bits of hardware, software, or code are often regressive, solidifying and even resurfacing old habits. What's new technically is not necessarily novel socially, politically, ontologically.
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Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 29/07/2026
Bernie Sanders wants the US government take ownership in AI companies. But is that really a good move? @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social joined @parismarx.com to discuss the long history of tech refusal and why we need to recognize this tech is not neutral. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/337_...
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Libération @liberation.fr · 23/07/2026
Thomas Dekeyser, géographe : «Il est temps de sauter hors du train fou de l’Intelligence artificielle» Souvent caricaturée en phobie technologique, la «techno-négativité» s’inspire de l’histoire des résistances technologiques pour proposer un répertoire d’action à l’ère des IA génératives.
l.liberation.fr
Thomas Dekeyser, géographe : «Il est temps de sauter hors du train fou de l’Intelligence artificielle»
Souvent caricaturée en phobie technologique, la «techno-négativité» s’inspire de l’histoire des résistances technologiques pour proposer un répertoire d’action à l’ère des IA génératives, démontre Thomas Dekeyser.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Interview with @liberation.fr on techno-negativity, moving beyond reformism, and imagining new tech politics. With thanks to @nastasiahadjadji.bsky.social for the conversation. www.liberation.fr/idees-et-deb...
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DCapTO @dcapto.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Thanks for sharing my book - hope you enjoy it! I wrote something specifically about the insult of techno-phobia that you might vibe with (it's also a chapter in the book): lithub.com/technophobe-...
lithub.com
“Technophobe!” A Short History of An Insult
On May 13th 1985, a Police Department helicopter hovering above 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia made history: it dropped 11/4-pound blocks of C-4 explosives, making it the first time a U.S. …
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Tech Won’t Save Us @techwontsave.us · 16/07/2026
Before the Luddites and the arrival of capitalism, it wasn’t just workers pushing back against technology; governments did too. This week @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social joins @parismarx.com to discuss how refusal of technology has a very long history. Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/337_...
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Really excited to have featured on one of my favourite podcasts - Tech Won't Save Us. Big thank you to @parismarx.com for the fabulous questions and great discussion.
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Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
🔴 NEW: Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel and Reform UK’s Cambridge University Recruitment Pipeline Project Revealed By @nafeez.bsky.social, @peterjukes.bsky.social and @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social The world-renowned academic institution has nothing to say in response to a six-month investigation…
bylinetimes.com
Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel and Reform UK's Cambridge University Recruitment Pipeline Project Revealed
The world-renowned academic institution has nothing to say in response to a six-month investigation by Byline Times raising serious concerns about the safeguarding of students and foreign influence at Cambridge University. Why?
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Synth @synthmedia.fr · 05/07/2026
« Non à l'IA » : et si ce slogan devenait le cri de ralliement d'un mouvement de résistance global contre l'IA ? Dans son essai Techno-Negative, Thomas Dekeyser propose d'investir la notion de "techno-négativité" comme un antidote au techno-solutionnisme. Un entretien à découvrir 👇🏼 Partagez, Likez
youtu.be
L'IA IMPOSÉE à tous : faut-il assumer le REFUS, voire le SABOTAGE ?
YouTube video by Synth media
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ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · 30/06/2026
!!! we are starting "Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine" by Thomas Dekeyser this week. this week we're just reading the intro, so you still absolutely have time to get the book ASAP and join us.
my photo of the Techno-Negative cover; in the background is a tree and grass in the morning light.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
*technological onticide
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Anyway, read Sylvia Wynter, folks. (And once you're done with that (impossible), check out my paper paper on tech and ontological onticide which is also a chapter in my book TECHNO-NEGATIVE journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...)
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Tech can claim to dismantle the liberal human subject while promoting a narrow, racialised human sovereignty. Not the emancipatory 'blurring' of the human & the nonhuman celebrated by posthumanists, but the introduction of new, more violent demarcations of the human from its presumed others. 4/4
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
2. Like all humanism, AI requires an 'other' to be demarcated as lesser-human and even less-than-human: the data workers and mining workers in the global south, those considered simply collatoral damage in AI's mass displacement of workers, etc. AI = ontological policing on steroids. 3/4
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
1. Its political economy is that of a narrow band of white dudes arranging and orchestrating new forms of techno-political organisation. Just because the slop is largely machine-generated, doesn't mean the political economy, capital extraction and wealth gains are. 2/4
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Really not convinced by the argument that's surfacing which celebrates AI for its presumed inhumanism (and denounces anti-AI as reactionary humanism). I see AI as the extension and culmination of an increasingly violent humanism. Currently writing on a piece on this, but some initial thoughts: 1/4
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fabianebeling.bsky.social @fabianebeling.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Neulich sprach ich für die F.A.Z. mit dem Humangeographen Thomas Dekeyser über sein aktuelles Buch "Techno-Negative". Es ging auch um die lange katholische Tradition der Technikkritik und das, was Dekeyser als "ontological policing" bezeichnet, also die Unterschiede, die Technologien einziehen.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
This is horrible. I'm so sorry to hear.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Brassier on FATELESSNESS soundcloud.com/socialdiscip...
soundcloud.com
SD46 w/Ray Brassier - Beyond Extinction Lies Communism
We’re incredibly honoured to be joined by Ray Brassier, a hugely formative thinker for both of us and one of the most important philosophers of the past 20 years. We talk about his upcoming book Fatel
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Brassier's forthcoming (2027) book FATELESSNESS looks fab. "Fate is never simply what befalls us; it is the consequence of what we have done. [Communism] is simply the abolition of fate, the movement through which we undo the illusion of necessity." www.foyles.co.uk/book/fateles...
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Civics of Technology @civicsoftech.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
We've got a book club this week! We're reading Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine by Thomas Dekeyser. Join us on Wednesday, June 24th at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. Register: sjsu.zoom.us/meeting/regi... www.upress.umn.edu/978151791773...
upress.umn.edu
Techno-Negative
A radical history of technology told through acts of resistance, not progressThe history of technology is often told as a history of progress, moving optimis...
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Jason Weidemann @fiveoclockbot.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Thomas Dekeyser's TECHNO-NEGATIVE (www.upress.umn.edu/978151791773...) has only been out a couple months but it's crossed over into the culture in ways few scholarly books do, and rarely so quickly. Reviews & discussion of the book in Vox, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine...
a cover for a book that shows black and white stills of flames devouring objects with the book title and author name appearing.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Thank you Jason - the Press (including the Publicist Alena) has been incredible at helping to get the book out into the world and at very quickly dealing with the many requests.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Yup. I told one to stop their AI nonsense and they got really offended (in one sentence), before throwing me some more AI generated nonsense.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
As the academic whose book is cited multiple times in this article, I want to make it clear: the data center revolt is great and we need more of it. (Getting a little sick of journalists purposefully misreading my arguments)
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School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford @oxfordgeography.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Vacancy: Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography SoGE, in association with @mansfieldoxford.bsky.social, seeks an outstanding Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography to provide cover during Professor Derek McCormack’s period as Head of School: bit.ly/3PUDVG7 #academicsky
my.corehr.com
Job Details: Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography
The School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE), in association with Mansfield College, seeks an outstanding Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography to provide cover during Professor Derek McCormack’s period as Head of School.
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Pope Leo XIV's critiques of AI remind me of the 12th C Pope Innocent III who saw in tech "all things vanity[...]as if man’s skill could surpass the art of his Creator.” Even if Leo's cynicism is sharper, anti-tech again becomes a means of extending Christian Humanism. (excerpt from Techno-Negative)
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Finally, a big thank you to @davidjbissell.bsky.social for the expert editorial guidance, and to @scgrg.bsky.social for publishing ✨
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
8. Book review of E Thacker and D Pettman's Sad Planets - @benbowsher.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Sad Planets
Published in Social & Cultural Geography (Vol. 27, No. 5, 2026)
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
7. Book review of J Miller's Retail Ruins - Chen Liu www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Retail ruins: the ghosts of post-industrial spectacle
Published in Social & Cultural Geography (Vol. 27, No. 5, 2026)
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
6. Blank utopias: inheriting the cartographic grid with a people’s atlas - Tuomo Alhojärvi www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
5. Is the terrain still vague? Reconsidering indeterminate spaces - @brianrosa.bsky.social and Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
4. Minding the emptiness of nothing: methodological nothingness and the spatial anthropology of futility - Les Roberts www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
3. What happens when nothing happens? Affective nothingness at the margins of friendship ties - Kinneret Lahad www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
2. The nothingness of surplus territory: unearthing the real abstraction of Singapore’s geographic expansion - William Jamieson www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
We are very grateful to all the contributors to our SI for their careful thoughts on nothingness, affects, (non)relations, weaponisation, etc. 1. Apocalyptic nothingness: lacks, holes, and the limits of the geographical imagination - @lucaspohl.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Thomas Dekeyser @thomas-dekeyser.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
The Intro to our Special Issue on 🌑 "Encountering Nothingness" 🌑 (w/ @katiecmoliver.bsky.social) is here. We propose a 'void-thinking' that examines the originary nothingness that underpins all life + that is, in our current moment, intensifying in circulation. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
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Alina Stefanescu @alinaetc.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Thomas Dekeyser is a great read on the techno-negative. Oddly enough, he sounds a lot like Walter Benjamin reconsidering “experience” after WWI.
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