Launching: "The World After Amazon" podcast, plus hiring
What will the world look like after Amazon, the company that, heavily influence by science fiction has revolutized retail, logistics, and much more and whose founder has accumulated so much wealth he literally shot himself into space?
We asked the company’s workers…
Earlier this year, we initiated a phase of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers across Turtle Island (North America) to write short, speculative fiction about “the world after Amazon.”
(You can read about the project here and here).
After a six-week intensive of presentations and writing workshops, the 13 participants in the project (which we hope will be the first of many) are currently drafting and redrafting short stories, which will be released in a collection early in 2024, and also as an audiobook.
Meanwhile, we’ve taken the presentations and then also some interviews and created The Workers’ Speculative Society: A podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future.
We focus on interviewing
(a) experts on Amazon and the struggle within, against and beyond it;
(b) facilitators and champions of workers’ writing as a form of resistance; and
(c) practitioners and celebrants of radical speculative fiction.
Guests
The podcast launches today, on July 11, and will continue weekly:
July 11 - “Empire of Words: Marc McGurl on Amazon and the fate of literature”
July 18 - “Logistics and Labour: Charmaine Chua on Amazon's supply chains and workers' resistance”
July 25 - “Amazon versus the Radical Imagination: Robin DG Kelley on the importance of freedom dreams”
And upcoming interviews with Cory Doctorow on Amazon's chokepoint capitalism, Syrus Marcus Ware on Black futures and activism, David A. Robertson on Indigenous speculative fiction, Alessandro Delfanti on Amazon's robots and warehouses, Leonika Valcius on the work of literary agents, Jamie Woodcock on writing as workers' inquiry, and more to come!
Listen and subscribe
To listen online you can head over to our Soundcloud page. To subscribe in your podcast app, search for “RiVAL radio” and look for the logo of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab (below). You can also use this RSS address to subscribe directly. Or find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify.
We’re looking to hire some people
For this project and others, RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab is looking to hire some professionals on a contract basis and I wonder if you have any recommendations?
A podcast producer (for a new, unannounced project). Tasks include: coordinating with the hosts; arranging interviews; recording, editing and producing episodes; maintaining web and podcast platforms; generally putting up with a fair degree of good-natured chaos.
Voice actors who would be interested in reading and recording the stories from the Worker as Futurist project about “The World After Amazon.” The authors in this project are from diverse backgrounds, and we are looking for actors who reflect that diversity.
A publicist who can help us spread the word about several projects, as ever at the intersection of art, academe, and social movements organizing. We need someone with strong links to legacy and emergent platforms to help us figure out how to broadcast what we’re doing to new publics.
Please let me know if you are or know of any of these professionals!
Now out in print
“From financialization to derivative fascisms: Some cultural politics of far-right authoritarianism in an era of unmanageable risks” in Social Text 155 (behind a paywall, but you can read a pre-released version here)