Jason Read
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jasonread.bsky.social
Jason Read
@jasonread.bsky.social
7.5K followers 3.6K following 4.3K posts
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine, Author of The Double Shift: Spinoza and Marx on the Politics of Work from Verso Books:
https://www.versobooks.com/products/2920-the-double-shift
More here:
http://www.unemployednegativity.com
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jasonread.bsky.social
It’s giving sans culottes
Bento (dog) and me in woods both wearing orange
November 28, 2025 at 12:59 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Fourteen or fifteen years ago I posted this status update, a friend combined it with an image and it went viral. It still circulates around, often with new images like this one. I think that this has less to do with the nature of the quote than the reality it describes.
Text "People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as parasites fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its hosts, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society." Jason Read
November 27, 2025 at 4:32 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
I am thankful for dogs and this dog in particular
Bento (dog) in orange vest crossing wooden bridge in woods
November 27, 2025 at 3:06 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Selfie with dog
Bento (dog) and me in orange hat and scarf
November 27, 2025 at 2:14 AM
jasonread.bsky.social
Happy Planet of the Apes day to all who celebrate.
Picture of control panel onboard the Icarus spacecraft from the film Planet of the Apes. It reads Earth Time 11-25-3978
November 25, 2025 at 2:42 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
I was obsessed with this book as a kid and made my parents read it to me so many times. I found a copy in an LFL this morning and took this picture. How it started/How it is going.
A copy of the book The Poky Little Puppy in front of Bento (dog) on the street
November 24, 2025 at 4:09 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Will trade treats for love
Me in blue hat feeding a treat to Bento (dog) Bento (dog) and me
November 22, 2025 at 11:56 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Bento loves chasing waterfalls
Bento (dog) standing by waterfall Bento (dog) jumping from rock to rock near waterfall
November 20, 2025 at 3:39 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Pop fly
November 18, 2025 at 5:58 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Deer season safety
Bento (dog) in safety orange vest near pond
November 17, 2025 at 3:18 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Happiest boy
Bento (dog) near waterfalls
November 16, 2025 at 2:08 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Undocumented workers are only "the worst human beings on planet earth" is you believe that the exclusion and hierarchy of borders, one determined entirely by the fortune of birth, is the most important thing that the law can protect.
www.unemployednegativity.com/2025/07/bein...
Homeland Security on X.com "Womp womp, cry all you want. These criminal illegal aliens aren't getting released. Like clockwork, violent rioters have arrived at the Broadview ICE facility to demand the release of some of the worst human beings on planet earth. Get a job you imbecilic morons.
November 15, 2025 at 6:56 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
My buddy is airbud
Bento (dog) chasing soccer ball Bento (dog) chasing soccer ball
November 14, 2025 at 10:17 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
New book by Pierre Macherey coming out this month. 350 pages on Spinoza.
BDS Études Spinoziens Pierre Macherey BdS, ces trois lettres apparaissent, en guise de nom d’auteur, sur la couverture des Opera Posthuma publiées en 1677, un an après la mort de Spinoza ; il s’agissait d’un recueil d’écrits alors inédits au nombre desquels figure l’Éthique, dans laquelle Spinoza avait consigné et mis en forme démonstrative l’essentiel de sa démarche philosophique. Cette signature énigmatique représentait une sorte de compromis entre la grande formule « Benedictus De Spinoza (amstelodensis) » et le complet anonymat sous lequel avait paru, en 1670, le Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elle résonne à présent comme une sorte de signal et traduit l’extrême singularité d’une démarche philosophique qui, depuis 350 ans, n’a pas encore livré tous ses secrets. Cet ouvrage revient sur certaines des difficultés que soulève aujourd’hui encore la compréhension d’une pensée déroutante entre toutes. Se confronter à ces résistances fait mesurer à quel point la philosophie de Spinoza reste vivante et agissante, à la fois active et d’une grande actualité.
November 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
November 13, 2025 at 6:52 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Bento and me
Bento (dog) and me
November 13, 2025 at 2:25 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Reread the following passage in André Tosel's Études sur Marx (et Engels) and it seemed to be the perfect encapsulation of the moment. As he argues, citing Losurdo we are living through a period of de-emanicapton "De-emancipation that takes shape in the recolonization of the Third World (with the support of the national bourgeoisies who have for horizon insertion in world market to their profit); in the rehabilitation of colonialism in practice and in theory, the dismantling of social and economic rights (conquered in the previous period by the workers' movement under the impetus or the protection of the revolution of 1917), in the reduction of representative democracy to political market that produces the political disappropriation of citizens as a condition of the economic and social disappropriation of producers in the liquidation of active citizenship and the constitution of a plebiscite of the excluded deprived of any prospect of work of society." Apologies for the quick translation.
November 13, 2025 at 12:00 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Paolo Virno has been an almost constant reference through all of my writing from The Micro-Politics of Capital to The Politics of Transindividuality, but one of my favorite uses of his work is when I cited his concept of opportunism to discuss Better Call Saul
The antithesis to the ideal of self-mastery appears in the form of Better Call Saul. If the former show dealt with the fantasy— the ideal that if you are good at something, even if that thing is cooking meth, then you can ultimately dictate the terms of your existence— the latter is, in some sense, about how skill is not enough. Of all of the backstory and revelations of the latter show, perhaps the most surprising is that Saul, or at the time Jimmy McGill, was at one point a good lawyer. Jimmy McGill finds himself practicing elder law early in his career. While he does skirt the ethical norms of the profession with the way he produces his commercials and solicits his clients, he is, at least in the beginning, a conscientious lawyer who makes his client’s needs paramount. Indeed, it is through his very attentiveness to them that he stumbles upon the major class action suit mentioned above. In some sense, this could be a career-making case, but in Jimmy’s situation, it ultimately unmakes him, turning him from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman. The story of Jimmy is that of one who is perpetually undone by his career, despite his talent and ability. It is less a narrative about breaking bad than one about the difficulty of walking the straight line. Jimmy’s difficulty is less an inability to change— to cease being a con man, as his brother claims— than his ability to see every social relation as an opportunity. This stems, in 98 “Kafkaesque,” Breaking Bad, written by Peter Gould and George Mastras, dir. part, from the particular kind of labor that Jimmy is involved in: one that foregrounds relations with others, persuasion, and appearance. There is no accident that “It’s showtime” is Jimmy’s mantra before entering the courtroom: he is a showman. Sometimes this entails dressing as Matlock, the television character beloved by retirees, before showing up at a retirement community to canvas for clients, and sometimes this means fabricating exculpatory evidence for a client. One of these is legal, albeit in poor taste, while the other is illegal. However, in the eyes of Jimmy, those differences do not matter as much as the opportunities themselves. Philosopher Paolo Virno has described “opportunism” as less a moral character, or lack thereof, than a product of particular historical situation defined by the labor situation. The precarity and flexibility of contemporary labor demand that workers shift from different rules and norms. The end result is that every set of rules seems arbitrary and negotiable. As Virno writes, The neutral core of the contemporary emotional situation, susceptible to opposing manifestations, consists of a familiarity with the possible, in so far as it is possible, and of an extreme proximity to the conventional rules which give structure to the differing contexts of action.99 For Jimmy, the rules of the game, the norms of propriety that define the ideal of the lawyer, as well as the stricter codes of the bar association, are just limitations on what is possible or effective in the pursuit of clients and winning cases. Jimmy draws his sense of possibility not just from his sketchy past as a con artist but from the entire range of the cultural industry: he plays a lawyer by imitating the images of law, and lawyers, that his clients have seen on TV. In his hands, the “cultural industry” becomes a means of production, a way to shape and transform people’s expectations and ideas. authority. It is because there is no objective or quantitative standard of what constitutes a good lawyer that one is increasingly subject to idiosyncratic and personal forms of evaluation. As Virno describes the problem with evaluation of work that is primarily subjective and relational, “How can one evaluate a priest, a journalist, a public relations person? How can calculate the amount of faith, of purchasing desire, of likeability that these people have managed to muster up?”101 Jimmy’s trajectory as a lawyer, like many forms of work that vanishes in the act of producing, such as service work, is punctuated not only by uncertain opportunities and events but by the immense sway that singular individuals have over the conditions of employment. This is the corollary of the power of singular events and cases to make one’s career— if one big case can make a career, a singular encounter or instance can also unmake it. The increased power of the event or situation also entails the increased importance of specific individuals and relations. As Virno writes, “In other words, virtuosic activity shows itself as universal servile work.”102 In the case of Jimmy, this means that his brother, Chuck, as a senior partner of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, has incredible sway over his career. When it is first revealed that Jimmy has put himself through law school at night and passed the bar, it is Chuck who prevents him from being hired. Chuck later prevents the firm from hiring him a second time, even when he brings his impressive class action suit to the firm. The fact that Jimmy’s trajectory is thwarted by his brother would seem to shift the show’s narrative away from work toward a family drama. However, his brother is just a particular instance of the servile and oddly personal nature of service work. Marx understood the transition from feudalism to capitalism to be, in some sense, the displacement of personal relations of dom broadly characterized as services, including practicing law, entails a return to personal forms of domination because of the specific and subjective nature of the service performed. This is not a reversal, a return to a feudal past, but, in some sense, a negation of a negation, as the impersonal domination of the market, of the need to find a job, is mediated through the particular tastes and opinions of the people whose job it is to evaluate and enforce its rules. In the work of a lawyer, just as a server or performer, “the product is not separable from the act of producing”; it ends when the case is closed, the meal is finished, or the show is over. Its only lasting effect is in the memory of the client, customer, or boss, and these impressions define one’s fate.104 As a worker engaging in such works, one is dependent both upon the general structure of employment and the specific power of the boss: as work becomes more subjective, concerning talents and abilities, the power of a specific boss increases; all it takes is one bad recommendation to ruin a career. At first glance, the fates of Walter White and Jimmy McGill could not be more opposed. Walter’s transformation into Heisenberg is a self-transformation framed through a mastery of work. Walter becomes the man he dreams of— a worker and provider— vanquishing his boss, his rivals, and anyone who stands against him. He may die in the end, but not before making sure his children get his money and a better place in society, living a version of the American dream. This is what made Heisenberg a figure of identification and fantasy for fans of the show. In contrast to this, Jimmy McGill’s transformation into Saul Goodman occurs through his acceptance of defeat, his recognition that there is no way to escape the deadweight of expectations, and of one’s background...
November 11, 2025 at 5:36 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Night games
Bento (dog) in yard with soccer ball at night
November 11, 2025 at 3:14 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Which way, western man?
Painting of Rene Descartes in a red convertible driving through the countryside titled "Rene Descartes and a Moving Matter" by Alexander Anatolevich Roitburd Painting of Spinoza riding a zebra titled Spinoza in Tuscany by Alexander Anatolevich Roitburd
November 11, 2025 at 2:42 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
The Motion of Light in Water
Bento (dog) swimming against dark water with rain and leaves
November 10, 2025 at 3:56 PM
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November 10, 2025 at 3:35 AM
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Two big Spinoza books arrived this week
Spinoza in Post-Marxist Philosophy by Katja Diefenbach and Sovereignty Disrupted by Gilah Kletenik
November 9, 2025 at 9:30 PM
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On the river
Bento (dog) and me on concrete pier in river
November 9, 2025 at 3:33 PM
jasonread.bsky.social
Review of The Double Shift in the Bulletin de Bibliographie Spinoziste
Review of The Double Shift in French Review of The Double Shift in French Review of The Double Shift in French
November 9, 2025 at 12:09 PM