I recently gave a talk for the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, based on the final chapter of my forthcoming book Personal Business: Sexual Violence in Racial Capitalism (with Manchester University Press). You can read the abstract and watch the video below.

This talk explores online violence against women, a phenomenon usually situated in a cultural ‘backlash’ frame. It contextualises this violence within a political economy of late (or ‘platform’) capitalism that draws on arguments that we are moving into a neo- or techno-feudal age. I engage Siapera’s understanding of digital violence as a strategy of enclosure that excludes women from technological spaces, arguing that it also enacts a fantasised neofeudal masculinity: this requires the humiliation and abjection of women, but ultimately vents a frustrated desire for power. Crucially, this ressentiment is one side of the neofeudal bargain in which some are offered impunity to perpetrate violence on others, as part of interactions between cyborgian serfs that ultimately generate value for the platforms owned by petty kings.