NM's blog

Published in 1967, Guy Debord’s analysis of the society of the spectacle posited that lived reality had “receded into a representation.” In its “concrete manufacture of alienation,” Debord contended, the spectacle obscured social contradictions. But the reproduction of society without consent now involves the formation of a “hyperspectacle”: the reality of contradiction itself becomes an image, a domineering abstract presence; the commodity’s colonization of life is such that it now extends to social contradiction itself. The more we observe Trump’s abstract spectacle of contradiction, the more we struggle to understand the concrete contradiction that has produced it. Amid intensifying alienation, the Trump administration pursues a new geostrategy. —  Juliano Fiori ,   February 19, 2026

At last, the time has come in which all that human beings had considered as inalienable has become the object of exchange, of traffic, and may be alienated. It is a time when the very things which before were conveyed, but never bartered; given, but never sold; conquered, but never purchased — virtue, love, opinion, science, conscience etc. — when, in short, everything has finally become tradable. It is a time of generalized corruption, universal venality or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when anything, moral or physical, receives a venal value, and may be taken to market to be appraised for its appropriate value. —Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy , 1847

The enduring influence of Marx’s masterpiece

Jean Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon “Make people ashamed of their existence.” Make them “face the world.” “But to what does this shame amount? What is shame’s sociogenesis, especially in situations of colonial or racial violence? To what extent is the feeling revolutionary? How does it provide the means to solidarity?” Marx : “ Shame is a kind of anger turned in on itself. And if a whole nation were to feel ashamed it would be like a lion recoiling in order to spring.” Mediating the error between class and race

Alienation [episode 1]

"the void of intimacy and the powerful distraction of our tech devices."