A podcast about the world Amazon is building and the writers, workers and communities fighting for different futures

The Workers' Speculative Society

In Marc McGurls " Everything and Less" the Stanford University professor of American literature explores the fate of the novel in the "Age of Amazon." Well known for his illuminating studies of the institutions that surround how we read and write, McGurl turns his attention to what he suggests may be the most important shift in literature in our moment: the fact that, today, one corporation has disproportionate control over the market for books and especially e-books. In this interview, we consider the consequences for readers, writers and the future of the written word.

* https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2769-everything-and-less
* https://english.stanford.edu/people/mark-mcgurl

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon". It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Empire of Words - Marc McGurl on Amazon and the fate of Literature (WSS01)

Amazon's exploitation of data, robotics, and workers has created a breathtaking global empire. Charmaine Chua, a labour organizer with Amazonians United and an assistant professor at University of California Santa Barbara's Department of Global Studies, is uniquely well qualified to guide us through what that means, for workers and for the world. Her work focuses on the ways working people resist and build solidarity against what can seem like insurmountable odds.

* https://www.charmainechua.com/
* https://www.amazoniansunited.org/
* https://www.global.ucsb.edu/people/charmaine-chua

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is trying to build and the workers, writers, and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon." It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Logistics and Labour - Charmaine Chua on Amazon's supply chains and workers' resistance (WSS02)

The legendary thinker and radical historian Robin DG Kelley joins us to discuss the importance of the radical imagination and the history of workers' writing. 
Kelley is author of many books on the history of labour and anti-racist struggles, and about  luminary proletarian creative figures. These include: Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times. 
In this conversation, Kelley explains how, in the face of corporate and capitalist power, which has never failed to mobilize racism, working people have consistently turned to the written word as a tool of solidarity and a means to demand a different future. In an age of digital capitalism where corporations like Amazon dominate the market for books, films and other "content," reclaiming the power to create and share works of the imagination are more important than ever.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Kelley
* http://www.beacon.org/Freedom-Dreams-P1855.aspx

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

Amazon VS the Radical Imagination - Robin DG Kelley on the importance of freedom dreams (WSS03)

In his 2020 memoir Black Water, award-winning author David A. Robertson reflects on how his Cree heritage and his family's survival of colonialism has shaped his imagination. In this conversation, he speaks of the joys and challenges of writing speculative fiction for adults and children, informed by Indigenous worldviews and struggles. Approaching fiction as a work of community-building, he speaks to the need for courage to push back against dominant narratives.

Robertson is author of numerous bestselling books for readers of many ages in a wide diversity of imaginative genres. In 2021 he received the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award and was named Globe and Mail Children's Storyteller of the Year. He has won Canada's prestigious Governor General's Literary Award several times.

* https://www.darobertson.ca/
* https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/425-kiwew

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

"We've been through our own apocalypse" - David Robertson on Indigenous speculative fiction (WSS04)

Amazon presents its "revolution" in logistics as a bloodless technological coup against the forces of convention, waged in the name of customer satisfaction. But in Alessandro Delfanti's book The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon, the University of Toronto professor reveals that its labour exploitation all the way down. In this episode he helps us understand the stakes of a struggle not only for workers' rights, but for the future of technology.

* https://delfanti.org/
* https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745342177/the-warehouse/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Robots+workers+warehouses - Alessandro Delfanti on technology and struggle at Amazon (WSS05)

Co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Canada and the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, Syrus Marcus Ware explores the importance of future imagining for Black, queer, trans, disability and collective liberation projects. He speaks to us about the importance of speculative fiction for social movement organizers and radical dreamers. Syrus is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University whose work in curation, painting, installation and performance has been widely exhibited in Canada and internationally. Their writing (fiction, non-fiction and academic) can be found in many leading and grassroots venues.

* https://www.syrusmarcusware.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Prototyping Ways of Being - Syrus Marcus Ware on sci-fi activism and imagination (WSS07)

Cory Doctorow is an essayist, novelist, activist, and public intellectual whose work focuses on themes of technology, intellectual property and the prospects for freedom in our digital age. Since the 1990s he’s been on the forefront of struggles for the rights of creators, including ongoing work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Today, he is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Locus, and many other publications. In this interview, we speak about his recent book (co-authored with Rebecca Giblin)Chokepoint Capitalism and the grave threats that Amazon and other huge corporations pose to creative freedom and the wellbeing of authors and the world. We also speak about his own career as a speculative fiction writer and the politics of the genre in an age when capitalism is getting pretty dystopian.

* https://craphound.com/
* https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Chokepoint! - Cory Doctorow on sci-fi and Amazon's empire (WSS08)

Léonicka Valcius is a literary agent specializing in championing the work of racialized and equity-seeking writers in genres including YA fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, kid lit, romance and sci-fi. In this interview, Léonicka breaks down how the publishing industry is changing and the consequences, good and bad, for emerging authors trying to disrupt the dominant scripts of the fantastic and futuristic.

* https://www.leonicka.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Future Books - Léonicka Valcius on the work of the literary agent (WSS06)

How has writing been part of the coming-to-consciousness of the working class and our ability to imagine and fight for different futures? We speak with Jamie Woodcock, senior lecturer of management at the University of Essex about the history of Workers' Inquiry, a method where intellectuals and workers collaborate to learn about the changing nature of capitalism and his own project, Notes From Below, which supports workers to write about their experiences. We also discuss his initiative Red Futures, a magazine of Marxist and radical science fiction.

https://www.jamiewoodcock.net/
https://notesfrombelow.org/
https://www.redfuturesmag.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Workers' Writing as Revolutionary Praxis - Jamie Woodcock on Workers' Inquiry and SF (WSS09)

Since 2011, the poet Mark Nowak has been facilitating rank-and-file workers' writing through the Workers Writers School. In collaboration with PEN, trade unions and other organizations, the WSS's workshops "create a space for participants to re-imagine their working lives, nurture new literary voices directly from the global working class, and produce new tactics and imagine new futures for working class social change." On this episode, Mark joins us along with long-time participant Lorraine Garnett, who reads several of her poems and discusses the School's impact on her life. 

https://www.workerwriters.org/
https://pen.org/worker-writers-school/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Poetry By and For Workers - The Worker Writers School (WSS010)

Heike Geissler is a prominent German novelist and writer who lives and works in Leipzig, once a major city in communist  former "East Germany." Today, it is a major logistics hub for Amazon and site of the "reunified" country's first strike against the American corporation in 2013.

In her 2014 memoir Saisonarbeit (published in English in 2018 as Seasonal Associate), Geissler meditates on the months she spent working at an Amazon fulfillment centre in 2010 and what it tells us about work under capitalism today.

* https://www.heikegeissler.de/
* https://spectorbooks.com/de/buch/saisonarbeit
* https://mitpress.mit.edu/9781635900439/seasonal-associate/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Portrait of the Author as Amazon Worker​ - Heike Geissler on work and writing (WSS011)

Steven Shaviro is a cultural critic and leading theorist of the social roles of science fiction and author of many books, including The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism (2014) and Discognition (2016). His book on science fiction, Fluid Futures, will be published in 2024. In this interview, he helps us understand the history of science fiction and its potentials to critique dominant power relations.

*http://www.shaviro.com/

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* workersspeculativesociety.org
* reimaginingvalue.ca

Extrapolation, Speculation, Fabulation - Steven Shaviro on the work of science fiction (WSS013)

In the thick of the pandemic, Montreal-based writer and organizer Mostafa Henaway worked at an Amazon fulfillment centre to learn how "essential" workers were made disposable in the name of corporate profits. In this episode, he shares stories and critical reflections on the sci-fi nature of Amazon's brand of capitalism, and the implications for workers' organizing and resistance. He concludes with vital thoughts on how this is connected to a broader story of imperialism that also encompasses the ongoing nightmare in Gaza.

Mostafa Henaway, a Canadian-born Egyptian, is a long-time community organizer at the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal, where he has been organizing for justice for immigrant/migrant workers for over two decades. He is also a researcher and PhD candidate at Concordia University. His book Essential Work, Disposable Workers: Migration, Capitalism and Class was published in 2023.

* https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/essential-work-disposable-workers

The Workers' Speculative Society is a research podcast about the world Amazon is building and the workers, writers and communities that are demanding a different future. It is part of the Worker as Futurist Project, which supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write speculative fiction about "The World After Amazon. It is hosted by Xenia Benivolski, Max Haiven, Sarah Olutola, and Graeme Webb and is an initiative of RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, with support from the Social Sciences a Humanities Research Council of Canada. Editing and theme music by Robert Steenkamer.

* http://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/sets/the-workers-speculative
* http://workersspeculativesociety.org
* http://reimaginingvalue.ca

No Worker is Disposable, from Amazon to Gaza - with Mostafa Henaway (WSS012)

Amazon, a corporation that is by some estimates the world's largest private employer, has succeeded in part because of a kind of sci-fi storytelling that places the firm at the forefront of capitalism, technology and human achievement. But if it presents a utopian narrative of itself, its workers pay the price, many of them toiling in dystopian conditions to create a profit-driven future that will exclude or exploit them.
The Worker as Futurist Project supports rank-and-file Amazon workers to write and publish short, speculative fiction about "the world after Amazon." It is undertaken in solidarity with workers' and communities' struggles around the world against a corporation whose wealth and power, today, rivals or exceeds that of many states. But beyond just fighting back, the Worker as Futurist project aims to reclaim the imagination of what the world might yet be if workers, rather than bosses, got to decide.
In this presentation, the project's initiator, Dr. Max Haiven (Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University) speaks at the 2023 Historical Materialism Conference (London) about the origins, inspirations, goals and progress of the project.
In particular, Haiven focuses on the project in the context of methodologies of "workers' inquiry" and militant inquiry more broadly, in which researchers play the role of facilitators creating space and time for an analysis of the changing nature of capitalism to emerge from those who experience its cutting edge directly: workers at firms like Amazon.
For more information about the project, visit: https://reimaginingvalue.ca/waf/

Writing SF with Amazon Workers: Introducing the Worker as Futurist Project (Max Haiven)

What can speculative fiction offer today's movements for collective liberation?
On this panel, assembled to celebrate the launch of The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers (http://afteramazon.world), four activist writing facilitators share their perspectives: Max Haiven (editor of the collection), Lola Olufemi, Phil Crockett Thomas, Sarah E. Truman, and Jamie Woodcock.

This is a recording of an event that took place on 15 September 2024 at London’s Pelican House. 

This event is presented by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, Red Futures and Notes from Below.

Max Haiven is a writer and teacher and Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination. His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022) and Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020). He is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press. He teaches at Lakehead University, where he directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher from London based in the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster. Her work focuses on the uses of the political imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021) and a member of ‘bare minimum’, an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. 

Phil Crockett Thomas writes fiction and poetry, and teaches sociology and criminology at the University of Stirling. Her research focuses on social harm, justice, and creative and collaborative methods. Her fiction has appeared in Granta and on BBC Radio 4. She is the editor of Abolition Science Fiction (2022) a collection of creative writing by activists and scholars involved in the movement for prison abolition in the U.K, and of The Moon Spins the Dead Prison (2022) with Thomas Abercromby and Rosie Roberts.

Associate Professor Sarah E. Truman is a trans-disciplinary scholar in literary education, cultural studies, and the arts, and co-director the Literary Education Lab at University of Melbourne. From 2022-2025, Dr. Truman is an ARC DECRA Fellow, their project ‘Speculative Futures’ focuses on speculative fiction as an interdisciplinary method for thinking about the world and mode of literary engagement in diverse pedagogical settings (high schools, universities, and interdisciplinary scholarship). Truman is also PI on the ARC Linkage Grant ‘Reading Climate’ (2024-2026) which focuses on the relationship between Indigenous climate fictions, literary education, and climate justice. 

Jamie Woodcock is a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London. He is the author of various books, including the recent Star Wars Andor collection. He is an editor of Red Futures, Notes from Below, and Historical Materialism.

Cooperative Speculative Fiction Writing as Activism

The ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) is a research and creativity workshop for the radical imagination active around the world and locally in Thunder Bay, Canada.