Michael Uhall

Gray sky thinking: Plato and political decay Plato’s creation is a conceptual machine, lumbering through the underground ruins of dead and dying civilizations, seeking an exit to the surface, an egress to the Outside.

Plato uses his political philosophy to develop alternative assumptions. This is where gray sky thinking slips the shining wire of mere critique, which always sutures the critic to the object of her critique: grayskythinking.substack.com/p/gray-sky-t...

Reading geopolitics: The Folly and the Glory (2020) Tim Weiner's The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare, 1945-2020

Brief reflections on @tim-weiner.bsky.social's The Folly and the Glory, a brisk and unsettling survey of American-Russian political warfare (1945-2020) and some of the recurring pathologies of great-power projection: grayskythinking.substack.com/p/reading-ge...

Introduction to gray sky thinking The standard assumption about the future is that it will resemble the past.

The default assumption that the future will resemble the past is dangerous. This short article introduces “gray sky thinking” as a framework for conceptualizing existential risk without continuity bias: grayskythinking.substack.com/p/introducti...

Nuclear nonproliferation was on the ballot in 2024, though most Americans didn’t realize or care.

In term 1, Trump let Iran out of nuclear restrictions in exchange for nothing, accepted DPRK as a nuclear weapons state, and made US allies want their own deterrent.

Now 50 years of US-Russia is done.

Adriana Mandacaru Guerra has written a scholarly review of my first book, Noir Materialism (www.bloomsbury.com/us/noir-mate...), for the January 2026 issue of Theory and Event (29:1): muse.jhu.edu/issue/56178. It's always an honor. Currently open access: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...

We’ll need to take this offline and circle back on the full portfolio of scoops to holistically assess ROI, once they’ve fully synergized with upcoming strategic initiatives currently in the pipeline and pending further alignment on TBD deliverables.

Honestly, I'm surprised they don't just have whichever brainless abacus they prefer gin up all the speeches.

"My personal view (not the university’s view): a university that forces philosophy professors to remove texts by Plato from their syllabi is not a serious university, it reduces itself to a political propaganda institution, just like philosophy departments in the Soviet Union": archive.ph/LiA44

THE LEFT HAND OF ALL CREATION: HOW TO REPURPOSE Whole Worlds PT. 3 // Michael Uhall This is the third part of a 3-part series The Left Hand of All Creation: How To Repurpose Whole Worlds by Michael Uhall. In this regard, to repurpose an object of whatever sort entails an…

Part 3 of a series on conceptual engineering and pragmatism ("The left hand of all creation: how to repurpose whole worlds") is up at Diffractions Collective. Part 3 engages with algorithms, Günther Anders, Ray Brassier, and chirality. diffractionscollective.com/2025/11/21/t...

I hated EWS until I read Tim Kreider's "Introducing Sociology," which genuinely changed my mind and appreciation for the film. Recommended: www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0096...

THE LEFT HAND OF ALL CREATION: HOW TO REPURPOSE Whole WORLDS PT. 2 // Michael Uhall This is the second part of a 3-part series The Left Hand of All Creation: How To Repurpose Whole Worlds by Michael Uhall. (PART 3): EXCURSUS ON CREATIVE DESTRUCTION (SPIELREIN, SCHUMPETER, BOYD, LA…

Part 2 of a series on conceptual engineering and pragmatism ("The left hand of all creation: how to repurpose whole worlds") is up at Diffractions Collective. Part 2 engages with S. Spielrein, J. Schumpeter, John Boyd, and Nick Land on creative destruction: diffractionscollective.com/2025/11/13/t...

Thanks, friend.

THE LEFT HAND OF ALL CREATION: HOW TO REPURPOSE Whole WORLDS PT.1 // Michael Uhall This is the first part of a 3-part series The Left Hand of All Creation: How To Repurpose Whole Worlds by Michael Uhall. “The world is an asymmetrical place full of asymmetrical beings.” – Fra…

Part 1 of a series on conceptual engineering and pragmatism ("The left hand of all creation: how to repurpose whole worlds") is up at Diffractions Collective. Part 1 engages with C. S. Peirce, OOO (critically), and Winnicott on object use and destruction: diffractionscollective.com/2025/10/29/t....

There is no final victory or defeat. There is only a new phase of the battle.

"Lovecraft in Mexico," along with my translation of Guillermo Samperio's "Borges, Escher, Lovecraft," is now available from Hippocampus Press's specialist journal *Lovecraft Annual: New Scholarship on H. P. Lovecraft* (19:1, August 2025): www.hippocampuspress.com/journals/lov...

On Screen: Geopolitics and Marriage in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981) — The Vault of Culture In this “On Screen” entry, Michael Uhall argues that Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981) is a film about much more than its obvious subject—divorce. Uhall explores the film’s interest in setting th...

"If you want a picture of this ghastly future, imagine enforcing perfect correspondence between the demesne of geopolitics and the psychic heatmap of human attachments": www.vaultofculture.com/vault/onscre...

YouTube video by klavss76 Paris, Texas - No Safety Zone

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TMX...

‪"It doesn't move because he has fastened it in place until he finds out why it doesn't move."

Very nice explanation of how these tariff policies hurt American businesses, consumers, and taxpayers, lensed through the microcosm of the games industry: www.catalystgamelabs.com/news/tariffs...

"For sublime deeds like the foundation of a city or the fabrication of a golem, one draws a circle, or better yet walks in a circle as in a children's dance, combining rhythmic vowels and consonants that correspond to the interior forces of creation as to the differentiated parts of an organism."

"The book is extraordinarily learned, and though we confess we never heard of most of the authorities he quotes, we suppose they are all right": www.nature.com/articles/122...

Agree. This is why it's important to construct invisible colleges and pseudo-monastic redoubts to survive what's coming and to preserve/transmit valuable knowledge (including capacities for thinking/thought). Every author is a potential Leibowitz; every reader is a prospective anchorite/compatriot.

Really glad we got to publish this at ARB. @noirmaterialism.bsky.social does a great job using the book & film to open up the culturally-telling angles of something that might look like cheap shock horror at first glance.

Nightmare Green: Cannibal Holocaust as Theory-Fiction Michael Uhall Nathan Wardinski’s Dissecting Cannibal Holocaust (2024) is a stellar example of a book that systematically thinks through a complex and controversial media object, namely, the Italian…

Nightmare Green: @noirmaterialism.bsky.social uses Nathan Wardinski's DISSECTING CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (Rowman & Littlefield) to think about horror, abjection, and Deodato's infamous film as theory-fiction
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2024/12/06/n...

Remember to check our latest essay written by the great @noirmaterialism.bsky.social on "Glamorama", by Bret Easton Ellis, featuring illustrations by our very own @cerulea_d.lux and @uy_que_paila 👜👒 (both of them in Instagram)

🔗 www.utopiadistrict.com/articles/vap...

We ran a great piece by @noirmaterialism.bsky.social on Interstellar, as part of Astronoetic Cinema series, at @vaultofculture.bsky.social : www.vaultofculture.com/vault/astron...

Now under contract w/ Routledge for my second book (Theory of the Alien), on the relatively recent emergence of outer space as an economic, political, and warfighting domain, as well as delineating ways our strategic imagination is informed by things “outside” the traditional scope of the political.

The Agora and the Archipelago // Michael UHALL 1: AGORA For some time now, the AGORA has served as the implicit structural model for every legitimate democratic politics. Historically, the AGORA named the public space in which Greek citizens co…

Just in time for the election, "The agora and the archipelago" is now available from Diffractions Collective: "Where the AGORA falters, ARCHIPELAGO enables the projection of political force [...]": diffractionscollective.com/2024/10/17/t...