Good Vibes Only
Phenomenology and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation
$75.74
- Paperback
238 pages
- Release Date
17 November 2026
Summary
In Good Vibes Only, Robin James argues that “the vibes”—the mathematical vectors driving modern technologies—have shifted. Considering the forms of governance performed by the algorithms fueling AI, recommender systems, facial recognition, and other contemporary technologies, James vividly illustrates our new biopolitical regime—one in which discourses of legitimacy function in place of norms to draw patriarchal, racial, and capitalist lines around personhood. James innovatively combines continental philosophy, popular music studies, and media studies to show how the math driving modern technologies translates into both political forms of governance and colloquial cultural practices ranging from social media posts to playlist categories to hip hop aesthetics. Qualitative atmospheres and abstractions are undergirded by quantitative orientations, utilized by users and platforms alike. Good Vibes Only breaks down the phenomenology of how these algorithmic “vibes” have shifted the way biopower governs, not with disciplinary or regulatory norms, but with orientations or lineages that it assesses for their capacity to carry patriarchal racial capitalist property relations into speculative realities.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781478039334 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1478039337 |
| Author: | Robin James |
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Imprint: | Duke University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 238 |
| Release Date: | 17 November 2026 |
| Weight: | 445g |
| Dimensions: | 152mm x 229mm |
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Critics Review
“Compelling, vivid, clear: in Good Vibes Only Robin James draws our attention to the relationship between music, technology, and the mathematical vectors that power contemporary machine learning systems. Her novel treatment of contemporary political regimes, and specifically the vibe as a political technology animating those regimes, offers satisfying connections between probability, risk and politics; algorithms; and Sara Ahmed’s work on orientations.“—Louise Amoore, author of Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others “Althusser saw a ‘question of questions’ behind our enduring philosophical problems: Where are we going? Behind this question sits another: Which direction should we follow? Robin James’s inventive book tackles these ur-questions with an original politics of orientation founded on surprising complicities between the vectors and vibes of contemporary algorithmic technologies. You may sit tall as the rich panorama of its illuminating analysis comes into view.“—Mary Beth Mader, Professor of Philosophy, University of Memphis
Robin James
Robin James is an independent scholar and author of several books, including The Sonic Episteme: Acoustic Resonance, Neoliberalism and Biopolitics and The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence.
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