Publications

Articles and Chapters

Whitehead’s Ethics: Fill in the Blanks

Published in Whitehead at Harvard, 1925-1927, 2025

In this paper, Daniel Bella and I examine Whitehead’s singular guest lecture in Richard Clarke Cabot’s seminar in social ethics. This paper was already published in Process Studies in 2023, but has been updated for this collected volume in which Whitehead-scholars examine the significance of the The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1925–1927: General Metaphysical Problems of Science.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, and Daniel Bella. 2025. "Whitehead's Ethics: Fill in the Blanks". In Whitehead at Harvard, 1925-1927, edited by Joseph Petek and Brian G. Henning. Edinburgh University Press.
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Inheriting Cosmopolitics: Pericles, Whitehead, Stengers

Published in Theory, Culture & Society, 2023

This open-access paper deals with the commercial political ontology of Isabelle Stengers by tracing it through the works of Alfred North Whitehead back to Pericles.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, and Daniel Bella. 2023. ‘Inheriting Cosmopolitics: Pericles, Whitehead, Stengers’. Theory, Culture & Society 40 (3): 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221092300.
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Protokoll 05: Banal Input/Output System

Published in ChatGPT und andere 'Quatschmaschinen'. Gespräche mit Künstlicher Intelligenz, 2023

Co-written with Mathias Denecke, this open-access, German-language paper contributes to an experimental collection that aims to document the passage in media history into a new era of ubiquitous AI.

Recommended citation: Denecke, Mathias, and Milan Stürmer. 2023. "Protokoll 05: Banal Input/Output System.". In ChatGPT und andere 'Quatschmaschinen'. Gespräche mit Künstlicher Intelligenz. edited by Anna Tuschling, Andreas Sudmann, and Bernhard J. Dotzler. Transcript Verlag..
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Whitehead’s Ethics: Fill in the Blanks

Published in Process Studies, 2023

The paper examines Whitehead’s singular guest lecture in Richard Clarke Cabot’s seminar in social ethics.

Recommended citation: Bella, Daniel, and Milan Stürmer. 2023. "Whitehead's Ethics: Fill in the Blanks" Process Studies 52 (2): 179–200.
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Relationen Denken: Teilhabe, Verwandtschaft und Innere Beziehungen nach Marylin Strathern

Published in Mediale Teilhabe: Partizipation zwischen Anspruch und Inanspruchnahme, 2023

This open-access, German langauge chapter is for those interested in the relational turn and the microvocabulary of dissolution that we can find in the New Kinship Studies generally and particularly in the ethnography of Marilyn Strathern. Following Strathern, I am asking what appears and disappears as a cultural resource for thinking about relations.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2023. "Relationen Denken: Teilhabe, Verwandtschaft Und Innere Beziehungen Nach Marylin Strathern." In Mediale Teilhabe: Partizipation Zwischen Anspruch Und Inanspruchnahme, edited by Beate Ochsner. Meson Press.
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The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization

Published in Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization, 2022

In this introduction, we investigate why the notions of liquidity, flow, and circulation exert an irresistible lure on scholars and artists engaged in depicting the principles that undergird the workings of our contemporary world. Drawing on Fredric Jameson’s work, we ask whether the concepts of liquidity, flow, and circulation might provide a useful means to grasp the cultural logic of today’s capitalism.

Recommended citation: Denecke, Mathias, Holger Kuhn, and Milan Stürmer. 2022. "The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization." In Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization, edited by Milan Stürmer, Holger Kuhn, and Mathias Denecke. Diaphanes, University of Chicago Press.
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Post-Mass Media and Participation

Published in Post-Mass Media and Participation (Special Issue), 2021

Michel Schreiber and I survey how early career researchers adopt and adapt the concept of post-media for their work today to allow a reframing of the question of participation after the end of the 20th century.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, and Michel Schreiber. 2021. "Post-Mass Media and Participation (Special Issue)." Augenblick: Konstanzer Hefte Zur Medienwissenschaft, 80: 5–16.
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Die Errettung der Zivilisation: Über das Versprechen der Onto-Epistemologie des Neuen Animismus

Published in Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift, 2021

This is an open-access, German-language paper in which I argue that the promise of the onto-epistemology of New Animism is nothing less but to save civilization.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2021. "Die Errettung Der Zivilisation: Über Das Versprechen Der Onto-Epistemologie Des Neuen Animismus." Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift. 6 (2): 39–56.
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Schwermut Und Leichtigkeit: Über Die Rolle Der Schwerkraft in Videospielen

Published in Paidia – Zeitschrift Für Computerspielforschung, 2015

Based on research done during my BA, I argue in this German-language paper that games’ frequent defiance of gravity reflects a broader technological imaginary of digital weightlessness which risks erasure of material/ecological costs while staging a productive tension between lightness and heaviness.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2015. "Schwermut Und Leichtigkeit: Über Die Rolle Der Schwerkraft in Videospielen." Paidia – Zeitschrift Für Computerspielforschung.
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Books and Edited Volumes

Jenseits von West und Ost: Gespräch über Technik und Philosophie

Published in Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Matthes & Seitz, 2025

This is a book-lenght conversation between Yuk Hui and myself, which aims to serve as both an introduction to Hui’s philosophy, as well as a commentary on a specific historical moment after the pandemic.

Recommended citation: Hui, Yuk, and Milan Stürmer. 2025. Jenseits von West und Ost: Gespräch über Technik und Philosophie. Matthes & Seitz Berlin.
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Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization

Published in Critical Stances, Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press, 2022

Placed at the intersection of art, media, and cultural studies as well as economic theory, this edited volume investigates the cultural logic of environmentalization. As flows, circulations, and liquidity resurface in all aspects of recent culture and contemporary art, we investigate the hypothesis of a genuine cultural logic of environmentalization through these three concepts.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, Holger Kuhn, and Mathias Denecke, eds. 2022. Liquidity, Flows, Circulation: The Cultural Logic of Environmentalization. Diaphanes, University of Chicago Press.
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Post-Mass Media and Participation (Special Issue)

Published in Augenblick, Schüren Verlag, 2021

This special issue examines how early career researchers adopt and adapt the concept of post-media for their work today to allow a reframing of the question of participation after the end of the 20th century.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, and Michel Schreiber, eds. 2021. "Post-Mass Media and Participation (Special Issue)." Augenblick: Konstanzer Hefte Zur Medienwissenschaft, 80.
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Reviews and other Writings (Selection)

Review of Generative AI for Academics

Published in Postdigital Science and Education, 2025

The challenge Carrigan’s book leaves for all of us is to create broader cultures of scholarship that would be conducive to reflective individual practice, while mitigating the collective harm. This, however, is not a question of a more or less thoughtful use of GenAI systems, but of rethinking and reforming the ways in which we ‘do university’.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2025. "Review of Mark Carrigan (2025). Generative AI for Academics." Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00580-x.
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Review of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence

Published in LSE Review of Books, 2023

In this review, we discuss Dan McQuillan’s call for a restructuring of artificial intelligence which prioritises the common good over an algorithmic optimisation that reinforces the marginalisation of vulnerable groups.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan, and Mark Carrigan. 2023. "Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence – review." Impact of Social Sciences (LSE Impact Blog). https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/11/16/resisting-ai-an-anti-fascist-approach-to-artificial-intelligence-review/.
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Review of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media

Published in LSE Review of Books, 2023

In this review, we go through Emily Hund’s outstanding analysis​ of the economics of influence​, which offers a​ sophisticated​ theoretical contribution at a point in history when the influencer industry has penetrated the mainstream ​​to an unprecedented degree.

Recommended citation: Carrigan, Mark, and Milan Stürmer. 2023. "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media." LSE Review of Books. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2023/08/07/book-reviewthe-influencer-industry-the-quest-for-authenticity-on-social-media-emily-hund/.
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Fit for Finance

Published in Parole Compendium: Form Follows Finance, 2021

Parole.cc is a website that commissions and publishes new critical texts and media about contemporary culture, in the form of design critique. In this contribution to the compendium on design and finance, I think through the organic critique of finance in design following Lewis Mumford, Thorstein Veblen, and the critique of political economy by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2021. "Fit for Finance". Parole Compendium: Form Follows Finance. https://parole.cc/compendiums/form-follows-finance/fit-for-finance/.
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Mann and Wainwright’s Climate Leviathan

Published in ‘Culture, Politics and Global Justice’ (CPGJ)-Blog at the University of Cambridge, 2020

Many people have recently confessed to the strange feeling of relief they felt when the government finally decided put them under house arrest. Under normal circumstances, this sort of reaction would be unthinkable, but this is a crisis and, in a crisis, it is time for the state to step up to the plate and do its job. Its job of governing us. Properly.

Recommended citation: Stürmer, Milan. 2020. "Mann and Wainwright’s Climate Leviathan." ‘Culture, Politics and Global Justice’ (CPGJ)-Blog at the University of Cambridge. https://cpgjcam.net/reading-groups/self-isolation-reading-group/mann-wainwrights-climate-leviathan/.
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Medienökologien fürs Anthropozän

Published in Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, 2016

Co-authored with Isabell Schrickel, this review essay looks at the discourse around the Anthropocene in media studies and covers Jussi Parikka’s The Anthrobscene (2014), A Geology of Media, Minneapolis (2015), as well as McKenzie Wark’s Molecular Red. Theory for the Anthropocene (2015).

Recommended citation: Schrickel, Isabell, and Milan Stürmer. 2016. "Medienökologien Fürs Anthropozän." Zeitschrift Für Medienwissenschaft 14: 180–85.
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