Jack uses critical cultural studies to analyze the politics of popular culture. He studies media culture as an intersection of power, knowledge, and subjectivity. He has written articles that apply autonomist social theory to such topics as audience studies, reality TV, political intellectuals, and popular secrecy. His book is called Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (SUNY 2008). He is co-editor, along with Jeremy Packer and Cameron McCarthy, of Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality (SUNY 2003).
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Critical cultural studies; social and political theory; popular culture.
From the September 2008 talk on the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Left. Bluestockings Bookstore, Downtown Manhattan:
My opening remarks at the 2007 Left Forum panel on the Left and Conspiracy
Book Chapters and Articles
(see bottom of page for selected pdfs)
“Affective Convergence in Reality Television: A Case Study in Divergence Culture”
Flow TV: Essays on a Convergent Medium
Editors: Michael Kackman, Marnie Binfield, Matthew Thomas Payne, Allison Perlman, Bryan Sebok (Routledge, 2010)
“When Collective Intelligence Agencies Collide: Public vs. Popular Intelligence and Networked Suspicions”
Post-Global Network and Everyday Life
Editors: Marina Levina and Grant Kien,
(Peter Lang, 2010)
“Empire/Globalization”
Key Concepts in Critical Cultural Studies
Editors: Clifford Christians and Linda Steiner
(University of Illinois Press, 2010)
“Spies Like Us: Secret Agency and Popular Occulture”
Secret Agents: Popular Icons Beyond James Bond
Editor: Jeremy Packer
(Peter Lang, 2009)
“Programming Reality: Control Societies, New Subjects, and the Powers of Transformation”
Makeover Television: Realities Remodeled
Editor: Dana Heller
(I.B. Tauris, 2007; pp. 6-22)
“Activating the Multitude: Audience Powers and Cultural Studies” 
New Directions in American Reception Study, Editors: Philip Goldstein and Jim Machor
(Oxford University Press, 2008).
“Fragments on Machinic Intellectuals”
Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigation, Collective Theorization
Editors: Stevphen Shukaitis and David Graeber
(AK Press, 2007; pp. 137-154)
“Apocryphal Now Redux”
Contesting Empire/Globalizing Dissent: Cultural Studies after 9/11
Editors: Norman K. Denzin and Michael Giardinia
(Paradigm Press, 2007; pp. 264-279)
“Governing the Present” (with Cameron McCarthy and Jeremy Packer)
Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality
Editors: Jack Z. Bratich, Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy.
(SUNY Press, 2003, pp.3-21)
“Making Politics Reasonable: Rationality and Ideology in the Problematization of Paranoia"
Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. Editors: Jack Z. Bratich, Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy. (SUNY Press, 2003, pp. 67-100).
“Injections and Truth Serums: AIDS Conspiracy Theories and the Politics of Articulation”
Conspiracy Nation.
Editor: Peter Knight
(New York University Press, 2002, pp. 137-156).
Journal Articles
“Summer of Double Super Secrecy: Public Secret Spheres, Evidence, and Cultural Strategies”
Cultural StudiesCritical Methodologies (7:2, May 2007, 118-131)
“Popular Secrecy and Occultural Studies”
Cultural Studies (21:1 January 2007, 42-58)
Temporary Guantanomous Zones: Reality Camps and Crucibles
FlowTV (5:7, January 2007)
“Public Secrecy and Immanent Security: A Strategic Analysis”
Cultural Studies (20:4-5, July/September 2006, 493-511)
"Nothing is left Alone for too long": Reality Programming and
Making Malleable Subjects in Control Societies”
Journal of Communication Inquiry (30:1, Jan. 2006, 65-83)
"Amassing the Multitude: Revisiting Early Audience Studies"
Communication Theory (15:3, August 2005)
“Trust No-one (on the Internet): The CIA-Crack-Contra Conspiracy Theory
and Professional Journalism”
Television and New Media (5:2, May 2004, 109-139)
"The Knowledge Gangsters: African American Conspiracy Theories, Political Rationality, and the Governance of Dissent"
Information, Theory, and Society (1:1, 2002, 91-108)
“Drawing a Line in the Fog: Post 9/11”
Cultural StudiesCritical Methodologies (2:2, May 2002)
Online essays and other publications
"The Twitterest Pill: Policing Dissent in the Information Age”Counterpunch newsletter (10/09/09)
“You Provide the Tweets, We'll Provide the Info War”
Counterpunch newsletter (7/25/09)
“The Fog Machine:Iran, Social Media and the Rise of Genetically Modified Grassroots Organizations”
Counterpunch newsletter (7/22/09)
"Eyes Put a Spell on You”
Counterpunch newsletter (9/13/06)
"Secreting the News: Anonymous vs. Confidential Sources”
Counterpunch newsletter (8/13/05)
“Fingerprints of Power: Summer of Double Super Secrecy”
Counterpunch newsletter (7/30/05)
“2 Live Cruise: Tom Cruise vs. Big Pharma”
Counterpunch newsletter (7/12/05)
“Swarmcession!”
Lumpen Magazine #96 (July 2005) pp. 20-25
“I’ve got you under my skin: Digging Kerry Out and Burying the Bones(men)”
Counterpunch newsletter (11/19/04)
"Art of Darkness: The Abu Ghraib Effect"
Interactivist Information Exchange (05/07/04)