Infinite Ontologies of the Chthulustream: Posthumanism and Racial Capital in Contemporary Streaming Media

by William Brown, David H. Fleming

Overview

Brown and Fleming employ the twin discourses of critical race theory and posthumanism in order to expose how multinational platforms like Netflix play a role in both problematising and perpetuating deeply entrenched violences lurking within the intersections of racism, capitalism, and technology. The authors dive into the racialised world-building of shows like Stranger Things, Watchmen, Lovecraft Country, Sense8, The Twilight Zone, The O.A., Ad Vitam and DEVS, and through their groundbreaking media philosophy diagnose and confront the oppressive and racialising nature of streaming media at the end of the world, in the so-called Chthulucene (or ‘Chthulustream’). As Brown and Fleming demonstrate, streaming media can, at their best, liberate thought to confront overlapping infinite ontologies (∞O) that themselves offer a timely panacea and corrective to Object-Oriented-Ontology (OOO).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399549806
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	09/30/2025
Series:	Screens, Thinking, Worlds
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

William Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of various books, including Non-Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking and the Multitude (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (Berghahn, 2013). He is also a maker of micro-budget films, including En Attendant Godard (2009), Selfie (2014) and This is Cinema (2019).

David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer in the Communications, Media and Culture Division at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Unbecoming Cinema (2017) and co-author of Squid Cinema from Hell (2020, EUP) and Chinese Urban Shi-nema (2020). He is also co-editor of Cinema, Identities and Beyond (2009).

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Mantle of the Beast; Or, Starting in the Middle (Passage)

Superposition I: Ontological Whiteness and/as Antiblackness

1. Ad Vitam
2. Stranger Things
3. The O.A

Superposition II: Paraontological Blackness
4. The Twilight Zone
5. Watchmen
6. Lovecraft Country

Superposition III: Ornamental Others and Foreigners Within
7. DEVS
8. Sense8

Conclusion: I May Destroy You... High Flying Birds