Dread: Facing Futureless Futures, David Theo Goldberg (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2021), 244 pp., cloth $64.95, paperback $22.95, eBook $18.

Abstract

Living during the COVID- pandemic, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the global rise of far-right parties, and the escalating climate crisis, among myriad other issues, many people can relate to a sense of anxiety and nervousness on a transnational level. Building on these feelings, David Theo Goldberg explores topics ranging from racial identity to artificial intelligence in his recent book Dread: Facing Futureless Futures. Dread serves as the book’s throughline, and Goldberg defines it in relation to the topic and perspective at hand. For instance, when discussing racial anxieties, Goldberg explicates how dread for those who identify as white is the anxiety they feel at the sense of losing “long-sustaining racial power” (p. ). On the other hand, dread is also felt by those oppressed by that same longsustained racial power. These juxtapositions are what make the book captivating, as Goldberg plays between and through perspectives and power dynamics, with a nod to intersectionality. Those interested in critical theory or who may feel a sense of postmodern dread will find this aspect of the book particularly compelling. While Goldberg begins the book with a discussion on dread, he does not specifically pin down a definition, which allows him to explore the concept as it relates to each topic he addresses in the book. Overall, however, he states that dread can broadly be thought of as a “social logic in which the war on everything is inevitably prompting a proliferating civil war, an internalizing war within and among ourselves” (p. ). Dread goes further than anxiety, as dread operates and acts within our lives yet is external to our wishes, needs, and knowledge. The first topic on Goldberg’s docket is artificial intelligence and the dread that comes with the feeling of constant surveillance. He notes the role of facial recognition, tracking citizens’ locations, and social media surveillance, each of which contributes to a sense of dread. Goldberg then builds on this to redefine and rethink capitalism, specifically referring to contemporary capitalism as “tracking-capitalism.” Not only is there the dread that comes from technology replacing human labor, primarily in manufacturing, but there is also dread that comes from being tracked and from our behavior being sold, often without our understanding of the scope. He then addresses the dread that has come from the pandemic. COVID- has cultivated a widespread sense of dread in part,