Micah Stubbs' Weblog

The Labor of the Inhuman as a pocket reader, with a glossary and two audio readings

21st October 2026

For the October 21 meeting of the Phil@Viv philosophy group, the reading was Reza Negarestani’s two-part essay “The Labor of the Inhuman,” from e-flux journal issues 52 and 53 (2014): Part I: Human and Part II: The Inhuman. It argues that taking humanism seriously, as a commitment to reason, leads to revising what “human” means without end. I couldn’t make the meeting, but I made a reading copy and two audio readings for it.

The reader

The reader is typeset from scratch from the e-flux web edition rather than printed from a PDF, on the same 6.125 x 9.25 inch precut stock as my other booklets. The cover art is generated: a ramifying cascade of lines that branches from a single red path, drawn by a small script with a fixed seed.

The interior is 48 pages in Century Schoolbook: a half-title, title, colophon, contents and epigraph, then Part I and Part II with their notes as numbered footnotes, then a glossary and an index. Body paragraphs are blocks with a blank line between them, as in the magazine. The web edition’s film stills are left out, and the few silent corrections are listed on the colophon page.

A glossary

The glossary is new to this edition: 37 terms, from abduction and the #Accelerate Manifesto to the space of reasons, each defined in plain language with the page where the essay first uses it. Negarestani leans on Sellars, Brandom and Peirce without stopping to explain them, so this is the part I’d hand to someone coming to the essay cold.

Download the glossary (PDF). The essay is free to read on e-flux, linked above, so I am not posting the full reader.

Two audio readings

Each part also has a dramatic reading on papertospeech.com, made from listening editions with the notes and page furniture removed:

1. Listen to Part I: Human
2. Listen to Part II: The Inhuman

Paper

The cover goes on Cougar White Card Stock, 65 lb / 176 gsm, Smooth and the interior on Cougar White Digital Super Smooth, 60 lb / 89 gsm, both from CutCardStock with custom cutting to 6⅛ × 9¼.

Links

1. Part I: Human on e-flux
2. Part II: The Inhuman on e-flux
3. Audio reading, Part I and Part II
4. Glossary PDF
5. Reader cover, first page and first glossary page
6. The next meeting’s booklet: Plato’s Crito and Phaedo