We are no longer waiting for the end of the world; we have already entered it.

This is the central thesis of Semiotics of the End. Sbordoni argues that the apocalypse is not a future physical event we must brave for, but rather the exact economic and digital reality we currently inhabit. Capitalism has mapped every corner and commodified the physical world.

I came to the book based on my interest in liminal horror films popping up like Backrooms and Exit 8. Backrooms of which, the author has an essay/chapter in the book for, where they describe this "recycled" media as a form of architectural horror, diagnosing the phenomenon as the "apocalypse of the boring".

Drawing on Kant, the author argues that the end of all things derives from the total absence of change. The terror of the Backrooms is the realization that the world is permanently stuck. We no longer fear the unknown; we fear the agonizing realization that the capitalist infrastructure we built has no exit.

While the author doesn't discuss AI, clear parallels can be drawn to generative AI as they note, "everything is reproduced already faster than it is imagined" and that the modern image is "already a copy". This is the reality of algorithmic dominance. Capitalism becomes our only remaining imaginary: we do not originate new concepts; our machines calculate probabilities to output a continuous, inescapable past. Human imagination becomes obsolete by the sheer velocity of algorithmic reproduction.

Semitiocs of the End is a useful diagnostic text for our current digital condition. It showcases how we are operating within a closed cultural system, endlessly recycling data into a haze. Sbordoni argues the physical destruction of the world is no longer our primary concern but the act of staring at the screen itself.

I read Braiding Sweetgrass a few years back and The Serviceberry was a delightful reminder and realignment for what it is we are working towards.

I live in Alberta, Canada and the province to the east of me is Saskatoon. I grew up familiar with the berry. I spent my summers visiting u-picks and finding the great Saskatoon berry out in the wild. I didn't realize how valuable this time was.

I feel so much more abundance from just reading this book. I'm imagining what my yard would look like if it was naturalized. I work as an ecological planner and we are so far away from this type of gift economy becoming hegemonic but it's present. It's present in the relationships we make. In being stewards for the environment. In thanking nature for what she does for us. I'm grateful for the ways nature was present as I grew up. Being oriented to the beauty of the earth has been something present all through my life and has shaped my career and daily life. I haven't had the opportunity to fully reflect on the meaningfulness and gratitude I have for being with nature and learning from her.

I highly recommend Braiding Sweetgrass for a more in-depth overview of looking to nature and Indigenous knowledge for ways to be in right relationship with the planet if you enjoyed The Serviceberry. For more on biomimcry and activism, I would recommend Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown. 🌿

CW: sexual violence & genocide

Soraya Chemaly’s All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy aligns with a deep lineage of feminist theory by analyzing male supremacy not as a social issue to be debated, but as an existential threat to life itself. This book is a rigorous deconstruction of how we are socialized to maintain our own oppression. I came to feminism formally in 2016 out of survival—as a way to deconstruct a world that had normalized sexual violence in my life. Over a decade now into this process of deconstruction, I am continually faced with the humbling reality that societal conditioning is pervasive; I still, unwillingly, internalize male supremacy. A specific example of this ongoing deconditioning occurred a few years ago when I started dating my current cis-boyfriend and realized I was embodying more patriarchal thinking than him. It served as a visceral example of Chemaly’s point: "not all men" are the primary drivers of this behavior; rather, women are often the system's disciplinarians. Being a feminist is an ongoing practice, a process to decondition and embody feminism. Reading this book was a reminder to keep my feminist teeth sharpened.

That constant need to stay sharp exists because Chemaly defines male supremacy not just as a prejudice, but as the "active right to dominate, control, or erase" anyone who does not conform. She argues that 60% of men believe feminism has "overcorrected" into discrimination against them, a statistic that perfectly captures the deliberate panic of a cultural hierarchy losing its grip. She underscores the fact that men rule and we are all held by male supremacist ideology, its institutions, and its identities. This hierarchy doesn't require every man to participate to function; as Chemaly notes, "all men don’t have to be predatory, just enough men have to be violent to keep threats to subordinated people credible and diffuse." The daily work of unlearning is what moves us from being the "implicated subjects" and frontline forces of state power—the teachers, nurses, and HR professionals responsible for executing reactionary policies in our day-to-day lives—to actually short-circuiting the system. We are all socialized by worldviews that pit us against one another for the amusement of people in power Chemaly argues.

What I found effective was how Chemaly's framework explains our current political reality with brutal clarity: the primary predictor of Trump support was not class or education, but a belief in hegemonic masculinity. This fact has shaped our entire political landscape, making it clear that these reactionary movements are driven primarily by a desperate need to preserve patriarchal control over every aspect of society. In addition to her explanations of our current authoritarian regimes' desire for control, a part I really appreciated was her explanation of the arbitrary line between "jobs infrastructure" and "care infrastructure", noting that ignoring the latter relies on a male supremacist imagination that assumes women will provide infinite, unpaid care (and labour) on demand. Chemaly points out the irony present in a system that extracts uncompensated labor and care work while simultaneously accusing women, specifically Black women, of just wanting "free stuff."

In Chapter 6, Chemaly brings up necropolitics, describing male supremacy as the superstructure of racial capitalism and environmental collapse, arguing that male supremacy is an inherently necropolitical worldview that gives a small few the power to decide who will live and who will die. Identifying that patriarchal systems build "death worlds" where people are forced to become apathetic just to endure. Chemaly illustrates this by pointing to our daily reality, noting that we carry surveillance devices that force us into constant calculations of "which forms of violence will harm less." We scroll through feeds where videos of children happily celebrating birthdays sit right alongside footage of "children whose heads and limbs have been blown off," or of people "screaming while being openly disappeared by masked government agents." She makes it clear that this resulting exhaustion "is not a side effect; it is a design feature." The stakes are existential. Chemaly argues that powermongers would rather kill tens of millions in a fantasy of apocalyptic conflagration than share power. She describes this as "the retributive, angry logic of patriarchal family annihilators operating at scale." Our politics are intractable because we have hit the limits of a male supremacist imagination that cannot envision a future that embraces limits on growth, energy, or people’s bodies.

Because of this, what Chemaly calls a "rebellion in slow motion" is occurring. She lays out the terms of this rebellion as a refusal, writing that we are finally telling society we will no longer fulfill the role of prioritizing men’s needs, thoughts, and approval to the detriment of us all. This decentering, she explains, turns the voice in our heads from asking what men need, into one that asks what we need to live, build, imagine, and thrive on our own terms. She is exact in her vision of what this rebellion looks like: we won’t smile when we don’t feel like it or be told we’re bitches for expressing our thoughts. We won’t hide messages calling us ugly or stupid for voicing legitimate concerns. We won’t be gaslit into believing that our experiences are invalid, have our sexual agency used against us, or have our children used against us. We will no longer be the muses instead of the artists, the supporters instead of the leaders, or footnotes in discoveries we’ve made. We won’t stop protesting being harassed, raped, stalked, beaten, and incarcerated because we are women with feelings, needs, traumas, and survival strategies.

Chemaly describes this movement as a global expression of sumud, a steadfast holding of one another through grief and happiness, organizing, and creating out of abandonment, wastelands, and rubble. When we refuse to comply, roll our eyes, and dance, we are practicing a feminist pedagogy that short-circuits the system (Ahmed, 2023). Chemaly reminds us that small acts are the building blocks of transformation. Embracing bad attitudes—our witchiness, sluttiness, bigness, loudness, brilliance, ugly clothes, and selfish boundaries—are all acts of refusal. The intensity of the current backlash is proof of the progress being made. As Chemaly writes, "Our sights can’t be set on survival but have to focus on transformation." Every day, by refusing to stay adjusted to this system, we demonstrate that the current order is not inevitable. In a world that expects us to be small, we step into what Legacy Russell calls the glitch. We malfunction the machine the moment we stop negotiating for mere survival—because all we want is everything.