[csaa-forum] Mark Howard (UCSC) upcoming talk on strategic contrarianism 20 / 05 3pm

[Rosemary Overell]

Kia ora koutou,

Please do join us for Mark Howard (UCSC) upcoming talk on strategic contrarianism. Please join us on Tuesday 20th May at 3pm in Burns 4, or register for Zoom link below!
Title: Performative Divergence: Contrarianism and the Production of Value in Silicon Valley
Abstract: This seminar examines contrarianism as a key defining logic in the Silicon Valley imagination—not merely as a personality trait or rhetorical posture, but a calculated performance of dissent within systems that reward speculative risk. At its heart, Mark Howardsuggests, is a paradox. The contrarian appears to stand apart from consensus, but nevertheless depends on it to be legible, valued, and ultimately successful. Drawing on René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, André Orléan’s theory of value as collective belief, and Nassim Taleb’s account of optionality and antifragility, this talk explores how contrarianism functions as both economic strategy and epistemic myth; a way of converting performative deviation from consensus into speculative value. On this account, the tech founder, speculative investor, or visionary outsider is less a breaker of systems than a byproduct of them—a figure who thrives not by rejecting mimetic desire, but by instrumentalizing it. This can be described as negative mimesis: a form of oppositional positioning that intensifies mimetic structures even as it claims to escape them. Through examples drawn from venture capital, innovation discourse, and the cultural mythmaking of Silicon Valley, Mark Howard asks: what kind of freedom is promised by contrarianism? And what kind of conformity does that freedom require?
Mark Howard is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Register for Zoom:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1lZNQmqWang6zNUmbISXREVonHWEEYOG2VflOXCryVI8/edit

Ngā mihi
Rosie.

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