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DAVID BERING-PORTER

Assistant Professor of Culture and Media
Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School

Welcome

I examine how capitalism produces figures of dispossessed laboring bodies—tracing connections from slavery and colonialism to contemporary digital technologies. My work operates at the intersection of Black studies, media theory, and critical technology studies, with particular attention to how AI systems extend historical patterns of extraction and control.

As core faculty in the Code as a Liberal Art program and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Race, Power, and Political Economy, I bring together theoretical rigor and technical understanding to explore questions of embodiment, automation, and value in digital culture.

Current Research

Undead Labor: Capitalism’s Zombie Workers
Forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press (Fall 2026)

This book traces the zombie figure from Haitian revolutionary culture through contemporary automation discourse, examining how narratives of “undead labor” reveal capitalism’s relationship to bodies rendered economically and socially disposable. By reading the zombie as a meditation on dispossession, the project connects colonial extraction to platform economies and algorithmic management.

Digital Doppelgänger

An ongoing investigation into AI systems that replicate human behaviors—voice cloning, chatbots, digital avatars. This project combines hands-on technological experimentation with psychoanalytic theory to understand what happens when machines double the voice, image, and gestures of the human body.

Teaching & Pedagogy

My courses integrate critical theory with practical engagement with digital technologies. Current and recent seminars include:

  • Digital Doppelgänger – Exploring voice cloning technology through psychoanalytic frameworks

  • Paranoid Aesthetics – Examining surveillance, conspiracy, and computational culture through theorists including Baudrillard, Steyerl, and Latour

  • Generative Media and Artificial Intelligence – Examining how generative AI systems (large language models, image generators, voice cloning) reshape labor, creativity, and embodiment. Students engage directly with these technologies while developing critical frameworks drawn from Black studies, media theory, and psychoanalysis to interrogate questions of authorship, automation, and the extraction of human expression.

Affiliations & Service

  • Core Faculty, Code as a Liberal Art Program, The New School (2017-2025)

  • Faculty Fellow, Institute for Race, Power, and Political Economy, The New School

  • Academic Advisory Council, Vera List Center for Art and Politics (2025-2027, theme: “The Matter of Intelligence”)

  • University Faculty Senate, The New School

  • Visiting Scholar, Digital Theory Lab, NYU (previous)

Selected Publications

“Data as Symbolic Form: Datafication and the Imaginary Media of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Critical Inquiry (Winter 2022)

“In the Grip of the Past: Haunting, Possession, and Repetition in the Culture Industry” in Calibano (#7) – The turn of the screw / dove abita la paura: https://www.operaroma.it/en/calibano/in-the-grip-of-the-past-haunting-possession-and-repetition-in-the-culture-industry/

“Undead Labor: On the Uncanny Vitality of the Zombie,” Public talk, McGill University, Montreal (March 2022)

Publications have appeared in Culture Machine, Critical Inquiry, Flow, MIRAJ, Post 45, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Contact

Email: beringpd [at] newschool [dot] eduHome