Necromantic Media

This article develops the concept of “necromantic media” using the works of Chris Chesher, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Gilbert Simondon. Examining the productive dynamics of LLMs (large language models), it foregrounds the revival of vast archives of past human expression—what Marx termed ‘dead labor’— to create an invocable reserve of ‘undead labor’: a potent, exploitable facsimile of cognitive labor. By examining this necromantic cycle, this article reveals how techno-capitalism appropriates collective knowledge, mutates the dynamics of labor, and radically affects the socio-technical milieus of techno-capital.