Appendix B — Corpus of Cultural Artefacts Examined

This appendix catalogues, for the convenience of the reader and the historical record, the principal cultural artefacts examined in the book. The catalogue is organised by category. It is not exhaustive of the material that informs the analysis; it lists what is named or substantively analysed in the text.

B.1 Press and journalism (anchor texts)

  • Bratton, L. (2026, May 3). Briefing: Beneficios de Palantir, OpenAI, Microsoft. The Information.

  • Cartner-Morley, J. (2026, March 22). We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool. The Guardian.

  • Charli xcx. (2025). [Substack essay on celebrity intellectual dismissal]. Substack. (Cited in Cartner-Morley, 2026)

  • Hogenboom, M. (2026, April 20). AI chatbots could be making you stupider. BBC Future.

  • Levitsky, S., Way, L., & Ziblatt, D. (2025, December). The price of American authoritarianism. Foreign Affairs.

  • Spitalniak, L. (2026, January). Trump 2.0’s impact on higher ed: The first year in 8 numbers. Higher Ed Dive.

  • Sykes, P. (2023–2026). Books and Bits [Substack newsletter].

B.2 Corporate and platform manifestos

  • Altman, S. (2026, April 26). Our principles [OpenAI manifesto]. OpenAI.

  • Karp, A. C., & Zamiska, N. W. (2025). The technological republic: Hard power, soft belief, and the future of the West. Crown.

  • elDiario.es (2026). Anthropic, Palantir y ejecutivos de Google chocan por los límites de la IA militar (2026, April). [Industry coverage].

  • Coeckelbergh, M. (2026, April 21). Palantir’s manifesto: Technofascism in plain sight. Medium < https://coeckelbergh.medium.com/palantirs-manifesto-technofascism-in-plain-sight-c160ca377e9a>

B.3 BookTok / digital reading communities

  • #BookTok corpus (2021–2026), with reference to:

  • Service95 (Dua Lipa book club, 2024–2026).

  • Library Science (Kaia Gerber’s book club, launched 2024, first selection: Akbar’s Martyr!).

  • Brown (2021) (Hali Brown’s BookTok account).

B.4 Fashion campaigns and product lines

  • Bottega Veneta SS25 campaigns featuring Zadie Smith and Barbara Chase-Riboud (Louise Trotter, creative director).

  • Saint Laurent menswear show (referencing Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Anthony Vaccarello, c. 2026).

  • Proenza Schouler runway notes citing Cixous’s Le Corps Lesbien and Irigaray’s Speculum (NYFW September 2025).

  • Joseph Altuzarra distribution of Ogawa’s The Memory Police at runway (NYFW September 2025).

  • Dior literary tote series: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Madame Bovary, Les Fleurs du Mal (SS26, retail c. £2,400).

B.5 Pop and screen

  • The White Lotus season 1 (2021): pool-side book coding (Nietzsche, Freud, Fanon).

  • Wuthering Heights (2026 production).

  • Netflix’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (Dolly Alderton showrunner; Emma Corrin in the lead, 2026).

  • FKA twigs, British Library keynote (2025).

B.6 Substack literary economy (sample)

  • Pandora Sykes, Books and Bits.
  • Service95 (Dua Lipa).
  • (Selected additional Substacks listed in Appendix C.)

B.7 Government / institutional documents

  • Trump administration Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education (October 2025).

  • AAUP statements on academic freedom (1915, 1940; 2025 update on federal coercion).

  • V-Dem Democracy Report 2025.

  • Levitsky, Way and Ziblatt (2025) Foreign Affairs article (above).

  • Northwestern University settlement agreement (28 November 2025; $75m).

  • Federal court rulings on Harvard funding freeze (Burroughs J., September 2025).

B.8 Empirical reading-statistics sources

  • US National Endowment for the Arts (2025) reading survey.
  • UK Reading Agency (2024) leisure-reading survey.
  • Australian survey data on adult reading (Merga and others; sample references in chapter Chapter 4).
  • European Commission: Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Education and training monitor 2025 – Spain, Publications Office of the European Union, 2025, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/3362264

B.9 Note on what is not catalogued

This work engages, in the body of the text, with academic literature across democratic theory, political economy, cultural sociology, media studies and the philosophy of education. That scholarly corpus, which now comprises approximately 190 entries, is catalogued in the References section and not duplicated here. The corpus above is restricted to cultural artefacts — primary materials in the journalistic, retail and entertainment registers — treated as objects of analysis rather than as scholarly sources.