Levan Book Chat—Hector Amaya, The Economy of Anonymity

Event details Date: Friday, October 9, 2026 Time: 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM Location: Online Type: Lecture / Talk / Workshop Department: Levan Institute for the Humanities, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism Audience: Students, Alumni, Faculty/Staff About this event A discussion of Hector Amaya's new book, The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification (Stanford University Press, 2026). The author will be joined in conversation by Kelly Gates (UC San Diego) and Ulises Mejias (SUNY Oswego), moderated by Tara McPherson (USC). Registration is required. REGISTER HERE About the Book: We use avatars to play videogames. We use pseudonyms on social media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital realm, anonymity is everywhere, a persistent option for those who wish to hide, experiment, and deceive. But we are anonymous in more contexts than the digital. In urban settings, we routinely experience the anonymity of the crowd, and routinely use anonymity to participate in political life and social protests. Anonymity matters. This book is a wager that we can learn much about society, humanity, and power by analyzing the structural tensions and possibilities of anonymity, and by analyzing how the economy of anonymity is changing in a modernity defined by computation. While many have explored the connections between surveillance, datafication, and privacy, relatively little has been done to theorize anonymity and its critical role in our lives. This book rebalances our intellectual investments by expanding our understandings of anonymity. Putting the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Bernhard Siegert into conversation, Hector Amaya examines the contours of anonymity in different social domains—in relationship to individuals, institutions, and contexts; to epistemology and ontology; and to history and society. As the book shows, anonymity entails paradoxical possibilities—sometimes anonymity is experienced as freedom and other times as powerlessness, or subjugation. About the Author: Hector Amaya is Professor of Communication at USC Annenberg and the author most recently of Trafficking: Narcoculture in Mexico and the United States (2020), among other titles. Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/. Official event details: https://calendar.usc.edu/event/levan-book-chathector-amaya-the-economy-of-anonymity