The idea of trading a Michel Foucault card for a Judith Butler card, similar to how children used to trade Charizards on a school playground, is both a little ridiculous and a little amazing. But when David Gauntlett introduced the Theory.org.uk Trading Cards back in 2000, he created precisely that small, strange universe. A media professor with a sense of humour and a soft spot for cultural theory, Gauntlett released them one a month, slowly, almost casually, as if he wasn’t entirely sure anyone would care. People did. First softly, then loudly.
The first card out of the deck was Anthony Giddens, the British sociologist who spent the 1990s trying to explain how modern selves stitch together identity from the noise around them. Then came Butler, whose claim that biological sex is just as manufactured as gender continues to reverberate in academic settings. Naturally, Foucault followed. However, the decisions were unpredictable. Tracey Emin was selected. So did Gilbert & George, and concepts like Postmodernity and Psychoanalysis, sitting beside the theorists like odd cousins at a family dinner.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Project Name | Theory.org.uk Trading Cards |
| Creator | David Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications |
| Origin Year | 2000–2001 (first set released monthly) |
| Original Set | Twelve official cards |
| Featured Theorists | Anthony Giddens, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, and others |
| Expanded Editions | 32-card pack and a later 21-card AltaMira Press set |
| Card Format | Photograph, summary of ideas, key publications, biographical notes |
| Gameplay Style | Trumps-style — match strengths, weaknesses, and special skills |
| Notable Mention | Featured in a 2004 New York Times article |
| Educational Use | Used at Bournemouth University with first-year media students |
| Fan-Made Additions | Karl Marx, Carl Jung, Simone de Beauvoir, Edward Said, Germaine Greer, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Duchamp |
| Tagline | “Creative knowledge you can put in your pocket” |
It’s difficult to ignore how cheeky the entire project is. Gauntlett borrowed the visual language of Pokémon and football stickers, then pasted Deleuze and Guattari onto it. The cards include strengths, weaknesses, and special skills. Foucault’s special move, apparently, is happily rejecting old models and inventing new ones. More amusingly, everyone is completely perplexed by Duchamp’s. The deck, when played as a game of trumps, makes complex theoretical work seem almost innocent, which is probably the point.
From there, the fans took over. Students and academics were creating their own knockoff cards to fill the void left by Gauntlett within a year or two of the initial release. Karl Marx appeared. Germaine Greer, Edward Said, Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, Simone de Beauvoir, and Carl Jung also did. In the same way that an independent band might connect to its own bootleggers, Gauntlett generously maintained a list of the unofficial ones on the website.
The New York Times had written about them by 2004, and a limited-edition print version was briefly available on Amazon. Eventually, AltaMira Press released a polished set of 21 cards that were essentially the same concept but more textbook than toy.
The cards’ survival is intriguing. Like angelfire pages and Flash animations, they were a 2001 internet curiosity that ought to have deteriorated over time. Rather, they continued to move around. The deck was created by Bournemouth University as a teaching tool for first-year media students who often find theory intimidating. The format, the picture, the bullet-point synopsis, and the tactile experience of holding a real card all contribute to the ideas’ seeming plausibility. It’s more like a conversation than an exam.
One could argue—and Guy Debord most likely would have—that the spectacle of turning critical theory into collectibles is precisely what Debord cautioned against. Understanding is replaced by ownership. Being is replaced by appearing. Commodifying the intellectuals who criticized commodification is a true irony.
Perhaps, however, that is part of the joke that Gauntlett is sharing with his audience. The cards are not a textbook; they are a wink. And even after twenty or so years, they continue to be in pockets, on desks, and quietly working to pique people’s interest enough to read the books themselves. which may ultimately be the most giving thing a trading card can do.
