{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","uuid":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/search"},"page":{"printed_page":147,"pdf_page":157,"physical_index":157,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b4e70fa5bc278ae0a5c66152ca598c49671b83f22ebbd51722796ef806815e48"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"Building movements, particularly of those alienated from the mainstream, is no trivial task. It has been a key tactic in the culture wars-as the success of the previously discredited school of neoliberal economics as well as of Christian fundamentalism indicates. Each has benefited from contestations over truth and the pluralizing of facts and values, from the relativism toward absolutes that construes each as entitled to her own opinion. Nonetheless, new media advocates often feti�histically proceed as if networked and participatory med.ia-blogging, the introduction of videos onto the Web, the independent journalism associated with indy media-are necessarily progressive, as if radical left politics is somehow built into the technology. They presume their introduction of information into the media stream is a crucial element of left opposition or anticapitalist resistance. Not only do they c<sub>�</sub>ry on as if the information and images they produce are visible and known, as if this information registers within the massive circulation of contributions within comunicative capitalism, but these content providers also take it for granted that the information they provide is meaningful. They act as if those who come into contact with this new information wil find it credible, as if common standards for the assessment and evaluation of this information exist and are widely, . rather than tribally, shared.\n\nMost political discussion (as well as democratic theory) takes for granted the existence of a consensus regarding the rules and conditions for establishing truth and falsity, not to mention a shared notion of reality. Quickly formatting \"the conversation\" via the exclusion of myriad views and positions as crazy or not serious, such discussion is premised on the fantasy that there is no fundamental disagreement over the basic character of the world (or that such disagreement has no bearing on politics) .4 This presumption is misplaced. Our present political-medialogical setting is one of dissensus, incredulity, and competing conceptions of reality. Communicative capitalism thrives under these conditions-but can left politlcs?\n\nIn Publicity 's Secret ( 2002), I discuss the deep imbrications of conspiracy thinkg and the hope for an American public, imbrications that demonstrate the ways democracy relies on publicity as a \"system of distrust;' to use the words ofJeremy Bentham. Crucial to democracy's triumph over absolutism was the power of revelation, a power claimed for the people over and against the arcane mysteries of monarchy. As Carl Schmitt explained over eighty years ago, belief in openness as a value for its own sake is a product of this time, a product ill-suited to the practicalities of party politics under mass democracy where electoral victories and defeats depend on much more than a revelation here or there. In the present setting, moreover, openness, publicity, and the power of revelation further the expansion of networked information technologies to con� solidate communicative capitalism. Materializing democratic aspirations and suspicions, the adoption, expansion, and intensification of communicative technologies is urged-on all sides, by left and right, privileged and disadvantaged-as vital to increasing democratic participation (as if a deficit in participation were the primary problem confronting democracy today). The ideal of publicity functions ideologically, serving global capitallsm's reliance on networked information technologies and consumers convinced that their every blog post, virtual march, or YouTube uploa,d is a radical act rather than ;tn entert�g diversion. Communicative capitalism mobilizes the faith in exposure animating democracy as the perfect lure. Subjects feel themselves to be active even as their every activity reinforces the status quo. Revelation can b� celebrated because it is inefectual. Its results are .medialogical, just another contribution to the circulation of content with little impact on power or policy.\n\nCERTAINTY\n\n147","previous_page":null,"next_page":null}