{"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":38,"pdf_page":48,"physical_index":48,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"73c8d06964ad782fa9103230557247adf8185b48f71afb376dbf0036e2a787b9"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"The technological fetish also covers over a fundamental lack or absence in the social order. It protects a fantasy of unity or wholeness, com pens at� ing in advance for this impossibility. Technologies are invested with hopes and dreams, with aspirations to something better. A technological fetish is at work when one disavows the lack or antagonism rupturing (yet producing) the social by advocating a particular technological fix. The \"fix\" lets us think that al we need is to extend a particular technology and then we will have a democratic or reconciled social order.\n\nGamson's account of gay websites illustrates this fetish function. Gamson argues that in the United States, the Internet has been a major force in transforming \"gay and lesbian media from organizations answering at least partly to geographical and political communities into businesses answering primarily to advertisers and investors:'35 He focuses on gay portals and their promises to ofer safe and friendly spaces for the gay community. \"What he notes, however, is the way that these safe gay spaces now function primarily \"to deliver a market share to corporations:' As he explains, \"Community needs are conflated with consumption desires, and community equated with market:'36 Qp.a fetish, the portal is a screen upon which fantasies of connection can be projected. These fantasies displace aten.; tion from their commercial context.\n\nIn communicative capitalism, the technological fetish has three primary modes of operation: condensation, displacement, and denial.\n\nCondensation occurs when technology fetishism reduces the complexi� ties of po¥tics-of organization, struggle, duration, decisiven�ss, division, representation, and so on-to one thing, one problem to be solved and one technological solution. For example, democracy might be treated as a singular problem of information: people don't have the information they need to participate efectively;37 Bingo ! Information technologies intervene to provide people with information. This sort of strategyj however, occludes the problems of organizing and political wil. For example, as Mary Graham explains in her study of the politics of disclosure in chemical emissions, food labeling, and medical error policyj transparency started to function as a regulatory mechanism precisely at a time when legislative action see.med impossible. Agreeing that people had a right to know, politicians could argue for warning labels and m.ore data while avoiding hard or unpopular decisions. Corporations could comply-and find ways to use their reports to improve their market position. \"Companies often lobbied for national disclosure requirements,\" Graham writes. \"They did so;' she continues, \"because they believed that disclosure could reduce the chances of tougher regulation, eliminate the threat of multiple state requirements, or improve competitive advantage . . . . Likewise, large food processing companies and most trade associations supported national nutritional labeling as an alternative to multiple state requirements and new regulations, or to a crackdown on health claims. Some also expected competitive gain from labeling as consumers, armed with accurate information, increased demand for authentically healthful productions:'38 Additional examples of condensation appear when theorists and activists emphasize singular websites, blogs, and events. Such spikes in the media sphere may well seem impressive, but they conform to the dictates of broadcast media spectacle, momentary eruptions that anchor people to their screens, calling upon them to register their opinions, to contribute. They don't provide alternative practices of collective engagement, challenge corporate ownership of the telecommunications infrastructure, or redirect financial flows toward the most disadvantaged.\n\n38\n\nONE","previous_page":37,"next_page":39}