{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","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":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","id":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","uuid":"e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","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/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","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/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e38ef66b-e3ac-494b-b5ea-9cc05b2975d8/search"},"page":{"printed_page":42,"pdf_page":52,"physical_index":52,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"322a3193011562e05f9a271f49328141265e7e8e701517e3ef4de4b39a70326a"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"The Fantasy ofWholeness: A Global Zero Institution\n\nCommunicative capitalism relies on the fantasy of abundance accompany;. ing the reformatting of messages as contributions and the fantasy of pa.�cipation accompanying technology fetishism. These fantasies give people the sense that our actions online are politicaly significant, that they make a diference. A fantasy of wholeness further animates networked communications. This fantasy furthers our sense that our contributions to circulating content matter by locating them in the most signif.: cant of possible spaces-the global. But the world does not serve as a space for communicative · capitalism analogous to the one th<sub>�</sub> nation pro.; vided for industrial capitalism. On the contrary, the space of communicative capitalism is the Internet. Networked communications materialize specifc fantasies of unity and wholeness as the global. These fantasies in turn secure networked transactions as the Real of global capitalism.\n\nThe cqncept of the \"zero institution'' helps explain the way the internet functions as the key space for imagining the global.41 A zero institution is an empty signifer. It has no determinate meaning but instead signifies the presence of meaning. It is an institution with no positive function. Al it does is signify institutionality as such (as opposed to chaos, say). As originally developed by Claude Levi-Strauss, the concept of the zero institution accounts for the way people with radically diferent descriptions of their collectivity nevertheless understand themselves as members of the same tribe. Zizek adds to the Levi-Straussian idea insight into how both the nation and sexual diference function as zero institutions. The nation designates the unity of society in the face of radical antagonism, the irreconcilable division and struggle between classes. Sexual diference, in contrast, suggests diference as such, a zero-level of absolute diference that will always be filled in and overdetermined by contextually given diferences.\n\n42\n\nONE","previous_page":41,"next_page":43}