{"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":46,"pdf_page":56,"physical_index":56,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4c8045289488661c695305ae950c1f4270082315e6c861e4fbe3a8364be781ef"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"No Reponse\n\nA Lacanian comonplace is that a letter always arrives at its destination. What does this mean with respect to networked communications? It means that a letter, a message, in communicative capitalism is not really sent. There is no response because there is no arrival. There is just the contribution to circulating content.\n\nMany readers wil likely disagree.48 Some might bring up the successes of Move On. From its early push to have Congress censure Bill Clinton and \"move on;' to its eforts to organize its millions\\ of members in opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, MoveOn has become a presence in mainstream American politics. In addition to circulating petitions and arranging emails and faxes to members of Congress, one of Move On's best actions was a virtual sit-in: over 2oo,ooo of us called into Washington, D.C., at scheduled times on the same day, shutting down phone lines into the Capitol for hours. In early 2004, Move On sponsored an advertisement contest: the winning ad would be shown during the Super Bowl footbal game. The selected ad, titled \"Child's Play,\" illustrated the Bush administration's trillion-dollar deficit with images of children hauling trash, working in assembly lines, and carying out other physically demanding tasks generaly associated with low-pay, low-skill labor. It was great-but C B S refused t o broadcast it.\n\nFar from being evidence against my argumel}t, MoveOn exemplifies technology fetishism and confirms my account of the reduction and cap.; ture of political energies into contributions to communicative capitalism's circuits of information and entertainment. MoveOn's campaigns director, Eli Pariser, says that the organization is \"opt-in, it's decentralized, you do it from your home:'49 No one has to remain committed or be bothered with boring meetings. Al one has to do is contribute-an opinion, a signature, or monei. Andrew Boyd, in a positive appraisal of the group, writes that \"MoveOn's strength lies . . . in providing a home for busy people who may not want to be a part of a chapter-based organization with regular meetings . . . . By combining a nimble entrepreneurial style with a strong ethic of listening to its members-via online postings and straw polls-MoveOn has built a responsive, populist and relatively democratic virtual communitY:'50 Busy people can think they are active-the technology wil act for them, alleviating their guilt while assuring them that nothing wil change too much. The virtual community won't place too many (actually any) demands on them. Its democracy is the democracy of communicative capitalism-opinions will circulate, views will be expressed, information will be accessed. By sending an email, signing a petition, responding to an article on a blog, people can feel political. And that feeling feeds communicative capitalism insofar as it leaves behind the time-consuming, incremental, and risky eforts of politics. MoveOn likes to emphasize that it abstains from ideology, from. division. While this postideological gesture is disingenuous-MoveOn's politics are clearly progressive, antiwar, leftdemocratic-the emphasis on a nonposition is symptomatic of precisely that denial of the trauma of contemporary left politics that the technological fetish covers over: it is a refusal to ofer a vision of collectivit'yj to stand for a solidarity premised not on individual particularities and desires (which is no solidarity at all) but on the painstaking and organized struggle for reclaiming the state as a force to be used against neoliberalism and its corporate beneficiaries.\n\n46\n\nONE","previous_page":45,"next_page":47}