--- schema_version: "library-reader-v1" source_type: "original_book" title: "Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet" author: null edition: null publisher: null year: null isbn: "9781911534044" library_document_id: "dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611" source_sha256: "2e02cbad6452f06df1ac7244516cd6cd361926b48645325215ff151a01db1008" pdf_physical_page_count: 236 pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0 range_start: 170 range_count: 10 html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611?start=170&limit=10" markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611.md?start=170&limit=10" previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611.md?start=160&limit=10" next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611.md?start=180&limit=10" --- # Critical Theory of Communication New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet > 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=170 | PRINTED_PAGE=166 5.4.4. Reification Reification is the process in which classes and elites separate humans and society from their essence. It brings ‘the essence of man into conflict with his existence, only when man’s nature is subjugated, deformed and crippled can we speak of an objective societal condition of alienation’ (Lukács 1971, xxiv). Whereas reification is the process that implements domination, alienation is the condition that results from reification. If humans appropriate their own essence in social struggles, then they do not return to a historical origin that once existed and was lost, but they struggle for social conditions that enable a humane existence and correspond to the immanent co-operative standards of sociality itself. Social struggles in class-based societies are struggles with potential results that lie on a spectrum between alienated and appropriated social conditions. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 give an overview of processes of reification and appropriation in society’s three realms. The general distinction is the one between social systems that are alienated and that are under common control. Alienation means that humans do not control basic social structures in a way that advances the common good so that a particular class or elite is in control and takes advantage of others. 5.4.5. Three Subsystems of Society – Three Dimensions of Reification Honneth (2008) distinguished three forms of reification: reification in our relationship to others, the world, and ourselves. So for him there are intersubjective, objective and subjective forms of alienation. This distinction points towards the dialectic of subject and object in social processes: human subjects have their own identities and personalities, based on which they encounter each other in the social world and in processes of social activity create, reproduce and transform the objective world. They co-produce the social world in processes of teleological co-positing. Human subjects interact in the social world and thereby co-produce objects. 166 Critical Theory of Communication ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=171 | PRINTED_PAGE=167 Exploitation is alienation and reification’s economic form, political domination its political form, and the two forms of cultural domination (cultural imperialism: unity without diversity; cultural fragmentation: diversity without unity) constitute cultural alienation. A commons-based economy, participatory democracy and cultural understanding (unity in diversity) are true social forms, in which social existence corresponds to its essence and humans have appropriated this essence. In an alienated economic system, humans are exploited and produce property that is owned by a dominant class. In a self-managed economy, humans co-produce, co-own and co-control property. In an alienated political system, an elite centralises political decision-making power and excludes citizens. In an appropriated political system, people have the power and co-decide in a system of participatory democracy, which constitutes political rights. In an alienated cultural system, an elite centralises meaning, making it so that others’ identities and moral values are disregarded and disrespected. In an appropriated cultural system, humans coproduce meanings of the world, mutually understand and morally recognise each other so that a unity in diversity of lifestyles and moral values exists. The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory 167 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=172 | PRINTED_PAGE=168 5.4.6. Subjective Alienation At the level of subjectivity, humans experience the world through their behaviours. They also emotionally interpret the world. Humans can feel alienated or non-alienated in an objectively alienated or non-alienated world. Objective and intersubjective alienation can, but does not necessarily have to result in emotionally experienced alienation. Slave workers, citizens in a dictatorship and people in a theocracy do not necessarily hate the slave masters, dictators, and theocrats. Physical, structural and ideological violence can make them accept domination, which can also result in a moral accommodation with their situation so that they cannot imagine a diferent situation and feel emotionally at ease with the dominant order. Objective alienation however nurtures potentials for emotional alienation, i.e. emotional experiences of dissatisfying labour, political dissatisfaction and cultural discontent. Such subjective alienation may just express itself as apathy, disinterestedness, or apathy. It can however, especially in situations of crisis, also nurture potentials for politicisation and political engagement. Reflection, social ruptures and movements can trigger individual empowerment (anti-capitalism, politicisation, cultural literacy) that at a social level can as aggregated and networked social phenomenon result in class struggles, political protests and struggles for recognition. There is no guarantee that such struggles are successful. If they however are successful, then non-alienated social conditions can be the result. There can however also be counter-struggles so that non-alienated conditions can turn into alienated ones. 168 Critical Theory of Communication ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=173 | PRINTED_PAGE=169 Non-alienated subjectivity means self-realising activity, active citizenship and general intellectuality. General intellect means not just a high level of general education and intellectual engagement, but also moral intelligibility so that humans provide recognition of each other. Humans can feel non-alienated in alienated social conditions: an employee may, for example, love his/her job and feel it’s a form of self-realisation and therefore accept that the company owners get richer and richer from the many hours of unpaid overtime in the company and the long working hours that damage his/her social life outside professional life. In such a situation, economic self-realisation can come along with social alienation in the realm of culture and everyday life that expresses itself for example in a lack of friendships, family life, sexual satisfaction, etc. Another example is that active citizens can feel happy in fostering a racist right-wing extremist political agenda that aims to harm immigrants. They feel emotionally non-alienated at the political level, but advance an alienated political system. Honneth argues in this context that social recognition can ‘just as well be sought in small militaristic groups, whose code of honor is dominated by the practice of violence, as it can be in the public arenas of a democratic society (Honneth 2007a, 77). Struggles for appropriated social systems must take into account the fact that humans are only truly at home in society when they feel individually satisfied and exist under intersubjective and objective conditions that are commonly controlled and benefit all. This can require disrespect for structures and practices that foster disrespect and respect for those that disrespect disrespect. Given these basic reflections on alienation, the question arises how this concepts matters for the critical analysis of mediated communication. 5.5. The Media, Alienation and Morality I want to discuss the question how alienation relates to the media with a specific example, namely Facebook. Facebook is the world’s most widely used social networking site and Internet platforms. It enables registered users to share and comment on content with their network of contacts. It is an expression of the blurring of the boundaries between the public and the private, the home and the workplace, work time and leisure time, labour and leisure, production and consumption (Fuchs 2015, chapter 8): Facebook brings together activities and contacts from such diferent realms on the same profiles, which enables users to observe people not just in the social roles they are familiar with them, but also other ones. It is however mistaken to see Facebook as a communications company: it does not sell communication or access to communication, but user data and targeted advert space. Facebook is one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory 169 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=174 | PRINTED_PAGE=170 5.5.1. Mark Andrejevic and Eran Fisher on Digital Alienation Some authors have discussed what alienation means in the world of Facebook. Mark Andrejevic (2012) argues that corporate social media only promise to overcome alienation, but in reality constitute digital alienation, a ‘form of the enclosure of the digital commons’ (84). ‘Users have little choice over whether this [surveillance] data is generated and little say in how it is used’ (85). Such ‘external, storable, and sortable collection of data about’ users’ ‘social lives’ is ‘separated from us and stored in servers owned and controlled by, for example, Facebook’ (2011, 88). ‘The result of the form of separation facilitated by Facebook is […] the alienability of the product of their online social activity: the fact that the fruits of this activity can become a resource whose uses range far beyond their control’ (88). ‘The data shadow is a figure of the alienated self’ (Andrejevic 2014, 182) and results in ‘algorithmic alienation’ (189) that determines life chances based on data mining, big data analysis and statistical correlations. Eran Fisher (2012) in contrast to Mark Andrejevic argues that alienation ‘signals an existential state of not being in control over something (the labour process, the product, etc.)’ (173). Less ‘alienation refers to a greater possibility to express oneself, to control one’s production process, to objectify one’s essence and connect and communicate with others. Thus, for example, working on one’s Facebook page can be thought of as less alienating than working watching a television program’ (173). The two processes that SNS [social networking sites] facilitate – the exacerbation of exploitation and the mitigation of alienation – are not simply co-present but are dialectically linked. SNS establish new relations of production that are based on a dialectical link between exploitation and alienation: in order to be de-alienated, users must communicate and socialize: they must establish social networks, share information, talk to their friends and read their posts, follow and be followed. By thus doing they also exacerbate their exploitation (179). 5.5.2. Nine Forms of Alienation on Facebook Andrejevic and Fisher both take a critical theory perspective and agree that Facebook usage means exploitation of users’ digital labour (see also: Fuchs 2014a, 2014b, 2015). They however have diferent understandings of alienation and therefore conceive Facebook either as alienated (Andrejevic) or dealienated (Fisher). My argument is that these claims are not mutually exclusive in a dialectical concept of alienation. Honneth’s distinction between subjective, intersubjective, and objective alienation helps us to map these diferences: Andrejevic refers to the objective dimension (data as objects), whereas Fisher refers to subjective experiences. Table 5.3 outlines nine dimensions of alienation on Facebook. 170 Critical Theory of Communication ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=175 | PRINTED_PAGE=171 On an intersubjective and objective level, alienation on Facebook means on the economic level the exploitation of users’ digital labour that generates a data commodity and thereby value and the loss of control over how their data is used. On the political level, objective and intersubjective alienation refers to the existence of a surveillance-industrial complex, in which Facebook and other communications companies collaborate, as Edward Snowden has shown, with state institutions such as the police and secret services in order to make a large amount of online communications visible to the state, which threatens liberal freedoms and shatters liberalism’s promises. On the cultural level, objective and intersubjective alienation means that attention and online visibility that enable meaning-making are asymmetrically distributed so that everyday users are at a disadvantage and celebrities and powerful organisations at an advantage. The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory 171 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=176 | PRINTED_PAGE=172 Corporate social media have a contradictory character: they enable users to easier stay and get in touch with others at the micro-level of everyday life, which enhances the quality of their lives, but at the same time this advantage comes at the price of digital economic, political and cultural alienation and reified data that serve purposes that allow powerful organisations to exploit, control and exclude the large mass of users. Given that these forms of domination are data-mediated, they tend not to be immediately visible and experienceable by the users. You do not feel and see that your data is a commodity, that the state stores and accesses citizens’ communications, and how many people talk about what you have posted on Facebook or about what the marketing teams of Shakira or Eminem, who have pages that are among the most ‘liked’ ones, have published. The subjective level of alienation refers to the experiences and attitudes of users, i.e. if they feel alienated when using Facebook. Attitudes can in this respect be alienated, non-alienated, or a combination of both. Table 5.3 indicates prototypical attitudes. Alienated and non-alienated subjectivity in respect to Facebook do not necessarily exclude each other: users can think that social media sociality as such is advantageous, but that such platforms are problematic if they foster exploitation, surveillance, control and exclusion. Such an attitude implies on the level of political organisation the demand for an alternative form of design and organisation. 5.5.3. Digital Fetishism The political problem is that it is easier to perceive Facebook as less alienating than a nuclear power plant that pollutes a river or lake. You can more easily use and enjoy Facebook, even when it exploits and monitors you, but you cannot swim in a nuclear contaminated lake or drink its water without seriously threatening your health. The damages caused by digital alienation are more indirect, mediated, long-term, and invisible. This does however not imply that they are unproblematic, but rather that they are more dificult to challenge and contest in social struggles. Users who argue that Facebook is great because it is social and that they therefore do not feel or do not mind digital exploitation, surveillance and exclusion express a partial truth, namely that social media can pose social advantages. At the same time their consciousness is reified because they cannot see beyond immediacy, only think about immediate individual advantages and not about the disadvantages that some users may unjustly sufer for example from being excluded from obtaining a mortgage, losing their jobs or being suspected of terrorism because of data mined from social media and analysed with predictive algorithms by credit scoring companies, employers or state institutions. 172 Critical Theory of Communication ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=177 | PRINTED_PAGE=173 Digital fetishism means that the immediacy of online sociality enabled by digital media veils the realities of digital exploitation, control, surveillance and exclusion that are more abstract. Digital media’s concrete social and communicative use-value obscures the more abstract forms of digital commodities and power that underpin usage. 5.6. Conclusion Axel Honneth has reformulated Georg Lukács’ theory of reification and alienation in a critical theory of recognition. Recognition is for him the social essence of society that grounds a moral theory that allows moral standards for criticising the disrespect for care, rights and solidarity. The advantage of this theory is that it is based on the distinction of three subdomains of society, reformulates Hegel’s dialectic of essence of existence in moral theory and thereby transcends postmodern moral relativism, stresses the importance of sociality as moral essence, and distinguishes between alienation’s subjective, intersubjective, and objective dimensions. Honneth’s moral monism however also makes recognition and morality the foundation of society and thereby ignores the importance of humans’ co-production of the social world and the relevance of the economy in society as being simultaneously part and no-part of all social systems. I have reformulated basic assumptions of theoretical concepts of morality and alienation in a way that takes social co-production and co-operation to be the essence of humans and society. Based on this foundation, I have identified nine dimensions of alienation along the distinction between economy, politics, and culture on one axis and the subject, intersubjective communication and the object on another axis. Social struggles can challenge alienation and result in humans’ appropriation of the conditions that shape their lives. The example of Facebook shows that alienation has not ceased to exist in the world of digital media, but has become more complex. The exploitation of digital labour, the surveillance-industrial complex and centralised online visibility constitute forms of digital alienation. The contradictory and mediated character of the online world makes it sometimes dificult for users to perceive and describe objectively alienated digital conditions as such. They tend tend to mistake digital alienation for digital freedom. Digital fetishism and digital alienation can only be overcome by social struggles that aim at appropriating the Internet and put it into the control of users. Digital media that are alternatively designed, shaped and used can advance achieving and living commonism, participatory democracy, mutual understanding and respect. Attaining such a world requires not just alternative projects and social movements, but also political parties, programmes and demands that make media reforms that enable and provide space, time and resources for alternatives. The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory 173 ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=178 | PRINTED_PAGE=174 Notes 1 http://philosophy.columbia.edu/directories/faculty/axel-honneth 2 German original: ‘Nach meiner Analyse sind wir nicht von unserem wahren inneren Wesen entfremdet, sondern von unserer Fähigkeit, uns die Welt in ihren räumlichen, zeitlichen, sozialen, handlungspraktischen und dinglichen Dimensionen “anzuverwandeln”’ (Rosa 2012, 322). German original: ‘Beziehung der Beziehungslosigkeit’. 4 Translation from German: ‘Entfremdung ist verhinderte Welt- und Selbstaneignung’. 5 Translation from German: ‘ontologischen Gleichartigkeit von Basis und Überbau, daß sie nämlich beide auf teleologischen Setzungen und deren kausalen Folgen beruhen’. 6 Translation from German: ‘Spielraum gewünschter (oder unerwünschter) Reaktionen auf gesellschaftliche Tatbestände, Situationen, Aufgaben etc.’ 7 Translation from German: ‘daß auf je einer konkreten Produktionsstufe der Wert des Produkts der Arbeit sich scharf danach scheidet, ob es unmittelbar brauchbar oder unbrauchbar ist, während im künstlerischen Schaffen das Feld, die Möglichkeit von Wert oder Unwert außerordentlich weit gestreckt, im voraus kaum bestimmbar ist’. References 174 Critical Theory of Communication ## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=179 | PRINTED_PAGE=175 The Internet, Social Media and Axel Honneth’s Interpretation of Georg Lukács’ Theory 175 下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/dadb939e-7360-4727-a1fb-be08c2f7a611.md?start=180&limit=10)