Sociophobia: Political Change in the Digital Utopia

197 Pages·2017·4.435 MB·English

by  César Rendueles

CÉSAR RENDUELES

FOREWORD BY
ROBERTO SIMANOWSKI
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POLITICAL CHANGE IN
THE DIGITAL UTOPIA
S OCIOPHOBIA

I NSURRECTIONS

CRITICAL STUDIES IN RELIGION,
POLITICS, AND CULTURE
I NSURRECTIONS: CRITICAL STUDIES
IN RELIGION, POLITIC S, AND CULTURE
SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK, CLAYTON CROCKETT,
CRESTON DAVIS, JEFFREY W. ROBBINS, EDITORS
Th e intersection of religion, politics, and culture is one of the most discussed
areas in theory today. It also has the deepest and most wide-ranging impact on
the world. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture will
bring the tools of philosophy and critical theory to the political implications of
the religious turn. Th e series will address a range of religious traditions and
political viewpoints in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world.
Without advocating any specifi c religious or theological stance, the series aims
nonetheless to be faithful to the radical emancipatory potential of religion.
For a complete list of books in this series, see page 169
CÉSAR RENDUELE S
TRANSLATED BY
HEATHER CLEARY
S OCIOPHOBIA
POLITICAL CHANGE IN
THE DIGITAL UTOPIA

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRE SS
N EW YORK
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
c up.columbia.edu

Sociofobia was fi rst published in Spanish in 2013 by Capitan Swing,
Rafael Finat 58, 28044 Madrid (SPAIN).
Rights negotiated by Oh! Books Literary Agency ([email protected])
© 2013 César Rendueles
Translation copyright © 2017 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rendueles, Cé sar, author.
Title: Sociophobia : political change in the digital utopia / Cé sar
Rendueles; translated by Heather Cleary.
Other titles: Sociofobia. English
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] |
Series: Insurrections: critical studies in religion, politics, and culture |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I dentifi ers: LCCN 2016041870 (print) | LCCN 2017000836 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231175265 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231175272
(pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231544375 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Internet—Political aspects. | Information
technology—Social aspects. | Mass media—Political aspects.
Classifi cation: LCC HM851 .R45713 2017 (print) | LCC HM851
(ebook) | DDC 303.48/33—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041870

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and
durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America

Cover design: Lisa Hamm
C ONTENTS
Foreword: Culture Industry 2.0, or the End of Digital Utopias
in the Era of Participation Culture vii
ROBERTO SIMANOWSKI
G ROUND ZERO: SOCIOPHOBIA 1
P ostnuclear Capitalism 1
Th e Global Panopticon 10
Counterhistory 20
1. DIGITAL UTOPIA 27
Cyberfetishism 27
Copyleft Utopianism 54
C ooperation 2.0 74
2. AFTER CAPITALISM 99
Emancipation and Interdependence 99
Institutional Imagination 127
C ODA: 1989 159

Notes 165
Index 169

F OREWORD
Culture Industry 2.0, or the End of Digital Utopias
in the Era of Participation Culture
R OBERTO SIMANOWSKI
TRANSLATED BY SUSAN H. GILLESPIE
RADIO CAME TOO soon. Th e society that invented it was by no means
suffi ciently advanced for it, as Bertolt Brecht observed in a lec-
ture he gave in 1932 on the function of radio: “Th e public was not
waiting for the radio, but rather the radio was waiting for the
public.” Instead of handing everyone a microphone and bringing
society into conversation with itself, Brecht said, people in broad-
casting were imitating the old theatrical and print media, address-
ing the masses from the “stage” of the ether. Brecht thought that
the task of turning radio from an “apparatus of distribution” into
“the fi nest possible communications apparatus in public life” was
impossible to achieve under the existing social order, but it could
be possible in another one, which it was therefore necessary to
propagate. 1
A medium as starting point for the overthrow of an entire so-
cial order? Th e idea isn’t so outlandish if we consider the social
consequences of the invention of printing. But it would take until
the end of the twentieth century before everyone would have ac-
cess to a microphone. Only with the Internet and then, in real ear-
nest, with the social networks of the Web 2.0 was there a bidirec-
tional medium that allowed every message recipient to turn into a
sender. Did that mean that the public Brecht had envisioned for
radio was at hand?
VIII ◉ FOREWORD: CULTURE INDUSTRY 2.0
Th is time the medium came too late, although at fi rst people
thought its arrival was just in time. Th at the demise of the socialist
social systems occurred in the same year as the birth of the World
Wide Web—a historical accident—seemed to argue for the re-
moval of all socially utopian ambitions to the realm of the new
media. So it was no surprise when, shortly thereaft er, the indepen-
dence of cyberspace from real-world governments was declared—
an idea that admittedly lasted only as long as hardly anyone was
actually interested in occupying this space. Today, all the ener-
gies of social change are being produced and consumed there,
under slogans like “Big Data,” “Industry 4.0,” and the “Internet of
Th ings.”
For a time, the optimism outlived even the commercial take-
over that accompanied the new millennium, and it still survives
today among some very stubborn types. For the Internet, as cyber-
space is now more matter-of-factly known, continues to be a space
that is freely accessible: Th ere are no more gatekeepers, no thought
police, no elite opinion makers, but instead free access to informa-
tion and a much-expanded public realm. Admittedly, the oft en in-
voked comparison with Jürgen Habermas’s study on the historical
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere was always already
tenuous, since Habermas held that the model of deliberative de-
mocracy was better off in the asymmetrical, ideally also self-refl ec-
tive and multiperspectival discourse culture of traditional mass
media than in the symmetrical and decentralized culture of the
Internet. For the Internet not only frees public discussion from in-
stitutional control; crucially, it also frees it from the central role of
political themes and creates a public that is d oubly dispersed : a pub-
lic broken down into very small groups, groups that are scarcely
willing to consider anything that exceeds the compass of their
smartphones.2
Th e “communication apparatus in public life,” which for Brecht
and numerous others aft er him promised the emancipation of the
individual, undermines—such is the bitter irony of its success—
the minimal demand that Brecht posed for radio: that as the locus
of political information and discussion it should sharpen society’s
critical awareness. Brecht’s critique of the radio—that “a technical
FOREWORD: CULTURE INDUSTRY 2.0 ◉ IX
invention with such a natural aptitude for decisive public functions
is met by such anxious eff orts to maintain without consequences
the most harmless entertainment possible”—still applies, indeed
more emphatically, to the Internet—this despite Wikileaks, politi-
cal bloggers, and the critical commentary that bravely persists here
and there. 3
Th e “organization of the excluded,” with which radio was sup-
posed to confront the “powers that exclude,” has become reality in
diverse social networks, but not in order to challenge the status
quo, as Brecht and others once hoped. Th e end of history that was
proclaimed in 1989 also spelled the end of Adorno’s perspective
according to which history—as the emergence of an emancipated,
exploitation-free life—had not yet begun. Talk of a life freed from
social delusion (V erblendungszusammenhang ) has faded away.
Amusement is no longer disdained as a compromise with false life,
and emancipation is now primarily taken to mean self-expression
and branding on the social networks. Th e survival trick of the so-
ciety Brecht and Adorno wanted to do away with is participation,
which, thanks to the combined availability of social and mobile
media, keeps people so busy 24/7 that they no longer have any time
to think about social alternatives.
Th e Internet came too late for what it could possibly have be-
come. Aft er the free-market economy, with its tangible consumer
culture, had won out over competing contenders for the future of
humankind, the new media system could not expect much more
from people than what the people had made the new media system
into: a virtual shopping center accessible at all times and places,
with a few niches consigned to social creativity and political edu-
cation, niches that, surrounded by advertising and subject to the
laws of the attention economy, ultimately serve as supply chains
for the neoliberal social model.
But the Internet would not have come at the right time earlier,
either. Its apparatuses—hyperreading, multitasking, power brows-
ing, fi lter bubble, instant gratifi cation, quantifi cation, etc.—are
diametrically opposed to the public sphere that Brecht intended.
With the next distraction only a click away, patience for things that
require eff ort evaporates. Anyone who doesn’t have quick responses