Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics

TLDR

The paper investigates how networked communication technologies shape politics, aiming to explain why an age of abundant communication yields no political response. It conceptualizes the current political‑economic formation as communicative capitalism and analyzes its defining features through the fantasies that animate them. The author argues that communicative capitalism depoliticizes by promoting fantasies of abundance, participation, and wholeness that blur friend/enemy distinctions and cast the other as a threat to be destroyed.

Abstract

What is the political impact of networked communications technologies? I argue that as communicative capitalism they are profoundly depoliticizing. The argument, first, conceptualizes the current political-economic formation as one of communicative capitalism. It then moves to emphasize specific features of communicative capitalism in light of the fantasies animating them. The fantasy of abundance leads to a shift in the basic unit of communication from the message to the contribution. The fantasy of activity or participation is materialized through technology fetishism. The fantasy of wholeness relies on and produces a global both imaginary and Real. This fantasy prevents the emergence of a clear division between friend and enemy, resulting instead in the more dangerous and profound figuring of the other as a threat to be destroyed. My goal in providing this account of communicative capitalism is to explain why in an age celebrated for its communications there is no response.