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Comprende i nomi: Jodi Dean, Jodi Dean ed.

Opere di Jodi Dean

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Armas da Crítica 08 - Junho de 2021
 
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HelioKonishi | Jun 26, 2021 |
Dean is at her best when synthesizing and applying other theorists. As a result, I find her work a bit derivative, but she does have flashes of insight with respect to her object of interest (blogging and other online media).

I found her steadfast technological pessimism a bit refreshing, because the relenting reminder that new media is often a tool of capitalism rather than a subversion of it sounds a much-needed cautionary note to counterbalance the technological optimism of other media theorists. Yet, it seems that she misses or glosses over some of the truly interesting things about online media because of her investment in her Lacanian theory of communicative capitalism. For instance, she misses some of the interesting ways that the internet affects physical space. What about when new media is used to organize in-person meet-ups, like protests or making an IRL date with an online sweetheart or simply friends gathering at each other's homes for parties planned on Facebook? She mentions that online games seem like the height of fantasy, yet affect the real economy. I would love to hear more on this - what does it mean that people buy imaginary WoW objects? How does Bitcoin relate to her theory of capitalism? What about cases where the real world economy and state infringe on the internet and the internet denizens fight back, like battles over Net Neutrality, illegal downloading, the Silk Road, and Anonymous?

As the previous paragraph may demonstrate, the best part of reading this book was that it helped me formulate some interesting research questions about new media. Another positive is that I gained a greater grasp of the media theory literature, because Dean engages with it comprehensively and gives summaries that make the debate easy to follow even if you haven't read the other theorists. On the negative side, she doesn't make much of a theoretical contribution. I also disagreed with her conclusions a fair amount, but that may be because I'm not a Lacanian.
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brleach | Jan 26, 2015 |
So, I will begin by (noting that I am) ignoring the awful, awful theoretical cant in this book, because shit, M, what did you expect? For similar reasons I will ignore the first chapter, which sets out, impenetrably, the principles with which Žižek works, because they are explained and illustrated much better when you're reading through the argument proper and using them to understand the ideas.

Chapter 2: "Totalitarianism," the equation of Nazism and Stalinism, is false and a pernicious strategy of liberal democracy to discredit alternative models. Nazism as ideology is a strategy to preserve capitalism by externalizing its tensions onto the Jews and eliminating Jews and tensions both. Its law and logic depend on the preservation of a space where they do not apply, and it is intrinsically pathological. Stalinism, on the other hand, is a perversion of the legitimately revoluitonary Leninist project, and the difference between perversion and abomination is clear when you consider the difference between a pogrom victim, organizing in labour action and singing songs as they atre cut down, and a concentration camp inmate to see the difference. Stalininsm contains a kernel of hope and legitimacy. This is the best chapter.

Chapter 3: Liberal pluralism, like fascism, is a strategy to preserve capitalist exploitation. In liberalism's case, it co-opts the "other" as legitimate or insider ("uchi," if I may) difference and pathologizes the potentially revolutionary other as fundamentalism. (Not that we want fundamentalism to win, just that) this is how liberal capitalism works: by convincing us that what we have is democracy, that even if it isn't it's the best we can hope for, and by atomizing or expelling our struggles within and against the system. Class struggle becomes just one struggle among many, less easily got hold of than racial or gender struggles, and its real universal "underlyingness" is obscured.

Chapter 4: Law depends on the injunction to enjoy. Whether you're enjoying following the rules or transgressing against them, you're still letting them define you, and that is killing to the revolutionary project because it allows capital the opportunity to define and (un)limit participation and transgression. "Nightly law" of transgression is subsumed into and supports day-law, and we all buy Asian food and feel good and think about female circumcision and feel bad and etc.

Chapter 5: So dood, the superego is keeping you down with its command to enjoy. Treat law as incidental, a condition to be worked within or without as suits instead of a structure to be overthrown, and it loses its compusive power. Do the work of politics without letting enjoyment fix you in place - that is, let enjoyment be part of your humanity without it being part of your relationship with politics or law. Instead of a necessary, othered space where your law does not apply, a fundamentalism that makes democracy what it is, create a space, in yourself or whatever, where law is the "not-all;" where it is incidental and the rest of the glass is filled with a Pauline spirit of love. And then, yo, you're free!

But free for what? Contemporary fundamentalisms also immobilize, enjoin to enjoy. So, create an ill-defined revolution(ofthespirit)iary party that makes its own truth, an alternative myth that by the very fact of being alternative is a blow against tyranny. Make your own truth. Make it with love. Hell, make love! And at least you'll have created the space for something good to maybe happen.

This last bit, as you can see, becomes mythic itself, and while AS myth it's strong tea, it just doesn't quite come together enough - it's notes in the direction of. Which is fine, because this is Dean not Slavoj and his project isn't Capital Answers anyway and blah blah, but you can't help but think that the vagueness she declines to explore could be a lot more creepily "proletaristocracy of the mind" than she suggests.

But it is interesting stuff. And the careerism of "constructing Zhizh" remains latent, but check the internet for many, many examples of how yes, humanities grad students are still about constructing themselves as intellectual superheroes with poststruc freezerays that are as doctrinaire as the old stuff . . . call it deconstructuralism?

But I'm ranting. You want good things and say some good things, Jodi, and you've definitely insighted me to SŽ. But you don't know the difference between a sentence and a fragment and you don't know how to use a comma. WHY?!
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Segnalato
MeditationesMartini | Jul 19, 2007 |

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Opere
16
Utenti
635
Popolarità
#39,694
Voto
½ 3.3
Recensioni
3
ISBN
51
Lingue
4

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