Jodi Dean’s “Introduction”

You probably noticed some similarities in Dean’s work and Baker & Jane. There is a big difference in that Dean isn’t writing a textbook, so there’s an assumption that the audience has more of a background in her topic. This is why I wouldn’t start with Dean, but, at this point in the semester, you have a background in what she’s discussing. Before we go any farther, what do you make of her book’s title Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics?

Communicative Capitalism: “the materialization of ideals of inclusion and participation in information, entertainment, and communication technologies in ways that capture resistance and intensify global capitalism” (p. 2). {Post-modern, late-capitalism is said to absorb the critiques of the system by, often, providing a platform or consumer good or fantasy of prosumption to communicate.}

Academic and Typing Left: I believe Dean refers to the overwhelming position of leftist-leaning academics and the variety of writers (journalists, pundits, bloggers, etc.) espousing leftist ideals.

• p. 1: “the election of 2000 indicated less a divided populace than it did the consolidation of conservative hegemony.”
  “We turned a split election into the fact, the victory, of conservatism.”  
  • But we keep hearing how divided American politics is. Why does Dean claim there’s not a lot of difference between the right and left?
• p. 3: Deregulation of the 1990s and the “dot-com euphoria that trampled on the poor.”
• p. 4: American culture appears to have “increased emphases on the singular, individual, and personal.”
  • p. 6: “Neoliberalism’s inevitable losses are displaced from systemic problems in need of collective solutions and concentrated onto the fantastic image of the individual criminal to be imprisoned, punished, tortured, and killed.”
  • Where can you point for evidence of this?
• p. 7: “the political trajectory that follows from the complaints of victims enhances surveillance and control, policing and security.”
• p. 7: Postmodernism, invention of the academic left, finds favor with the Right–“The right’s will to construct (and deconstruct) reality to fit their interests reached new extremes during the Bush administration.”
• And this was in 2009! Imagine what she’d say about 2016…
• p. 8: “‘there could be no empirical reality in news, only a reality you wanted to hear (or they wanted you to hear).'”
• p. 11: “the spread and intensification of neoliberal economic policies have subjected states to the demands of corporations and the seemingly inevitable logic of the market.”
• p. 11: “The individualization of politics into commodifiable ‘lifestyles’ and opinions subsumes politics into consumption.”
• What’s an example of a commodifiable lifestyle? How does one commodify something other than materials?
• p. 14: Zizek on politicization–“raising the particular to the level of a universal.”
• p. 15: “post-politics mobilizes the vast apparatus of experts, social workers, and so on, to reduce the overall demand (complaint) of a particular group to just this demand, with its particular content.”

Jodi Dean’s Ch. 1 “Technology”

In this chapter, Dean further explains “communicative capitalism.” What I hope we focus on is the rhetoric of the technologies embodying communicative capitalism’s main fantasies: Abundance, Participation, and Wholeness. Before we get there, though, we need to be aware of the risk of slipping into technological determinism. Do these communication technologies create, support, or reflect prevailing capitalist ideology? We can find ways “prosumers” use these technologies to supply the circulating messages about a topic, but did these technologies create the value of wanting to make one’s voice heard?

• p. 21: “The fundamental premise of liberal democracy is the sovereignty of the people.”
• p. 21: “content critical of a specific policy is just another story or feature in a 24/7 news cycle, just another topic to be chewed to bits by rabid bloggers.”
  • What might we learn from John Stewart?
  • This is the CNN “leaves it there” bit
• p. 22: “The proliferation, distribution, acceleration, and intensification of communicative access and opportunity result in a deadlocked Democracy.”

For an analysis of how those who are ruled allow themselves to be duped by their rulers, check out What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank, who discusses why Kansans vote against their self interests.