[ICTs-and-Society] What is Critical Media and Communcation Studies Today?
astrid mager
astrid.mager at univie.ac.at
Wed Feb 15 23:21:14 PST 2012
Thanks Jon for sharing your really interesting thoughts! I still want to
read the paper "Do Marxists use Facebook?" though ;)
Best, Astrid
Am 14.02.12 21:50, schrieb Jonathan Beller:
> Dear All,
>
> Forgive the intrusion, especially as I, very regrettably for me, will
> not be at the Uppsala conference. However I want to say -- as someone
> who has been working on Marxist political economy of visuo-digital
> technologies for two decades now, and as someone who has never been
> friended or had a friend on face-book -- that neither of these
> practices provide any guarantee of radicalism. Even though it is
> arguable that representation itself has been fully subsumed by
> capital-logic and therefore that entry into the domain of
> representation is now always already a re-entry into networked
> expropriation structurally managed to increase the accumulation of
> capital and hence, necessarily, the abundance of dispossession, it is
> still not a given that to exist at the margins of representation or
> even beyond the horizons of the representable constitutes a
> revolution, or even a revolutionary. From the standpoint of existence,
> to not exist is not necessarily radical. Of course this void, occupied
> perhaps by the majority of humans on the planet (and undoubtedly by
> the majority of life), can, these days at least, only be posited from
> within representation and thus, it seems, from within capital. Imagine
> what it woud be like to not be on Facebook, to not be an academic, to
> not be enfranchised at least to some degree as a global citizen, etc.
>
> Which is to assert two things: 1) All of us who are included in this
> sentence (in any way) are complicit with the production and
> reproduction of capitalist society and 2) we must strain the limits of
> discourse far beyond the academico-scientific grammars; which is to
> say that to /seriously/ embark on the project under discussion on this
> list serve, one must wage constant war on meaning itself. Meaning that
> what we need to seek is the non-sensical, impossible, foreclosed,
> beyonds and futures of actually existing semiosis. In answer to the
> question in the subject line of this email, it's an aesthetic project,
> amigos, and also a social one -- finding ways to graft our energies
> and attentions to the struggles of specters. It is not and never could
> be merely an economic and/or technical one and be anything other than
> a radically cynical endeavor.
>
> Reading Marx is never a bad idea, I completely agree, and there are
> things to learn from our romance with the actually existing Italians.
> But an analysis that does not understand race, gender, language-group,
> sexuality, nation etc., as themselves /political-economic/ categories
> (and not merely analytical categories beyond the domain of political
> economy) -- that is as real abstractions that themselves operate as
> engines of production and reproduction -- will find itself writing a
> technical manual for the overthrow of the state that will serve only
> aspirant bureaucrats. This is in no way to belittle the brilliant work
> and brilliance of those who will convene in Uppsala. Only to say that
> with this project there arises aesthetic, cultural, representational
> and affective demands that the language of political economy, even
> Marxist political economy, will be at great pains to execute. It is
> not time for the discipline of communications theory to absorb the
> world, rather it is time for the world to absorb the discipline. We
> must bring the world, the myriad and singular struggles of peoples,
> and those parts of our distributed selves which are perhaps of the
> world, into the space of our nascent discipline and run the risk of
> destroying it. Otherwise the lived time of the global south, all the
> unremunerated living labor of survival performed by the unrepresented
> and unrepresentable billions, serves, as it does for the global
> society, merely to produce a writing surface for us experts too, a
> virtual place for us to encode our contemplations about leaving
> facebook from the safety of our offices.
>
> I think back to Negri's early work where he spent some time
> considering Marx's class hatred. A significant dose of animus to
> animate the theory. Hatred, rage, outrage, indignation, disgust -- we
> can use these things, indeed, I would say we must.
>
> With these elements in mind, as well as their utopian corollaries,
>
> Jon
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Jonathan Beller
> Professor
> Humanities and Media Studies
> Critical and Visual Studies
> Pratt Institute
> jbeller at pratt.edu <mailto:jbeller at pratt.edu>
> 718-636-3573 (office fax)
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 14, 2012, at 11:24 AM, Ekaterina Petrovna wrote:
>
>> Dear Astrid,
>> your take on the role of the researcher/ versus using these platforms
>> for promotion etc, is an excellent one! In fact, there should be an
>> article on it, something like 'Do Marxists use Facebook and why?" or
>> "Can you be critical and STILL be on Facebook?"
>> I think that this touches a more general debate about the role of the
>> researcher in the current age: universities become more and more
>> commercial structures and everyone is looking for funds, - and these
>> platforms indeed seem as a way to look for them and promote one's work.
>> best regards,
>> Ekaterina Netchitailova
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 4:02 PM, astrid mager
>> <astrid.mager at univie.ac.at <mailto:astrid.mager at univie.ac.at>> wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> this is a highly interesting discussion! I totally agree with the
>> importance of the (Marxist) political economy of Google & co.
>> My own work has become increasingly political over the last years
>> showing how the capitalist spirit gets inscribed in search
>> engines by way of social practices, which similarly applies to
>> Facebook and other corporate platforms of course.. I call it the
>> "algorithmic ideology" in the talk I proposed for the Uppsala
>> conference:
>>
>> http://www.astridmager.net/?p=1810
>>
>> Concerning this line of work I find approaches from critical
>> theory very useful since they allow for understanding how
>> capitalism materializes in search technologies, how users get
>> involved in Google's capital accumulation cycle, how technologies
>> spread and solidify hegemonic power etc. Despite the relevance of
>> these aspects for contemporary internet research - especially
>> because of the celebratory accounts dominating the field, as
>> someone pointed out earlier - I see a paradox that increasingly
>> disturbs me:
>>
>> How do we - critical internet researchers - and our own
>> self-promoting online practices fit into the picture? Google,
>> Facebook, Twitter and other services have become useful tools for
>> promoting our own (critical) work, right? Apart from researches,
>> who just recently commited a social media suicide or never joined
>> those platforms in the first place, lots of researchers are using
>> these services and hence increasing & stabilizing their power,
>> advertising revenue and exploitation schemes.. while lots of
>> internet users only unconsciously support these mechanisms we
>> (and I deliberately include myself here) DO know/ even write
>> about those dynamics etc.. BUT still use the services, which
>> raises a number of questions:
>>
>> Why do we use Facebook and not Diaspora.org <http://Diaspora.org>
>> and other non-profit tools & alternative technologies? (with all
>> their drawbacks Christian pointed out)
>> Could we escape Facebook & co. in an age of (academdic)
>> self-promotion where being known/ having followers and friends/
>> being talked about/ being read has become almost more important
>> than doing research itself?
>> Didn't we turn into commodities long before Facebook & Google
>> started their businesses? (Or is it a phenomenon they co-produced?)
>> And if users matter (and I do agree on that since my background
>> is in STS as well), how do critical internet researches/ we
>> matter in terms of supporting/ stabilizing those tools? (and
>> other ones like Google Analytics enabling us to participate in
>> and even benefit from the surveillance culture they perpetuate)
>> Or could we think of our activities as (ab)using those tools to
>> advocate against them? In fact, where else could we reach people
>> & raise awareness about new media and their negative facets if
>> not on the platforms themselves?
>> But could we then ever overcome their power and monopolies?
>> And how could we avoid Google if there is no better non-profit
>> search engine available?
>> ...
>>
>> I wonder what the list thinks about those aspects! (and if people
>> totally disagree with me because they never joined those
>> platforms and thus think of me as weak, cynical and
>> commercialized? - but how do they search then?)
>>
>> Thanks for the discussion!! I'm really looking forward to the
>> conference (where I probably "won't shake my head about the
>> stupidity of 90% of what I hear" ;) )
>>
>> Best wishes from Vienna, Astrid
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 14.02.12 01:52, schrieb Christian Fuchs:
>>
>> Dear colleagues,
>>
>> Thanks a lot for the discussion contributions thus far. My
>> own experience is that the more intense and controversial and
>> constructive the pre-conference discussion is, the better the
>> conference will be. And what we really want to have is some
>> good intellectual debates in Uppsala, not one of the usual
>> conferences, where you go, shake your head about the
>> stupidity of 90% of what you hear and go home again. So all
>> of you on this list are very much welcome to engage in the
>> discussion, to contradict what others are saying, to express
>> your views, etc. What we want to foster with this list and
>> the conference is a deep critical intellectual discussion.
>>
>> I think the issues brought up thus far require us to consider
>> the relation between:
>> a) Critical Political Economy of Communication
>> b) Cultural Studies
>> c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory
>> d) Alternative Media Studies
>>
>> I have myself argued that we need a synthesis/integration of
>> these approaches, but I want to be more specific because I do
>> not think that we need any kind of synthesis, but a specific
>> dialectical unity in diversity of specific expressions of
>> these four contributions. So what I want to argue is that all
>> four of these approaches have been (to a more or less extant)
>> both much wrong and right.
>>
>> a) Critical Political Economy of Communciation
>>
>> Dallas Smythe's and Nicholas Garnham's approaches have been
>> strongly focused on aspects of capital accumulation and
>> commodification, often downplaying the importance of ideology
>> in capitalism, although Marx's Capital, Vol 1, focused on
>> both a) commodification and b) ideology critique (the
>> commodity fethishism chapter). I adivce to re-read Graham
>> (Murdock's) answer to Dallas Smythe in the Blindspot Debate
>> because he very much pointed out the importance of ideology,
>> which builds bridges of Critical Political Economy towards
>> both Critical Cultural Studies (Williams, Thompson, Hall,
>> etc) and Frankfurt School that are both much interested in
>> ideology.
>>
>> My own criticism of the approach of "Political Economy of
>> Media/Communication" is that actually there are many forms of
>> political economy (neoliberal, Keynesian, Schumpeterian,
>> institutional, Marxist, etc) and that the use of the term
>> "Political Economy of
>> Media/Communication/Culture/Information" (as in book titles,
>> recent handbooks, etc) has obscured the term
>> "Marxist/Critical" as prefix, although the specific thinkers
>> have had much Marxist and critical intentions. I think the
>> grounding in Marx, which means the groundning in class
>> analysis and the critique of capitalism, should be visible in
>> naming the approach, which it is not if we just speak of
>> "Political Economy of X" and not "Marxist Political Economy
>> of X"...
>>
>> b) Cultural Studies
>>
>> The works of Williams, Thompson, (partly) Hall etc were much
>> grounded in the works of Marx and were a specific critical
>> analysis of ideology in capitalism. Critical classical
>> cultural studies shared with Frankfurt School the interest in
>> the critque of ideology. I think what happened in much of
>> recent Cultural Studies is that a) the category of class was
>> dropped, which implied a reformist cultural poltics that no
>> longer wanted to abolish capitalism and substituted class
>> analysis by identity politics instead of complementing the
>> two and that b) there was a theoretical simplification. Take
>> a look at an arbitrary work by Fiske, Jenkins et al: They do
>> not cite Marx or Gramsci etc, they only cite what Hall et al
>> say that Gramsci said (and they anyway never cite Marx or
>> Hegel because they have not read these works, which actually
>> is my largest criticism of these thinkers - they are
>> anti-critical theory). I doubt that they have ever read Marx
>> or Gramsci or even Hegel. The Marxist roots of Cultural
>> Studies have been destroyed, and this has resulted in a
>> reformist agenda that no longer questions capitalism. In my
>> own Uppsala conference talk, one part will be a radical
>> critique of Henry Jenkins (and Manuel Castells, who is not
>> Cultural Studies, but something that is also not very critical).
>>
>> c) Frankfurt School Critical Theory
>>
>> Frankfurt School shares with Classical Critical Cultural
>> Studies the interest in ideology. But the picture of
>> Frankfurt School has both in "Political Economy of the Media"
>> and Cultural Studies often been very simplified, ignoring its
>> own complexities. Garnham and Smythe said that Frankfurt
>> School ignored political economy, which is wrong, if you take
>> a look at the presence of political economists like Friedrich
>> Pollock and Henryk Grossman in Critical Theory. Frankfurt
>> School understood itself always as interdisciplinary project
>> involving various aspects of Marxist thinking. Some strands
>> in Cultural Studies have argued that Frankfurt School has
>> seen the audience as "culutral dupes". Frankfurt School is
>> much more sophisticated, one can think about Adorno's
>> analysis of re-education after Auschwitz, where the media and
>> schools have a special role, Enzensberger's and Brecht's
>> alternative media theory, and even Adorno's take on the need
>> of an alternative TV. The problems of prejudiced Cultural
>> Studies scholars is that they have never read or understood
>> much of Frankfurt School, either because of language limits
>> (not everything has been translated from German to English,
>> so probably you have to be able to read German to fully grasp
>> Critical Theory) or because of ignorance.
>>
>> A second aspect is the Habermasian turn in Frankfurt School,
>> I have myself been long critical of Habermas, but think that
>> we should re-discover Habermas' Marxist and communist roots
>> and his big connection to Adorno and Marcuse. But one thing
>> remains: You can refer to Habermas without ever questioning
>> capitalism, you can NEVER refer to Marcuse in a reformist and
>> pro-captitalist way, you can be quite pro-capitalist in
>> relation to Habermas' works (and that is why I think scholars
>> today talk so much about Habermas and much less about
>> Marcuse, which is a pity). So much in line with Andrew
>> Feenberg's works, I think we have to re-discover the
>> importance of Marcuse for Marxist Studies of Culture today.
>>
>> d) Alternative Media Studies
>>
>> I think the area of Alternative Media Studies is also crucial
>> for transforming society and the media. Cultural Studie has
>> too often focused on altenrative media usage and
>> interpretation, but the question is, if we should not start
>> with alternative practices of producing media (alternatives
>> to Facebook, alternatives to Fox, alternatives to CNN,
>> alternatives to everything). Alternative media have always
>> been close to social struggles, they are social struggle and
>> social movement media.
>>
>> The problem that alternative media are facing is that a) if
>> they cannot gain material and political influence (power,
>> money) they are within capitalism based on precarious labour,
>> voluntary self-exploitative labour, lack of resources etc,
>> which enables a radical project, but results in a lack of
>> mass availability, and that b) if they accept material
>> support either by the state (state funding) or capital
>> (advertising, marketization, etc), they may risk loosing
>> their autonomy and criticality. Alternative media in
>> capitalism are facing the antogonism between
>> self-exploitation and autonomy. I think that in alternative
>> media studies, these kind of media are too often idealised
>> witout seeing the constraints. At the same time, it is
>> important to see how actual struggles manage to make use of
>> media for organizing themselves, but are actually facing
>> limits at the same time (state surveillance of media use by
>> revolutionaries, etc). Autonomist Marxist Theory stresses
>> much the role of mediated class struggle today, although it
>> tends to idealise knowledge labour and to ignore the
>> constraints of ideolgoy, which we also have to take into account.
>>
>> e) What way to go?
>>
>> My proposition is is that all four approaches are failed, to
>> different extent. And I think that the lack today is the
>> focus on Marx. Marx had all of these elements - accumulation,
>> consumption, ideology, struggles and alternatives. So my
>> first and foremost proposition is that by re-orienting our
>> analysis on Marx, and by reading Marx again together with
>> students and young people and everyone, we can gain so
>> tremendously much for establishing a truly Critical Media and
>> Communication Studies that challenges the contemporary
>> dominance of uncritical, instrumental, technological,
>> neoliberal rationality. And this is not purely abstract, it
>> relates to the ongoing and contemporary struggles that we
>> have to fight now.
>>
>> So some thoughts about our conference.
>>
>> Good night and good luck, Christian
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Prof. Christian Fuchs
>> Chair in Media and Communication Studies
>> Department of Informatics and Media
>> Uppsala University
>> Kyrkogårdsgatan 10
>> Box 513
>> 751 20 Uppsala
>> Sweden
>> christian.fuchs at im.uu.se <mailto:christian.fuchs at im.uu.se>
>> Tel +46 (0) 18 471 1019 <tel:%2B46%20%280%29%2018%20471%201019>
>> http://fuchs.uti.at <http://fuchs.uti.at/>
>> http://www.im.uu.se <http://www.im.uu.se/>
>> NetPolitics Blog: http://fuchs.uti.at/blog
>> Editor of tripleC: http://www.triple-c.se
>> <http://www.triple-c.se/>
>> Chair of ESA RN18-Sociology of Communications and Media Research
>> ICTs and Society Network: http://www.icts-and-society.net
>> <http://www.icts-and-society.net/>
>>
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