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Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics
Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States. Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean takes the left to task for its capitulations to conservatives and its failure to take responsibility for the extensive neoliberalization implemented during the Clinton presidency. She argues that the left’s ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined by the ascendance of “communicative capitalism,” a constellation of consumerism, the privileging of the self over group interests, and the embrace of the language of victimization. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason.Dean’s critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to an analysis of the fantasy of free trade underlying neoliberalism, and from an examination of new theories of sovereignty advanced by politicians and left academics to a look at the changing meanings of “evil” in the speeches of U.S. presidents since the mid-twentieth century. She emphasizes the futility of a politics enacted by individuals determined not to offend anyone, and she examines questions of truth, knowledge, and power in relation to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Dean insists that any reestablishment of a vital and purposeful left politics will require shedding the mantle of victimization, confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy, and mobilizing different terms to represent political strategies and goals.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
21 people are currently reading
955 people want to read
About the author
Jodi Dean
48 books145 followersJodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited eleven books, including The Communist Horizon and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 4, 2022
OMG this book is SO GOOD. SO IMPORTANT. Everyone who is even remotely interested in the success of the Democratic party or leftist, progressive values needs to read it at once.
July 24, 2011
Every now and then I come across a book that makes me stop, re-read, and re-think. This is one: Dean draws on Žižek and others to expose the power of neoliberalism through a trenchant critique of the failures of the political Left – in its activist, academic, and typing forms – to develop a coherent politics grounded in values that resist the neoliberal ideological onslaught. Dean sees the present era as one characterised by 'communicative capitalism' the key characteristics of which are consumerism, ego-centrism (self, not the group), languages of victimisation, and new technology driven politics that centre on speaking rather than being heard. She has a powerful sense of the challenges, limitations, and threats of new technology, and the risks of romantic technologism that sees new, accessible technologies as necessarily progressive. This trope weaves through a text that critiques both the right and major elements of the left by unpacking the roles of fantasies technology, free trade, democracy, resolve, ethics (a blistering critique of Judith Butler), and certainty in the operation of neoliberal idologies, mystifications, and obfuscations.
A key element, and the one that for me merits revisiting, is the notion of a decline in symbolic efficiency (a central element of her argument about free trade) so that ""Identities, arguments, or signs that are clear and compelling in some settings carry little weight in others. One might imagine Nicole Ritchie and Jurgen Habermas in an airport waiting area. Neither would recognise the other's symbolic weight or be able to assess the other's cultural capital."" Although it might be a tad harsh on both of them (do we know their understandings of each other?), anyone who can get Nicole Ritchie and Habermas to be the examples that mutually illustrate a political point has to be worth it, and is notwithstanding the fabulousness of the analysis! More importantly, there is also an excellent discussion of the ways on-line activism (click here to register your protest) is likely to weaken political opposition and struggle.
Here comes the but..... It is all analysis with only an implied programme: the book is a fabulous (although I could do with a little less Lacan in contemporary political theory) analysis of the present practice of ideology but generally fails to posit specific political activity or sites/modes of struggle.
A key element, and the one that for me merits revisiting, is the notion of a decline in symbolic efficiency (a central element of her argument about free trade) so that ""Identities, arguments, or signs that are clear and compelling in some settings carry little weight in others. One might imagine Nicole Ritchie and Jurgen Habermas in an airport waiting area. Neither would recognise the other's symbolic weight or be able to assess the other's cultural capital."" Although it might be a tad harsh on both of them (do we know their understandings of each other?), anyone who can get Nicole Ritchie and Habermas to be the examples that mutually illustrate a political point has to be worth it, and is notwithstanding the fabulousness of the analysis! More importantly, there is also an excellent discussion of the ways on-line activism (click here to register your protest) is likely to weaken political opposition and struggle.
Here comes the but..... It is all analysis with only an implied programme: the book is a fabulous (although I could do with a little less Lacan in contemporary political theory) analysis of the present practice of ideology but generally fails to posit specific political activity or sites/modes of struggle.
March 22, 2011
Jodi Dean writes:
Recent developments in network science demonstrate structure in seemingly random networks. On the web, for example, sites are not equally likely to have the same number of links. Nor are links randomly distributed among sites in a predictable, bell-curve fashion. Instead, there are clusters and hubs wherein some sites are nodes to which many sites link. These hubs serve as connectors for other nodes. In his path-breaking work on structure in complex networks, Albert-László Barabási finds hubs on the Web, in Hollywood, in citation networks, phone networks, food webs in ecosystems, and even cellular networks where some molecules, like water, do much more work than others.
Barabási explains that degree distribution in networks with hubs, most real networks, follows a power-law. He writes, “Power laws mathematically formulate the fact that in most real networks the majority of nodes have only a few links and that these numerous tiny nodes coexist with a few big hubs, nodes with an anomalously high number of links. The few links connecting the smaller nodes to each other are not sufficient to ensure that the network is fully connected. This function is secured by the relatively rare hubs that keep real networks from falling apart.” In most real networks, nodes don’t have an average number of links. Rather, a few have exponentially more links than others. Barabási describes the difference between random networks and networks that follow a power-law degree distribution with the term scale. In random networks, there is a limit to the number of links a node can have as well as an average number of links. Random networks thus have a characteristic of “scale.” In most real networks, however, “there is no such thing as a characteristic node. We see a continuous hierarchy of nodes, spanning from the rare hubs to the numerous tiny nodes.” These networks don’t scale. They are “scale free.”
Barabási notes that others have observed power-law degree distributions. The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto noticed that 20 percent of his peapods produced 80 percent of the peas – nature doesn’t always follow a bell curve. He also found that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. In business management circles, Pareto’s law is known at the 80/20 rule (although he did not use the term) and is said to apply in a variety of instances: “80 percent of the profits are produced by only 20 percent of the employees, 80 percent of customer service problems are created by only 20 percent of customers, 80 percent of decisions are made during 20 percent of meeting time, and so on.” Further examples might be Hollywood’s “A list” or the “A list” that emerged among bloggers. Like scale-free networks, Pareto’s law alerts us to distributions that follow power-laws.
How can power-laws be explained? Is some kind of sovereign authority redirecting nature out of a more primordial equality? Barabási finds that power-laws appear in phase transitions from disorder to order (he draws here from the Nobel prize-winning work of the physicist Kenneth Wilson.) Power-laws “are the patent signatures of self-organization in complex systems.” Analyzing power-laws on the web, Barabási identifies several properties that account for the Web’s characteristics as a scale-free network. The first is growth. New sites or nodes are added at a dizzying pace. If new sites decide randomly to link to different old sites, old sites will always have an advantage. Just by arriving first, they will accumulate more links. But growth alone can’t account for the power-law degree distribution. A second property is necessary, preferential attachment. New sites have to prefer older, more senior sites. Differently put, new sites will want to link to those sites that already have a lot of links. They don’t link randomly but to the most popular sites which thereby become hubs. Barabási argues that insofar as network evolution is governed by preferential attachment, one has to abandon the assumption that the Web (or Hollywood or any citation network) is democratic: “In real networks linking is never random. Instead, popularity is attractive.” Nodes that have been around for awhile, that have to an extent proven themselves, have distinct advantages over newcomers. In networks characterized by growth and preferential attachment, then, hubs emerge.
The fantasy of abundance – anyone can build a website, create a blog, express their opinions on the internet – misdirects some critical media theorists away from the structure of real networks. Alexander R. Galloway, for example, emphasizes “distributed networks” that have “no central hubs and no radial nodes.” He claims that the internet is a distributed network like the U.S. interstate highway system, a random network that scales, to use Barabási’s terms. Embracing Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s image of the rhizome, Galloway notes that in a rhizome any point can be connected to any other; there are no intermediary hubs and no hierarchies. For him, the Web is best understood rhizomatically, as having a rhizomatic structure. Barabási’s work demonstrates, however, that on the Web, as in any scale-free network, there are hubs and hierarchies. Some sites are more equal than others. Imagining a rhizome might be nice, but rhizomes don’t describe the underlying structure of real networks. Hierarchies and hubs emerge out of growth and preferential attachment.
Recent developments in network science demonstrate structure in seemingly random networks. On the web, for example, sites are not equally likely to have the same number of links. Nor are links randomly distributed among sites in a predictable, bell-curve fashion. Instead, there are clusters and hubs wherein some sites are nodes to which many sites link. These hubs serve as connectors for other nodes. In his path-breaking work on structure in complex networks, Albert-László Barabási finds hubs on the Web, in Hollywood, in citation networks, phone networks, food webs in ecosystems, and even cellular networks where some molecules, like water, do much more work than others.
Barabási explains that degree distribution in networks with hubs, most real networks, follows a power-law. He writes, “Power laws mathematically formulate the fact that in most real networks the majority of nodes have only a few links and that these numerous tiny nodes coexist with a few big hubs, nodes with an anomalously high number of links. The few links connecting the smaller nodes to each other are not sufficient to ensure that the network is fully connected. This function is secured by the relatively rare hubs that keep real networks from falling apart.” In most real networks, nodes don’t have an average number of links. Rather, a few have exponentially more links than others. Barabási describes the difference between random networks and networks that follow a power-law degree distribution with the term scale. In random networks, there is a limit to the number of links a node can have as well as an average number of links. Random networks thus have a characteristic of “scale.” In most real networks, however, “there is no such thing as a characteristic node. We see a continuous hierarchy of nodes, spanning from the rare hubs to the numerous tiny nodes.” These networks don’t scale. They are “scale free.”
Barabási notes that others have observed power-law degree distributions. The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto noticed that 20 percent of his peapods produced 80 percent of the peas – nature doesn’t always follow a bell curve. He also found that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 percent of the population. In business management circles, Pareto’s law is known at the 80/20 rule (although he did not use the term) and is said to apply in a variety of instances: “80 percent of the profits are produced by only 20 percent of the employees, 80 percent of customer service problems are created by only 20 percent of customers, 80 percent of decisions are made during 20 percent of meeting time, and so on.” Further examples might be Hollywood’s “A list” or the “A list” that emerged among bloggers. Like scale-free networks, Pareto’s law alerts us to distributions that follow power-laws.
How can power-laws be explained? Is some kind of sovereign authority redirecting nature out of a more primordial equality? Barabási finds that power-laws appear in phase transitions from disorder to order (he draws here from the Nobel prize-winning work of the physicist Kenneth Wilson.) Power-laws “are the patent signatures of self-organization in complex systems.” Analyzing power-laws on the web, Barabási identifies several properties that account for the Web’s characteristics as a scale-free network. The first is growth. New sites or nodes are added at a dizzying pace. If new sites decide randomly to link to different old sites, old sites will always have an advantage. Just by arriving first, they will accumulate more links. But growth alone can’t account for the power-law degree distribution. A second property is necessary, preferential attachment. New sites have to prefer older, more senior sites. Differently put, new sites will want to link to those sites that already have a lot of links. They don’t link randomly but to the most popular sites which thereby become hubs. Barabási argues that insofar as network evolution is governed by preferential attachment, one has to abandon the assumption that the Web (or Hollywood or any citation network) is democratic: “In real networks linking is never random. Instead, popularity is attractive.” Nodes that have been around for awhile, that have to an extent proven themselves, have distinct advantages over newcomers. In networks characterized by growth and preferential attachment, then, hubs emerge.
The fantasy of abundance – anyone can build a website, create a blog, express their opinions on the internet – misdirects some critical media theorists away from the structure of real networks. Alexander R. Galloway, for example, emphasizes “distributed networks” that have “no central hubs and no radial nodes.” He claims that the internet is a distributed network like the U.S. interstate highway system, a random network that scales, to use Barabási’s terms. Embracing Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s image of the rhizome, Galloway notes that in a rhizome any point can be connected to any other; there are no intermediary hubs and no hierarchies. For him, the Web is best understood rhizomatically, as having a rhizomatic structure. Barabási’s work demonstrates, however, that on the Web, as in any scale-free network, there are hubs and hierarchies. Some sites are more equal than others. Imagining a rhizome might be nice, but rhizomes don’t describe the underlying structure of real networks. Hierarchies and hubs emerge out of growth and preferential attachment.
April 2, 2015
After reading Berardi, I began to like this book much more. But can we all agree to ditch psychoanalysis? The chapters on evil and on conviction are good reads nonetheless.
May 15, 2024
This book is a must read for students of a true and liberating global democratic revolution. Dean draws on a collection of thinkers including Zizek, Debord, Habermas, Foucault, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Hardt and Negri. This book is both a philosophical inquiry into the meaning and use of the term democracy in the increasingly hyper connected world, as well as a sharp political analysis that at its heart questions why we need more motivation to change the system than the absurd realities of extreme income inequalities between workers and CEOs.
At parts it is heavily reliant on Laconian analysis and can be a bit challenging, but it’s worth the work it takes to grasp her line of questioning and thinking. One of the most succinct points I got from this work is her assertion that via the virtual world we are all swept up in, there exists a “democracy that talks without responding”. Is all of this ability to argue and exchange political messages online actually doing any good or bringing us any “more democratic” engagement? The social media giants are, after all, enclosed spaces of communication whereby the algorithms are owned by people who seek to modify our behaviour for profits and their own political good. A good reading companion to this book I would recommend is Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism.
An important question left lingering in my mind from this is are we truly so “free” because we have unprecedented access to commodifying our personalities in the extended stage of social performance that these digital platforms and ubiquitous cameras allow? Are we willingly giving up the remains of our political autonomy in the guise of so called participation? What value does mass culture via hyperreality have if we have no real power to influence the material conditions of our respective nations? What value does this so called freedom of expression have if it is disconnected from or reliant on the snuffing out of calls of the environment we rely on to sustain our lives as it begs us to use our imaginations and will to implement systems that work with it instead of brutally against it? How much of our autonomy and ability to regulate our own human bodies do we sacrifice to new AI technologies?
“Contemporary subjects increasingly lack self-control, in part because they lack a strong sense of self that arises through discipline, and … look outside themselves for some authority to impose control. External control— through the direct or indirect use of force, through threats and fears, and through the mobilization and intensification of affects and desires— takes on more of the work previously done by internalized control. In psychoanalytic terms, we can say that symbolic identity is increasingly fragile, uncertain, and meaningless in the society of control. Imaginary identities sustained by the promise and provision of enjoyment replace symbolic identities. And the multiplicity and adaptability of these identities does not mean that subjects are somehow freer or more liberated than they were under the discipline of the welfare state. Rather, they come under different sets of controls, different organizations of enjoyment.”(66)
At parts it is heavily reliant on Laconian analysis and can be a bit challenging, but it’s worth the work it takes to grasp her line of questioning and thinking. One of the most succinct points I got from this work is her assertion that via the virtual world we are all swept up in, there exists a “democracy that talks without responding”. Is all of this ability to argue and exchange political messages online actually doing any good or bringing us any “more democratic” engagement? The social media giants are, after all, enclosed spaces of communication whereby the algorithms are owned by people who seek to modify our behaviour for profits and their own political good. A good reading companion to this book I would recommend is Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism.
An important question left lingering in my mind from this is are we truly so “free” because we have unprecedented access to commodifying our personalities in the extended stage of social performance that these digital platforms and ubiquitous cameras allow? Are we willingly giving up the remains of our political autonomy in the guise of so called participation? What value does mass culture via hyperreality have if we have no real power to influence the material conditions of our respective nations? What value does this so called freedom of expression have if it is disconnected from or reliant on the snuffing out of calls of the environment we rely on to sustain our lives as it begs us to use our imaginations and will to implement systems that work with it instead of brutally against it? How much of our autonomy and ability to regulate our own human bodies do we sacrifice to new AI technologies?
“Contemporary subjects increasingly lack self-control, in part because they lack a strong sense of self that arises through discipline, and … look outside themselves for some authority to impose control. External control— through the direct or indirect use of force, through threats and fears, and through the mobilization and intensification of affects and desires— takes on more of the work previously done by internalized control. In psychoanalytic terms, we can say that symbolic identity is increasingly fragile, uncertain, and meaningless in the society of control. Imaginary identities sustained by the promise and provision of enjoyment replace symbolic identities. And the multiplicity and adaptability of these identities does not mean that subjects are somehow freer or more liberated than they were under the discipline of the welfare state. Rather, they come under different sets of controls, different organizations of enjoyment.”(66)
August 21, 2021
Pretty dense read and references ideas from other sources, mainly Zizek. But overall it was fascinating and I enjoyed just thinking about how the modern world a decade or so later fits Dean's description of communicative capitalism so well.
December 31, 2017
Only about 232 pages or so
July 3, 2011
Smart, fun, and a strong rejoinder to the left to get tough, Real, and stop ceding so much (including passionate oppostion) to the right and the circuits of what she dubs communicative capitalism. The back cover nails what the book is about, so go read that at least. I especially appreciate her use and parsing of Zizek, who I like but find quite difficult on his own. I'll re-read and teach from this book.
Read
December 20, 2010What's now so great about the internet? Everything, well political discourse mainly, according to Dean. This is better and I believe more comprehensive then her latest, Blog Theory.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews