Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive
by Jodi Dean
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Blog Theory offers a critical theory of contemporary media. Furthering her account of communicative capitalism, Jodi Dean explores the ways new media practices like blogging and texting capture their users in intensive networks of enjoyment, production, and surveillance. Her wide-ranging and theoretically rich analysis extends from her personal experiences as a blogger, through media histories, to newly emerging social network platforms and applications. Set against the background of the show more economic crisis wrought by neoliberalism, the book engages with recent work in contemporary media theory as well as with thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Jacques Lacan, and Slavoj ?i'ek. Through these engagements, Dean defends the provocative thesis that reflexivity in complex networks is best understood via the psychoanalytic notion of the drives. She contends, moreover, that reading networks in terms of the drives enables us to grasp their real, human dimension, that is, the feelings and affects that embed us in the system. In remarkably clear and lucid prose, Dean links seemingly trivial and transitory updates from the new mass culture of the internet to more fundamental changes in subjectivity and politics. Everyday communicative exchangesÑfrom blog posts to text messagesÑhave widespread effects, effects that not only undermine capacities for democracy but also entrap us in circuits of domination. show lessTags
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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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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