From media to machines: A machinic perspective on the evolution and crises of Facebook

This article diagrams Facebook as a megamachine, arguing that this diagram helps scholars better understand technological evolution and the production of subjectivity. The article contrasts a medium-based approach to Facebook, which emphasizes how Facebook enables neo-liberal subjectivity, with a machinic approach, which illustrates how Facebook also produces the affected subject. The affected subject often conflicts with the imperatives of the neo-liberal subject, and this tension motors the evolution of Facebook’s algorithm, interface and moderation policies, as illustrated through the examination of changes to Facebook resultant from problems that emerged in the course of its history, including too much information, becoming swamped with sponsored viral content, lack of expressivity in the like button, hate speech and disinformation. Such tensions, part of a more general crisis faced by contemporary capitalism, will shape the future of subjectivity and media evolution alike.

Sen’s Conception of Freedom, and a Conjecture on Embodiment

This article explores Amartya Sen’s understanding of freedom, and performs two central functions, one classificatory and the other substantive in nature. First, I situate his reflections within canonical understandings of liberty, finding an irreducible pluralism incorporating positive liberty in ‘capability’ alongside negative and republican liberty in ‘process’, which is subsequently unified in the notion of ‘comprehensive outcomes’. Secondly, I attempt to find a normative referent for the intrinsic value of choice, and thereby indirectly that of freedom, in his account. In contrast to the liberal subjectivity one might – I believe, mistakenly – attribute to Sen’s deployment of neoclassical economic frameworks, I instead argue for a re-interpretation of his account, inspired by the sociological literature on embodiment. Here, an ‘encumbered’ subject must inherit and transcend a normative totality to become an agent in the fullest sense.

POETRY, DOCTRINE AND SUBJECTIVITY IN THE LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY CATHOLIC PRESS

Este ensayo focaliza en el papel que jugó la poesía en el contexto doctrinal y conservador que ofrecía la revista semanal El Católico Argentino (1874-1876), precursora en la consolidación de la prensa católica en Argentina. A través del estudio de la relación entre el repertorio estético de los poemas y la fuerte crítica al liberalismo y a la modernidad en los artículos doctrinarios de la revista, este ensayo argumenta que la poesía buscaba la creación de una subjetividad lectora de caráctercomunitario. Esta se presentará como alternativa a la subjetividad liberal a la que apelaba la prensa liberal del momento, promoviendo la novedad y la moda. ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the role played by poetry in the doctrinal and conservative context of the weekly newspaper El Católico Argentino (1874-1876), a forerunner in the consolidation of the Catholic press in Argentina. By studying how the aesthetic repertoire of the poetic pieces relates to the strong criticism of dominant liberalism and modernity in the newspaper’s doctrinal pieces, the essay argues that poetry, via different strategies, appeals to the creation of a sharedor communal reader subjectivity. This will stand as in contrast to the liberal subjectivity appealed to by the contemporary press of the time, which highlighted novelty and fashion.

The Voice of Feeling

This chapter addresses the nature of social worlds that coalesce around events of speech in two films from contemporary liberal culture: Love Actually (2003) and The King’s Speech (2010). Though one centers on romantic union and the other on the union of nation, both films culminate in scenes whose formal outlines are nearly identical: a character played by Colin Firth must deliver a speech, though his ability to speak is in some way compromised, and the coherence of a social order hangs on his ability to make his voice flow. By locating the drama of intersubjectivity in the individual’s capacity simply to produce a voice, these cases offer an alternative to a visual grammar of intimacy located in the return of the other’s gaze. Instead, they resonate with theories of liberal subjectivity that emphasize the way in which speaking itself produces an efflorescence of personhood. By focusing on speech and not the gaze, these accounts suggest that the other may be structurally negligible in cinematic scenes of recognition. The formal structure of intimate and national resolution in these films indicates a broader blueprint of liberal togetherness, one in which a certain concept of the voice sustains and unites an idea of individual expressiveness with the promise of a collectivity magnetized by feeling.

Fusing an Alloy

This chapter charts the formation of the documentary poetry tradition in the U.S. through a consideration of Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead. It demonstrates how Rukeyser pushed the boundaries of genre and media to imagine modes of expression that resisted traditional notions of liberal subjectivity. Drawing on multiple valences of the term alloy, the chapter argues that Rukeyser imagined documentary writing as a complex fusing of elements that speculates on the ontology of the poem itself. The chapter begins with an account of the historical, definitional, and theoretical concerns that have shaped documentary poetry. The chapter’s subsequent analyses of The Book of the Dead consider the impact of industry on subject formation: demonstrating how Rukeyser experimented with literary and visual genres, as well as poetic tropes and themes, to devise alternate modalities of personhood that interface the human with the materials of history and industry. The chapter concludes by showing how Rukeyser’s plans to adapt The Book of the Dead into a documentary film demonstrate a combination of formal and technical resources that illuminate new principles of composition.

The Human Is Dead – Long Live the Algorithm! Human-Algorithmic Ensembles and Liberal Subjectivity

The article analyzes the relation of humans and technology concerning so called ‘intelligent’ or ‘autonomous’ algorithms that are applied in everyday contexts but are far removed from any form of substantial artificial intelligence. In particular, the use of algorithms in surveillance and in architecture is discussed. These examples are structured by a particular combination of continuity and difference between humans and technology. The article provides a detailed analysis of boundary practices that establish continuity and oppositions between humans and information technology, referring to their exemplary depiction in movies. Both strands of boundary practices have the potential to challenge as well as sustain the position of the human as liberal, autonomous subject. Finally, it is shown how the particular combination of continuity and difference that structures the use of algorithms maintains the power of liberal, autonomous subject positions, while the shift of decisions to the algorithms seems to decenter the human.

Hospitality beyond Good and Bad

This chapter on the concept and practice of hospitality goes back to the time around the millennium and the first years of the New Labour government. It takes a novel – Nick Hornby’s How to Be Good – as its object of analysis. The chapter is about identity, inclusion and exclusion, but it is more about ‘us’ (White, liberal middle-class, etc.) than about those marked as exotic others, those whom multiculturalism is usually taken to be about. Through an analysis of the novel’s treatment of hospitality and charity, the chapter shows how a certain liberal subjectivity is central to the scene of British multiculturalism. As with equality, recognition and tolerance, hospitality is always caught in a tension between unconditionality and conditionality, between openness and closure. The chapter uses Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction and his work on hospitality and the gift as its theoretical basis.

Neo-liberal Subjectivity, Self-branding and ‘My Rape Story’ YouTube Videos

This article considers the YouTube ‘My Rape Story’ genre in light of critical feminist analyses of rape survivor stories. The feminist mobilization that developed out of the political ferment of 1968 told a ‘rape story’ of male power and women’s oppression. However, as first-hand rape stories proliferated in late 20th-century popular media, psychological experts typically framed them with therapeutic narratives of individual self-efficacy and self-transformation. Critical feminist analyses of such rape ‘survivor discourse’ called for new discursive spaces that would allow survivors to eschew therapeutic accounts. A new generation of women have spoken out on a variety of digital platforms, confronting established limits on talking about rape. Considering YouTube ‘My Rape Story’ videos as one manifestation of this new wave of speaking out, my analysis shows that examples of such videos evidence the impact of incitements to self-disclosure through self-branding built into much social media. I argue that these videos exemplify how first-hand rape stories can provide a site for the construction of neo-liberal subjectivity by positioning rape trauma as something survivors must work on in order to achieve self-efficacy. Nevertheless, these accounts also show resistance to victim-blaming rape myths.