The Joy of Following: Network Fascism and the Micropolitics of the Social Media Image.
This article deploys Spinoza's ethic of joy alongside Deleuze and Guattari's exposition of micropolitics to expose how fascist desires and affects bloom and circulate through digital communications ecosystems that generally promote a diffusion or decentralisation of power. Beyond the steady barrage...
| Publicado en: | Deleuze & Guattari Studies Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 277 - 308 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Edinburgh University Press
May2022
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=156629584&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 156629584 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 23989777 L8MC jtl: Deleuze & Guattari Studies issn: 23989777 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2022 vid: 16 iid: 2 pid: 2327 pub: Edinburgh University Press artinfo: ui: 156629584 10.3366/dlgs.2022.0478 ppf: 277 ppct: 31 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.2MB tig: atl: The Joy of Following: Network Fascism and the Micropolitics of the Social Media Image. aug: au: Crano, Ricky affil: University of California, Irvine su: Social media Joy Pleasure Fascism Digital communications Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 sug: subj: Social media Joy Pleasure Fascism Digital communications Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 keyword: desire fascism joy micropolitics social media Spinoza ab: This article deploys Spinoza's ethic of joy alongside Deleuze and Guattari's exposition of micropolitics to expose how fascist desires and affects bloom and circulate through digital communications ecosystems that generally promote a diffusion or decentralisation of power. Beyond the steady barrage of alt-right content conscientiously documented by liberal journalists and progressive watchdogs, a more persistent and widespread fascist impulse permeates the very forms of some of our most banal digitally mediated acts and encounters. Rather than a sole looming authoritarian figurehead, the network itself – particularly with the new image paradigms propelled by apps such as Instagram and TikTok – has become the rallying point for the circulation of fascistic affects, burnished through the art and ethos of following: of rules, routines, protocols, accounts. I contend that a joyful passion accompanies much of this everyday experience of keeping up with one's feeds, engaging the platforms, participating in the spectacles. This is what Sontag, interrogating the appeal of the Third Reich, calls the 'joy of followers', a joy in fascist belonging, which is to suggest that fascist movements thrive not only on the circulation of negative affects like hatred and fear, but also on the profusion of pleasure and affiliation. Deleuze's Spinoza, resolutely anti-fascist, helps us parse this situation as it plays out in the social media sphere. Spinoza offers a bipartite conceptualisation of joy that allows us to diagnose the pleasures particular to fascist belonging and network belonging alike as passive, partial and indirect. Ultimately, what we today share with historical fascisms is a ubiquitous aesthetic that merges art with life and bodies with information, and a corresponding ethos that cultivates conformism, barbarises critical thought and redirects joyful impulses into reactionary social forms. As fascistic power relations spread anew through digital cultures' newly evolving modes of visuality, hapticity, vibration and expression, one can observe something of what Deleuze calls 'sad joy', a sort of joy rooted in conquest and domination. The aim of this article is to root out such sad joys, to appreciate their appeal, and ultimately to reject them in all their various forms. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Deleuze & Guattari Studies is the property of Edinburgh University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Deleuze & Guattari Studies holder: Edinburgh University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|