Beating Them at Their Own Game: The Cultural Politics of the Open Software Movement and the Gift Economy

Abstract

This article interrogates the validity of claims that the 'open software movement' provides a substantial alternative to intellectual property and a challenge to the encroaching digital hegemony of neo-liberalism. The open software movement is participating in ongoing 'language wars' of the new communication technologies; it is attempting to redefine the social and economic value of information and computer networking, and as such does present a challenge to neo-liberalism. However, this challenge is not mounted through traditional and public-oriented modes of cultural politics but instead through personal and bodily re-imaginings channeled via direct engagement with the new technologies. Indeed, similarities exist between discourses of the open software movement and discourses of 'flexible work' and the reinvention of labour as temporary, transient, and 'empowered'. As such, the open software movement can be considered to enable forms of 'visceral democracy', and its political potential is capacitated but also restricted by this form of cultural politics.