Feminism, Communicative Capitalism, and the Inadequacies of Radical Democracy

Abstract

Under communicative capitalism, should feminists be radical democrats? If radical democracy entails an emphasis on the multiplicity of political identities engaging in agonistic struggle within a framework of liberal democratic norms and institutions, as it does for Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), then the answer is no. The changing conditions of signification accelerated by networked information and communication technologies decrease the viability of the production of symbolic identities as a means of left political struggle. At the same time, the tenacity of neoliberalism as an economic project renders allegedly democratic institutions barriers to significant political change. Together, these two aspects of communicative capitalism indicate the limits radical democracy places on left political thought and point to the importance of reinvigorating socialism as a left political project.