Abstract
This article proceeds in two distinct parts. The first section engages with a deliberately small number of popular texts written by discriminating and interrogative consumers and producers of digital culture and society. While these may be dismissed as journalistic texts and sources by those of a more focused academic intent, here these texts are used because they are the connection between academic engagement and wider public readership. As such, they frame what can be termed the critical public engagement with digital capitalism. These texts are read in tandem with my thesis of immaterial capitalism and Marazzi’s’ The Violence of Financial Capitalism. The paper then concludes with what can be described as the ‘manifesto turn’ by raising some questions for a renewed engagement with digital society, to be undertaken from what is termed, an emergent critical digital humanities, as the site of critique and resistance. This is an exercise in what can be labelled Mongrel methodology and ideology, a neo-logism deliberately provocative in intent to signal a post-academic approach, chosen over such traditional descriptors as mixed-methods or assemblage and the like. As such, it may draw on Marxist thought but is not Marxist in ideology or final intent; it is critical of capitalism but acknowledges our on-going existence and possibilities within it; it is written by an academic seeking to act as intermediary between academic and non-academic readings and responses. It is a deliberate act of provocation as a manifesto call for change.
Highlights
This article proceeds in two distinct parts
Over the past decade there have been an increasing number of popular texts, occupying that space between journalism and academia, written by discriminating and interrogative consumers and producers of digital culture and society. While these may be dismissed as journalistic texts and sources by those of a more focussed academic intent, I increasingly use these texts in my teaching and scholarship because they are the connection between academic engagement and wider public readership and most importantly, understanding
I want to begin this section with the text that ignited my interest in these questions regarding digital society and I wish to further begin with a framing statement that should be self-evident in its simplicity: digital society is digital capitalism
Summary
This article proceeds in two distinct parts. The first section engages with a deliberately small number of popular texts written by discriminating and interrogative consumers and producers of digital culture and society. This is what I term the state of being beyond financial capitalism, finding ourselves instead in the new immaterial capitalism whereby we (often unknowingly) work for free every time we are on-line, especially in social media, 'manufacturing the very personal data that makes their companies so valuable' (Keen, 2015, p 57).
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