Abstract
Political identities created long before us have been positioned to represent our daily struggles and how we are to identify with them. The mediatization of these political identities makes them inexorable as they further the processes of simulation. We become more dependent on systems of representation to communicate these ideas, instead of finding identities through encounters and establishing connections through face-to-face interactions—thereby escaping our roles as online participants. Social media and political participation are now linked. With social media, representation has taken on a new meaning—each form of technology, either productively or aesthetically, represents a facet of human life. Yet, no one is ever fully represented and conflict is created throughout society because of the contradictions found between representation and self-identification. How can critical theory effectively challenge the idea of representation? For this, perhaps we should consider theorists that typically are not associated with critical theory: Jean Baudrillard and Vilém Flusser.
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- 1.
Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (New York: Semiotext(e), 1988) 99.
- 2.
Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics (New York: Semiotext(e); 2nd edition, 2006) 18.
- 3.
Massification: The process of creating uniformity in society.
- 4.
Vilém Flusser, The Surprising Phenomenon of Human Communication (Metaflux Publishing, www.metafluxpublishing.com, 2016) 89.
- 5.
Peter Krapp, Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) 36.
- 6.
Rex Butler, Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (London: Sage Publishing, 1999) 20.
- 7.
Hyper-Fascist: A post-historical, digitally based perception of fascism. The hyper-fascist is only a copy of a copy of fascist identity—a representation of an idea that can no longer share its original meaning. It is the social product of fascism in the reproductive code of simulation.
- 8.
Buter, Defence of the Real, 133.
- 9.
Finger, Anke, Rainer Guldin, and Gustavo Bernardo, Vilém Flusser: An Introduction (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) 87–88.
- 10.
Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Millennium (Or the Suspense of the Year 2000) (Online, http://ctheory.net/ctheory_wp/in-the-shadow-of-the-millennium, 1998) Accessed 7 August 2018.
- 11.
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1976) 152.
- 12.
Ibid, 155.
- 13.
Ibid, 172–173.
- 14.
Gerald J. Russello, The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007) 105.
- 15.
Ibid, 104–106.
- 16.
Ibid, 101.
- 17.
Ibid, 110–111.
- 18.
Ibid, 15–16.
- 19.
Simulacrum: A material image, made as a representation of some deity, person, or thing, as “something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities”, and as “a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness of something”. See Devin Sandoz, Theories of Media Keywords. University of Chicago, 2003) Glossary: Simulation, simulacrum.
- 20.
Jean Baudrillard, In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (New York: Semiotext(e), 1983) 50.
- 21.
Vincent Law, 18 Year Old Thomas Rousseau Is Rebranding Nazis as ‘Patriots’ (Online. https://itsgoingdown.org/18-year-old-thomas-rousseau-rebranding-nazis-patriots, 2017) Accessed 7 August 2018.
- 22.
Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (Missouri: Telos Publishing, 1981) 163.
- 23.
Vilém Flusser, Post-History (Minnesota: Univocal Publishing, 2013) 94–95.
- 24.
Ibid, 95.
- 25.
Ibid, 96.
- 26.
Ibid, 97–98.
- 27.
Hyperreal: Baudrillard defines this as “The generation by models of a real without origin or reality.” It is reality in a mode of simulation. See Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation [Simulacres et simulation] (France: Galilée Editions, 1981).
- 28.
Dialogic: A term often related to the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin; the idea of communicating ideas that include multiple voices and perspectives. A relationship of dialogue and utterances. Bakhtin’s dialogism rejected totalizing language and conceptual relationships in favor of open meaning, multiple voices (heteroglossia), and spontaneity of thought. See Mikhail Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1981).
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Turner, J. (2019). Death by a Thousand Hyperlinks: The Commodification of Communication and Mediated Ideologies. In: Battista, C., Sande, M. (eds) Critical Theory and the Humanities in the Age of the Alt-Right. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18753-8_10
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