1,721,104 research outputs found
Post-Symbolic Images in Platform Capitalism: An “Impolitical” Aesthetic Space
Full text linkPlatform capitalism brings several processes to completion that were already apparent during post-industrial capitalism. One of these involves images and their gradual loss of a symbolic dimension. The mechanisms that platforms employ to direct the production of media content reduce images to objects of immediate use and consumption. Consequently, images fail to synthetise the multiplicity of the social reality: instead of inscribing it within a horizon of meaning, they simply reflect it. This article reconstructs the “de-symbolising” process of images during the various phases of capitalism and explains why a post-symbolic aesthetics should also be viewed as “impolitical”. If the political is indeed symbolic, since the giving of meaning and direction to society (a political task par excellence) also takes place through the construction of symbolic systems, the post-symbolic aesthetic is instead imposed by platforms for purely economic reasons
Il nuovo sensazionalismo delle «verità veloci»: un'analisi dei titoli dei giornali sui social network
No full textInoperosità. Heidegger nel dibattito francese contemporaneo
No full textNel panorama filosofico francese, ed in particolare all’interno del filone decostruzionista, si è registrata nella seconda metà del secolo scorso una complessiva rivalutazione dell’opera di Martin Heidegger precedente alla cosiddetta Kehre. Seguendo il percorso interpretativo di filosofi come Jean-Luc Nancy e Jacques Derrida, emerge come l’autore di Essere e tempo possa essere recuperato in funzione di un nuovo pensiero del soggetto e della comunità, da far emergere forzando la prima filosofia heideggeriana fino alle sue conseguenze implicite ed inespresse. La categoria di “inoperosità”, di radice teologica e centrale nella costellazione filosofica postmoderna, risulta decisiva in questo contesto. Assunta come doppia chiave ermeneutica, tale categoria fa luce non solo sul valore della filosofia heideggeriana degli anni ’20, ma anche sulle sue successive compromissioni con il totalitarismo e la metafisica, producendo un contemporaneo rovesciamento del concetto di comunità dall’essere-con alla comunità di destino
Etica dell'estetica. Narcisismo dell'io e apertura agli altri nel pensiero postmoderno
No full textQuesta tesi prende in esame il rapporto tra la sfera etica e quella estetica all'interno del pensiero postmoderno. Molti critici del postmodernismo hanno infatti evidenziato come questo paradigma filosofico si riduca ad una celebrazione della libertà individuale che scivola verso il narcisismo e l'edonismo delle sensazioni. L'estetica dell'io soppianterebbe insomma, secondo questa lettura, l'etica del noi. Ciò avverrebbe in particolare per il collegamento implicito tra postmodernismo e società post-industriale, ovvero una società in cui la realtà risulterebbe talmente sovraccaricata di segni estetici da svuotare la capacità critiche e riflessive degli individui. La mia tesi cerca però di dimostrare come, partendo dall'analisi dell'interconnessione globale favorita dalla circolazione di prodotti culturali e dalla trasmissione di segni e immagini, un certo filone della teoria sociale postmoderna sia riuscito a reintegrare l'estetica nell'etica. Secondo questi autori, infatti, è proprio un'estetica riflessivamente mediata che, nella società globale, diventa il principio fondativo di un'etica cosmopolita non astratta e normativa, bensì basata sulla concretezza delle relazioni tra culture
Toward a neomodern epistemology of digital journalism
No full textThe relationship between objective accounts of reality and expressions of subjective points of view has been discussed in journalism studies in terms of two dominant epistemological paradigms: the modern and the postmodern. This article proposes a different epistemological model, defined as ‘neomodern,’ whose aim is to articulate a dialectical relationship between subjectivity and objectivity that is better able to account for the processes of information production and consumption on digital platforms. An overview is given of the principles of the neomodern model and its main exponents. To understand the implications of a neomodern epistemology when discussing the practices of contemporary journalism, the journalistic genre of fact-checking is analyzed as a case study
Georg Simmel’s Social Aesthetics and the Digital Public Sphere
No full textIn this paper I use concepts of Georg Simmel’s social aesthetics to investigate and describe several relational and communicative dynamics that occur in the digital public sphere—where the aesthetic dimension has now assumed great importance. Specifically, Simmel’s work proves to be more suited than Habermas’s for understanding the mechanisms of “typification” and “gamification” found in online interactions between individuals. I further argue that, on the Web, these mechanisms in particular are responsible for blocking the exchange of opinions and meanings on subjects of public interest, thereby betraying the universal, societal outcomes of Simmel’s social aesthetics
From Institutions to the Platform Society: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Recent Works by Roberto Esposito
No full textIn recent years, reflection on institutions has assumed great prominence in Italian Theory. Roberto Esposito especially, in his three most recent books, has provided a genealogy of institutions, aimed at challenging the prevailing way in which they have been thematized in Western thought. As he sees it, a repressive conception of institutions has dominated in philosophy as well as in sociology and legal studies, which views them as apparatuses that limit the free expansion of individual instincts and life itself. Following an original hermeneutic path, the Italian philosopher seeks to pull through strands of thought that understand the concepts of institution and life to be mutually implicated rather than opposed to each other. This article starts from Roberto Esposito’s work on institutions, clarifying its meaning and perspective. It then draws connections between Esposito’s instituent thought and a few focal points of contemporary sociological thought on institutions. Specifically, it analyzes how Esposito’s post-normative perspective presents similarities with the ‘cognitive turn’ in the institutional thought of new institutionalism, among other sociological schools. The article concludes by showing that Esposito’s work and its connections with sociological thought enable one to reflect critically on a number of practices spawned in the ‘platform society’ by new institutional actors such as Big Tech
Beyond the person: Roberto esposito and the body as ‘common good’
No full textIn this review of Persons and Things, recently translated into English and published by Polity Press, we discuss how this text investigates some of the most important themes of Roberto Esposito’s thought. Specifically, the book continues the process of constructing an idea of community intended as lack, gift and impropriety that the Italian philosopher has been developing since the publication of Communitas. In this case, it is the notion of body that demolishes the metaphysical apparatus that has conditioned the moulding of the philosophical-legal lexicon of the Western tradition. Doomed to constant submission to the rational sphere of the person, hence assimilated to the materiality of a mere thing, the body can win back its full dignity if it is considered as a ‘living body’. Only in this way, according to Esposito, is it possible to move past the ‘proprietary’ and subjectivistic notion that, in philosophy as well as in law, has determined a clear-cut separation between persons (intended as rational beings) and things (conceived as inert objects), as well as between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ persons. Thus, in Persons and Things, the body becomes an actual vector for a trans-individualization of the individual, for an opening to the common, public, and communitarian dimension. According to Esposito, this process is favoured by the changes brought about by biotechnologies and science in general, not only in medical practices, but also in the legal formulations that follow from them
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