1. Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism” and “Affective Networks”

2. Political Divides Politics and the press (The public sphere) vs
Politics and television
Politics and the Internets

3. Messages sent vs. content circulating
Messages that are sent, but to which there is no response

4. Competition between politicians, governments, and activists
Disconnect between political circulation as content and official politics

5. Post-Politics
“Post-politics thus begins from the premise of consensus and cooperation. Real antagonism or dissent is foreclosed. Matters previously thought to require debate and struggle are now addressed as personal issues or technical concerns.” 56

6. A post-political formation in which strong counter- hegemony is impossible because it is stripped of context, is framed by plurality of values, is deemed personal or technical and not therefore subject to debate.

7. Communicative Capitalism
“Just as industrial capitalism relied on the exploitation of labor, so does communicative capitalism rely on the exploitation of communication. “

8. Three Fantasies Animating Communicative Capitalism
1. Fantasy of abundance in which the basic unit is no longer the message but the contribution

9. 2. Fantasy of activity or participation materialized through technology fetishism

10. 3. Fantasy of wholeness that relies on and produces a “global” both Imaginary and Real, a global Zero Institution
(Imaginary as a space of opposition, notably between self and other, and Real as located beyond the symbolic, undifferentiated space)

11. Communicative Capitalism
“[C]ommonplace idea that the market, today, is the site of democratic aspirations” (54) There is a “strange merging of democracy and capitalism” (55) in networked communications

12. Some topics to ponder:
The fantasy of choice (You can have whatever you want, as long as it is on the menu.)
The commodification of communication
Standards of finance- and consumption-driven entertainment culture also become the standards of the political
The Post-Political?

13. Interpassivity
False idea of activity, but where a fetish object acts in our stead
DISPLACEMENT
Technology as inherently democratic
Technology as political action
Technology as…?

14. Technological Fetish Protects Multiple Fantasies Of:
Active, engaged subject
Technology as linking and organizing the whole
Of connection
Works through condensation, displacement, foreclosure (63-66)

15. “Affective Networks”
Our networked lives create affective responses, most notably anxiety Witness: “Nomophobia”

16. To translate: There is something about the internet, about endless circulation, that gives us enjoyment, but that enjoyment is both the source and the effect of an anxiety

17. The endless circulation appeals to the compulsion to repeat, it both soothes and enervates us, it creates enjoyment (repetition) and anxiety (when faced with the foreign kernel, the past alternatives)

18. In its contradictory feelings or affects, this compulsion to repeat speaks of desire, and, particularly, the desire to desire, and the drives, the investment of energies into objects

19. Communicative capitalism is able to do what it does because it captures us
It works on the affective dimension of media, the need to ease affective intensities

20. It works by contributions, not messages
It released politics from the burden of coherence and consistency
The obligation of constant communication leads to perpetually postponed action

21. “Corporate and state power need not go the expense and trouble to keep people entertained, passive, and diverted. We prefer to do that ourselves” (35) “Networked, participatory spectacles let us stage and perform our own entrapment” (36)

22. Barry Schwartz, “The paradox of choice”

23. Slavoj Zizek, Perverts Guide to Ideology, https://www. youtube

24.
Jodi Dean on Communicative Capitalism, an interview