This lecture was given as part of the Trust's annual lecture series in London in June 2022.
The end of the twentieth century heralded a new information age of networked participatory democracy. A quarter century later, we complain about being addicted or tethered to our phones, dependent on “big tech” overlords who extract from us our information, money, and time. What happened? This lecture answers the question by setting out the neofeudalizing tendencies of communicative capitalism.
Jodi Dean is a Visiting Fellow at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. She is a Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and has held the position of Erasmus Chair of the Humanities at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is the author of nine books, including ‘Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies’ (2009), ‘Blog Theory’ (2010), and ‘Comrade’ (2019).
You can watch her full lecture.