The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device

With the advent of digitization and the affirmation of a symbolic value on social exchange within capital, public demonstrations of discontent are nowadays being performed along an aesthetic canon, thus losing their possible revolutionary potential. Once we internalized that it’s easier to imagine...

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Main Author: Marco Poloni
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Salerno 2020-10-01
Series:Culture e Studi del Sociale
Online Access:https://www.cussoc.it/journal/article/view/149
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author Marco Poloni
author_facet Marco Poloni
author_sort Marco Poloni
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description With the advent of digitization and the affirmation of a symbolic value on social exchange within capital, public demonstrations of discontent are nowadays being performed along an aesthetic canon, thus losing their possible revolutionary potential. Once we internalized that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, our struggles become individually symbolic and turn to aestheticism. Rather than stopping discontent, the power chooses to allow it because its performative content has already been neutralized. These demonstrations happen within a democratic culture – they play within the rules of the game. This is the imperial domination: to guarantee a resemblance of global peace for capital to develop, at the price of local omni-crisis. If Empire is born and shows itself as crisis, this crisis is felt at every peripheral point of the Empire. Solutions of governmentality have worked until now, but at a cost: even though there still are cathartic events, they don't manage release social tension completely – they always leave a mimetic residual. It's on those physical and psychological spaces of individual recognition that the Empire exercises its domination. And it’s there that forms of resistance can be tested.
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spelling doaj-art-c4336acbf82e49978f05dc6e508f86132025-08-20T03:44:21ZengUniversity of SalernoCulture e Studi del Sociale2531-39752020-10-0152The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary DeviceMarco Poloni0Universitat Autònoma Barcelona, Spain With the advent of digitization and the affirmation of a symbolic value on social exchange within capital, public demonstrations of discontent are nowadays being performed along an aesthetic canon, thus losing their possible revolutionary potential. Once we internalized that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, our struggles become individually symbolic and turn to aestheticism. Rather than stopping discontent, the power chooses to allow it because its performative content has already been neutralized. These demonstrations happen within a democratic culture – they play within the rules of the game. This is the imperial domination: to guarantee a resemblance of global peace for capital to develop, at the price of local omni-crisis. If Empire is born and shows itself as crisis, this crisis is felt at every peripheral point of the Empire. Solutions of governmentality have worked until now, but at a cost: even though there still are cathartic events, they don't manage release social tension completely – they always leave a mimetic residual. It's on those physical and psychological spaces of individual recognition that the Empire exercises its domination. And it’s there that forms of resistance can be tested. https://www.cussoc.it/journal/article/view/149
spellingShingle Marco Poloni
The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
Culture e Studi del Sociale
title The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
title_full The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
title_fullStr The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
title_full_unstemmed The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
title_short The Biopolitical Quest for Individuality as a Reactionary Device
title_sort biopolitical quest for individuality as a reactionary device
url https://www.cussoc.it/journal/article/view/149
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