The Critique of Digital Capitalism: An Analysis of the Political Economy of Digital Culture and Technology

Anything that can be automated, will be. The “magic” that digital technology has brought us — self-driving cars, Bitcoin, high frequency trading, internet of things, social networking, mass surveillance, the 2009 housing bubble — has not been considered ideologically. The Critique of Digital Capitalism identifies how digital technology has captured contemporary society in a reification of capitalist priorities. The theory proposed in this book is the description of how digital capitalism as an ideologically “invisible” framework is realized in technology. Written as a series of articles between 2003 and 2015, it provides a broad critical scope for understanding the inherent demands of capitalist protocols for expansion without constraint (regardless of social, legal or ethical limits) that are increasingly being realized as autonomous systems no longer dependent on human labor or oversight and implemented without social discussion of their impacts. The digital illusion of infinite resources, infinite production, and no costs appears as an “end to scarcity,” whereby digital production supposedly eliminates costs and makes everything equally available to everyone. This fantasy of production without consumption hides the physical costs and real-world impacts of these technologies

The Fantastic Structure of Freedom: Sartre, Freud, and Lacan

This dissertation reassesses the complex philosophical relationship between Sartre and psychoanalysis. Most scholarship on this topic focuses on Sartre’s criticisms of the unconscious as anathema both to his conception of the human psyche as devoid of any hidden depths or mental compartments and, correlatively, his account of human freedom. Many philosophers conclude that there is little common ground between Sartrean existentialism and psychoanalytic theory. I argue, on the contrary, that by shifting the emphasis from concerns about the nature of the unconscious to questions about the role of imagination in psychical life, we can see that Sartre and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory develop strikingly similar accounts of human subjectivity. After establishing the historical background of Sartre’s career-long engagement with psychoanalysis, I demonstrate the proximity of Sartre and Lacan on the nature of unconscious thought. I proceed to develop the claim that there is a homology between the concept of unconscious fantasy in psychoanalysis and the concept of the imaginary in Sartre’s philosophical corpus. Despite the concept of fantasy being one of the more structuralist-inspired aspects of Lacan’s metapsychology, I show that Sartre’s concept of the imaginary is likewise a structural feature of the psyche, one which establishes the coordinates within which the subject engages with the world. For Sartre, Freud, and Lacan fantasies form the core of subjectivity, giving form to the basic patterns of one’s character. Taken together, these three thinkers furnish a nuanced view of fantasy/the imaginary. On the one hand it is determining insofar as it is responsible for many of the psychopathologies met with in psychoanalysis. On the other hand, it is liberating insofar as the agency of the subject is implicated in the formation of fantasy. I thereby show that Sartre does not fit the caricatured picture of a radical voluntarist that is often attributed to him and that psychoanalysis can accommodate a conception of human freedom

Constructing collective identities in the Internet age: a case study of Taiwanese-based internet forums

The thesis presents a case study of asynchronous Taiwanese-based internet forums, aimed at exploring new perspectives in the question of collective identity construction via intemet-forum participation. It develops a discursive-constructivist approach that incorporates the theories and models of Goffman, Butler, Laclau & Mouffe and Melucci, investigating the performative, antagonistic and negotiated dimensions of identities. Methodologically, it deploys a series of analytic tools from linguistics and micro sociology, as well as the methods of content analysis and online ethnography. Focusing on the questions of gay identities and national identities, the case study tracks down ten years of archives of the local gay forums and political forums, examining the ways in which collective identities take form through speech performance and social interactions in cyberspace. The case analysis of the gay forums finds that the internet gives rise to networked online gay communities, where individual gays’ subject-positions are performed. Meanwhile, the forums permit the reconstruction of the Other of the gay community, which ironically results in the creation of an internal Other among the community. Furthermore, the forums allow their grassroots participants to engage in the local gay movement, which eventually leads to change in the public identity of the movement. The case of national identity shows that antagonism between the two oppositional nationalisms in Taiwan penetrates identity practices in this domain; cyberspace is no exception. The local political forums become the space for marking, creating and stigmatising the Other. Nevertheless, they also provide the space for negotiated interactions concerning identity-oriented national projects, as well as facilitate dialogues between Chinese and Taiwanese online participants on the question of Taiwan’s future. To conclude, internet forums do not necessarily lead to the devolution of symbolic and political power of their participants. Mainstream discourses still deeply influence the discourses in cyberspace. Grassroots participation in debates concerning social projects may intervene in decision-making; however, this is dependent on the participants’ access to valid information and the decision makers’ attitudes towards the grassroots forums. Finally, while connecting people together, the internet is also disuniting people in spreading antagonisms and animosity

A Lacanian and post-Althusserian approach to homophobia and its resolution

Bibliography: pages 266-280.This thesis is a theoretical analysis. It attempts to address the problem of how to conceive the process by which, in certain cultures, a particular social phenomenon, the stigmatisation of homosexuality, has powerful negative effects at the level of individual emotions. Individuals' abhorrence of their own homosexual desires, as well as individuals' abhorrence of the homosexuality of others, are considered. The answer provided is held to apply to both men and women. The problem is also addressed, within the same parameters, of how change from abhorrence to acceptance of homosexuality is to be conceived with respect to the relation between social and individual phenomena. In order to develop an answer to these questions, relevant aspects of appropriate theoretical frameworks are described and an integration of them developed. These frameworks are: Lacanian psychoanalysis, which provides an account of the individual subject's relation to the social; and a post-structuralist view of ideology, which analyzes the specific contributions made by the social phenomenon of ideology to the way the individual makes sense of the world. A particular aspect of ideology as understood in this view is emphasised and developed. This is the importance ideology is understood to give to the concepts "natural" and "unnatural". The ideological role of these concepts is then argued to provide a link, for the present purposes, between the psychoanalytic theory of the subject and the relevant theory of ideology. In this way a synthesis of the two theoretical areas, suitable for the present aims, is developed. This synthesis is then applied to the problem outlined above of making sense of homophobia (the abhorrence of homosexuality), and to the problem outlined above of making sense of the resolution of homophobia (the change to acceptance of homosexuality). The homophobic individual is argued to be best conceived of as trapped in a complex set of contradictions resulting from the collusion of unconscious strivings with the ideologically emphasised idea of what is natural. The resolution of homophobia is argued to be best conceived of as a resolution of the above-mentioned set of contradictions through modifications of the role given by ideology to the concepts of what is natural and unnatural. This conceptualisation of the synthesis of aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis and aspects of a theory of ideology is then suggested to have a variety of further applications of the type developed here

Beyond Disability: Extraordinary Bodies in the Work of William Gibson

This dissertation conceptualizes figurations of disability in the work of contemporary U.S.-American writer William Gibson arguing that there is a distinct development in the representation of the manner and effect of corporeality from the Sprawl to the Bigend trilogy. In the Sprawl trilogy, prosthetic repair and rehabilitation are depicted as a common cultural practice, whereas in the Bigend trilogy the medical cure of the characters’ “deficiencies” for purposes of normative alignment is no longer a desired measure. By adopting a disability studies framework, I argue that this transition is not primarily related to a shift in genre, which does exist, but instead that it is motivated by a changing attitude toward the “broken” body that seeks restoration. A main concern of this book is, therefore, to understand the formal qualities of Gibson’s writing with regard to the forms and functions of the disabled figure, and to further demonstrate how this literary style and underlying ideology changes in parallel with the advancement of cultural conceptions of disability. This thesis distinguishes two major shifts over the course of the novels, one on the level of genre and the other on the conceptual level. I show how Gibson’s depiction of characters draws increasingly on a processual understanding of the human body, and decreasingly on traditional prosthetic technologies. This conceptual trajectory from prostheses to processes corresponds with the genre-specific shift in Gibson’s work that I classify as one from technoromanticism to new realism. The analysis is methodologically met with a theoretical triad that feeds on the socio-historical developments of the concept of disability, drawing specifically on the theory of intersectionality, new materialism, and actor-network theory

Digital Filters

The new technology advances provide that a great number of system signals can be easily measured with a low cost. The main problem is that usually only a fraction of the signal is useful for different purposes, for example maintenance, DVD-recorders, computers, electric/electronic circuits, econometric, optimization, etc. Digital filters are the most versatile, practical and effective methods for extracting the information necessary from the signal. They can be dynamic, so they can be automatically or manually adjusted to the external and internal conditions. Presented in this book are the most advanced digital filters including different case studies and the most relevant literature