[D66] Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

[Antid Oto]

http://www.aejmc.org/topics/archives/3137
Book Review

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and 
Left Politics.
Jodi Dean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 232 pages.


Jodi Dean is a multitasker. She teaches political science at Hobart and 
William Smith Colleges, and is the Erasmus Professor of the Humanities 
at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is also a critical scholar 
worthy of the title. Rather than following the well-worn path of 
criticism directed at the “powers that be,” Dean directs her attention 
toward the infirmities within and among critics and activists on the 
political left in the United States. At the heart of her critique is her 
suggestion that the once-sharp edges of social movement vanguards have 
been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving 
chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she 
defines as the essence of “communicative capitalism.”
Despite the fact that most of the analyses that serve as core of her six 
tightly organized chapters were written before we had much experience 
with the “post-partisan” and “post-racial” versions of progressive 
politics as performed by the Obama administration, most readers could 
fill in the blanks on what her assessment would likely be.
Dean lays the groundwork for her attack on liberal capitulation to a 
neoliberal hegemony by identifying several core themes in the approach 
to social policy that achieved dominance during the Clinton years. Of 
particular significance is her suggestion that the discursive frameworks 
that supported progressive struggles for the “rights” of various 
oppressed groups served to reinforce the “position of the victim” at the 
heart of these movements. She then suggests that it is precisely the 
character and capacity of communicative capitalism that creates “ideal 
discursive habitats for the thriving of the victim identity.” Although 
Dean gives a central place of honor to recent work in psychoanalytic 
theory, the examples, arguments, and illustrations that she provides 
throughout the book will still generate understanding and appreciation 
among those of us not well grounded in Lacanian Marxism.
Dean explicates her take on the nature of communicative capitalism, 
appropriately enough, in a chapter on technology. In essence, she argues 
that rather than serving the democratic functions of enlightenment that 
we expect to find in a Habermasian public sphere, the ever-expanding 
flow of commentary and personal expression exists as little more than 
circulating content, something akin to a warm bath. For example, she 
suggests that pointed criticism “doesn’t require an answer because it 
doesn’t stick as criticism. It functions as just another opinion offered 
into the media-stream.” Thus, her definition of communicative capitalism 
is “talk without response.” In her view, communications technology helps 
to provide a “fantasy of participation” where taking political action is 
reduced to an act of talking into the space of flows of which the 
Internet is the deepest end.
Her chapter on free trade as a neoliberal fantasy provides an informed 
and engaged assessment of the means by which an idealized marketplace 
has come to stand as the guarantor of individual freedom at the cost of 
any hopes of achieving anything approaching social, political, or 
economic equality. For Dean, the core fantasy of the free trade story is 
a world in which everybody wins, except for those who fail to invest 
well, or fall victim to those who cheat. Even our failure to enjoy our 
meager winnings serves to reinforce the identity of victim (or criminal).
Democracy itself is examined in a chapter that focuses on its critical 
assessment as a radical ideal, a political practice, and as a 
“theoretical justification for rule.” This particular aspect of 
democracy is explored through a framework that reads “deliberative 
democracy” as “the discourse of the university.” Essentially in what is 
a detailed criticism of Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson’s contribution 
to this framework, Dean characterizes most political deliberation as 
merely talk circulating around any decision as “a justification of 
itself.” As a result, no one has to accept responsibility for decisions 
taken, or for the social outcomes that result, because the possibility 
of further talk is always there. Indeed, in her critical construction of 
the ideal of democracy “we already know what is to be done—critique, 
discuss, include, and revise.”
Dean uses Judith Butler’s writing on ethics as a basis for her own 
criticism of the manner in which left political criticism appears to 
have embraced ethics “out of a kind of political despair.” She suggests 
that following Butler’s lead would make it difficult for us to engage in 
principled condemnation of individual or institutional misbehaviors out 
of a fear of disconnection. Of course, she doesn’t agree, suggesting 
that condemnation might be the basis for political mobilization.
Although I don’t understand why Dean has chosen to end her book with an 
extended discussion of conspiracy theories and certainty as an aspect of 
psychosis, she easily accomplishes her goal of associating the rise and 
spread of these extremist discourses with communicative capitalism in 
full bloom. Perhaps she goes too far. Dean admits that she is quite 
pessimistic about the political potential of alternative progressive 
media, trapped as they are within the directionless flow of personalized 
expressions of certainty about little that matters.
There are no answers here, but there are a great many entry points 
through which we all might explore the realm of still possible and 
desirable futures.

OSCAR H. GANDY JR.
University of Pennsylvania