Abstract
The Fetishism of the Network. It does not elude me that the title of this essay is itself the product of the processes that I will be critiquing. Paul Gilroy’s Against Race (2000) and Emily Apter’s Against World Literature (2013) are two well-known recent examples that adopt the classic titular form of the polemical pamphlet. It transpires that mine is not even the first polemic ‘against network thinking’. In the time between proposing an essay of this title to the editors of Affirmations and sitting down to write it, Michael Coward published an essay bearing the same title that addresses the field of international relations.1 What could be more ‘networked’ than the use of a construction whose meme-like popularity has shaped and connected adversarial practices of speech across the globe? It is a tacit admission that to speak against networks is the theoretical equivalent of ranting against corporate surveillance on Facebook.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 30-44 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Affirmations: of the modern |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ) (unless stated otherwise) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright is retained by the author(s).Keywords
- literature
- online social networks