Concept Note:
Idealist
thinking marked the development of the Internet and digital
technologies, especially in the 1990s. Writers, both academic and
popular, imagined a more democratic world where information would be
unrestricted, communication would erase space, and technologies would
free our time. In many ways, rhetoric about the Internet and other
digital technologies parallel the uncritical hope many found in the
technological inventions of the scientific revolution and philosophical
edicts of the Enlightenment. In Dialectic of Enlightenment,
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer demonstrate that the exact
developments in science and technology heralded by enlightenment
thinkers as elevating freedom actually resulted in greater oppression of
the masses.
Utopian (and dystopian) visions of technology
surround us, but they tend to obscure more than they reveal. Nuanced
accounts of existing digital phenomenon are necessary to identify the
operations of power and complex cultural logics embedded in seemingly
novel cultural texts and practices.
This edited collection aims to
explore the contradictions of digital culture to provide the critical
work necessary to understand the role of digital technology in
contemporary society.
We seek theoretical engagements with the
digital dialectic as well as case studies that explore the
contradictions inherent in digital phenomena. Several contributors have
been confirmed. Areas of scholarship currently underrepresented include
(but are not limited to):
- Net neutrality
- Platforms – Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify, etc.
- Professionalization/Commodification of “amateur” culture (fanfiction, crafts, ext.)
- Social Media
- Political Organizing
- Environmental Issues/Sustainability
- Dark Web – Tor
- Journalism (alternative facts; changes in print media)
- Disability Cultures
Please submit a 300-500-word abstract and 200-word author bio by March 1, 2018 to DialecticDigitalCulture@gmail.com. Drafts of accepted chapters will be due August 1, 2018.
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