Communicative Capitalism

Jodi Dean’s Communicative Capitalism describes the exploitation of communicative labor in an age of networked media. Communicative capitalism operates by capturing users in affective “networks of enjoyment, production and surveillance,"[1] for which Dean applies the psychoanalytic concept of drive. Drive is distinct from desire, since desire can be fulfilled. Drive, rather, attains pleasure by never reaching its mark, it is the enjoyment one feels by never fulfilling a goal, but remains caught in compulsive, feedback loops of behavior as a result. Because communicative capitalism is indifferent to the semantic content of what is communicated, radical critiques are just as exploitable as kitten videos; what matters is that something is being circulated, so as to sustain the capture of drive, and continue generating extractable surplus value elsewhere.

[1] Jodi Dean, Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in Circuits of Drive, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010).