Invisibility, Inequality and the Dialectics of the Real in the Digital Age

Abstract

In the digital age, the practical possibility of engaging inequalities as political problems, that is, as problems related to the competition for the control over the distribution of values in society, is undermined by the digital invisibility of reality In the current state of affairs, the digitalization of society reflects the influence of capitalist interpellation and brings about the invisibility of the real. The invisibility of the real through capitalist digitalization, in turn, conflates digitization and digitalization subordinating the latter to the former. Construed as a process inspired by technological rationality, capitalist digitalization undermines the possibility of mobilizing knowledge and legitimizing practices in support of the interpretation of invisibilities in relation to inequalities and injustice. In line with the critical perspective of Andrew Feenberg and others, my approach is that the influence of capitalism in the digital age results from an epistemic appropriation of a technological development. This appropriation is the source of invisibilities that support inequalities and ultimately injustices that can and should be opposed. Leading on from this, my point is that opposition to this influence depends on the possibility of establishing alternative epistemic grounds and the formulation of alternative interpellations for the production of digital subjectivity. To foster the normative agenda of critical theory, I discuss this possibility in terms of the ‘dialectics of the real’, the re-politicization of the social construction of reality in the digital age and the role of critical media literacy.