POST-POSTMODERNISM AND BEYOND: THE DIGITAL WORLD AND ITS IMPACTS
In recent years, the logic of bureaucratic and capitalist administration has rapidly driven the development of computing. Political-economic interests have fueled the exponential growth of the variety, volume, and velocity of information, to a degree “where quantity turns into a quality.” Increasingly, algorithms and digital machines are generating, storing, processing, and collecting Big Data. Globally, humans average 6 hours and 58 minutes of screen time per day. We have managed to convince ourselves that the decentralized character of the internet has allowed us to overcome hierarchies, foster a participatory culture, and allow democratic communication to flourish.
In this essay, we will explore how the pervasive nature of digital capitalism has infiltrated the fabric of modern society, turning us into the subjects of a modern form of imperialist capitalism. Firstly, we will argue that society has severed itself from its former frameworks. The triumphs of the postmodern thinker no longer resonate in our digital age. We have entered a new era: post-postmodernism. As the digital machine has become increasingly pervasive in our day-to-day life, so has our distance from postmodernism. Second, we will argue that the organizational structure of post-postmodernism has led to the optimal conditions for the revivification of the imperialist dynamics of capitalism. Instead of nations turning others to their colonial subjects, the proto-capitalist digital processing companies have turned us into victims of subjugation. Lastly, we will look into our own contribution to the omnipresence of this cycle. Using Jeremy Bentham’s design of the Panopticon as an explanatory model for humanity’s inescapability from the digital machine.
OUR NEW EPOCH: POST-POSTMODERNISM AND ITS ARCHITECTURE
Postmodernism rejected the concept of an objective truth, and instead, in its deconstruction of metastructures, explored pluralities of truth(s) alongside the individual’s experiences of reality to validate them. Jean-François Lyotard denominates this phenomenon as the death of metanarratives, a successive fragmentation of authorized belief systems, born out of the non-negotiable ethical oppositions between perpetrators and victims arising from the horrors of World War I and II. The inherent questioning of determinism was a feature of the works of brilliant postmodern thinkers, such as Haraway, Derride, Deleuze, Guattari, and Lyotard. Postmodernism thought stressed “chance instead of design, deconstruction instead of totality, absence instead of presence, networks instead of hierarchies, and indeterminacy instead of determinacy.” For cultural theorist, Eric Gans, these frameworks were derived from the identification of “peripheral victims” and disdaining the “utopian center” occupied by their perpetrators, and justly so. Postmodernism was the response to the incomprehensible destruction of the mid-twentieth century.
For Gans, humanity has severed itself from its former frameworks and entered the new epoch of postmillennialism: the rejection of victimary thinking and a turn to “non-victimary dialogue” that will “diminish the amount of resentment in the world.” Gans was correct in his recognition of our separation from postmodernism. Postmodernism, indeed, has died. Where he fails is in analysis of what rose from its ashes. We will henceforth refer to this new epoch as post-postmodernism.
A more accurate deconstruction has been conducted by the literary Alan Kirby. In his work, The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, Kirby formulated a sociocultural assessment of post-postmodernism that he calls “pseudo-modernism,” a triteness and shallowness that results from the instantaneous, superficial participation in culture made possible by our digital world. Pseudo-modernism’s “typical intellectual states” are furthermore described as “ignorance, fanaticism and anxiety,” producing a “trance-like state” within its “participants”. Whilst Kirby’s definition is certainly more accurate, his definition of humanity as “participants” underestimates the pervasive digitalisation of the modern world. Post-postmodernism has become the host for a new age of digital imperialism. Whilst there cannot exist a singular definition for our current condition, the following will attempt to reveal its basic principles:
1. Postmodernism sought to successively deconstruct the metastructures of authorized belief systems whilst validating the truths of “peripheral victims”, born from the non-negotiable collective traumas of colonialism, global tensions, and war. Post-postmodernism is the pseudo-legitimization of this “victimary dialogue,” in which each individual’s experience of reality is determined as objective truth. Postmodernism fought for the successive fragmentation of authorized belief systems. Post-postmodernism re-built this deconstruction into a web of superficial digital participation.
2. Postmodernism encouraged open discourse and critical thinking. In post-postmodernism, humanity is falsely led into believing it engages in the aforementioned activities. Instead, society engages in a digital hubbub of pseudo-intellectualism in synchron with victimary dialogue, fuelled by the manipulation of data by authorities.
3. Post-postmodernism is the age of “surveillance capitalism,” as defined by Shoshana Zuboff. The Zuboffian definition closely articulates the architecture of the modern state: “a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.”
In a world where “victimary dialogue” has become popular discourse and in which each individual’s experience of reality is deemed “objective truth,” there no longer exists a need for critical thinking. We are no longer responsible for our misfortunes. Instead of responsibilities, we have turned to a self-internalized form of auto-victimization. Now, through clicks, likes, upvotes, and the like, the machine feeds us more of what we buy into. It has become inescapable. The more we feel “connected” to the digital world, the less we feel connected to those around us. How can humanity be expected to exchange thoughts when the machine validates their self-conformity? The machine divides us, and it is precisely under these conditions that this “new economic order” can take place under.
THE REVIVIFICATION OF THE IMPERIALIST DYNAMICS OF CAPITALISM
We have examined the conditions and architecture of the state of post-postmodernism. It is these very conditions that contribute to our ever-growing isolation, anxieties, and hence, overreliance upon the digital world. The primary consequence of post-postmodernism is the revivification of the former imperialist dynamics of capitalism. Marxist economist Paul Baran first presented his dependency theories in the 1960s in response to the delayed development in former colonial states:
Poor nations provide natural resources, cheap labor, a destination for obsolete technology, and markets for developed nations, without which the latter could not have the standard of living they enjoy.
Wealthy nations actively perpetuate a state of dependence by various means. This influence may be multifaceted, involving economics, control, politics, banking and finance, education, and culture.
How is our modern age any different? It is we, who have become the imperial subjects, victims of subjugation, not by other nations, but by the authoritarian corporations who use us as vessels for their proto-capitalist ventures. Post-postmodernism is the rebirth of what postmodernism sought to destroy. The neo-imperialist model of surveillance capitalism has recreated the relationship of subordination and dependency seen prior, this time, not military, but economic. Our modern world has fallen victim to the machine, an advanced form of digital colonialism, targeted at the mass population. As a result of socio-political interests and the rapid growth of technological development, the volume, velocity, and variety of data increased to a degree where quantity turns into a new quality: Big Data. Algorithms and digital machines are collecting, generating, storing, and processing. The machine now makes decisions. Humans have become sidelined in the process of critical thinking. This neo-imperialist architecture places corporations at the forefront of thought systems, knowledge sharing, discourse, and ideologies. The “roots of digital knowledge and authority are no longer confined [...], mediating every form of social participation.” These concepts are beautifully articulated in Zuboff’s Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Post-postmodernism has become the graceful host to the “parasitic economic login in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification.” Human experience has become free, raw material, ready for translation into behavioral data. The competitive dynamism of this new imperialist market “acquires our behavioral surplus: our voices, personalities, and emotions.”
Capitalism has become pervasive, and increasingly so. It gives us no choice. As we are no longer individuals, but digital consumers, we now have to pick sides. To agree with what is “acceptable”. To disagree with what is “offensive.” To refuse conformity is to face ostracization. Faced with this threat the machine presents us, we better click, share, and like what has been agreed as defensible. It is in this manner that neo-digital imperialism has resulted in the inevitable campification of thought. The formal structures that postmodernist thinkers thought to challenge and change, the concept of “us,” and “them,” has now been corporatized. The means of production have now been subordinated to “complex and comprehensive means of behavioral modification.” It continues to divide us. Many countries have experienced heightened political polarization, where opposing ideological or political groups become more extreme in their views, making compromise or cooperation difficult. Interculturally, differences in beliefs, values, and attitudes have become more pronounced, leading to tensions between various groups within societies. Due to this digital age of neo-imperialist corporatization, we only consume information that aligns with our preexisting beliefs, leading to larger echo chambers where differing perspectives are to be dismissed.
AUTO-PANOPTIFICATION: WE’VE ALL GOT OUR EYES ON US
The Panopticon is a conceptual design developed by Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and social theorist, in the 18th century. Bentham's Panopticon was a system of social control where the constant possibility of surveillance would lead individuals to regulate their own behavior. This design aimed to induce a state of self-discipline among prisoners, thereby internalizing the disciplinary mechanisms of the authoritarian institution. The digital age has led to an incredible phenomenon. We have seen the auto-panoptification of society. Big Brother was a concept popularized by George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. It is the symbolic, all-seeing, and omnipotent leader of the totalitarian regime: the Party. In popular culture, many point to our political organizations and institutions and draw parallels between the two. We are overlooking a far more problematic issue. We have seen a further development of Bentham’s Panopticon. There no longer requires an institutional being to police our compliance. We now do it ourselves. With unrestricted access to each other’s personal lives, privacy has become a thing of the past. The very recent phenomenon of cancel culture functions as clear evidence for this development. Cancel culture involves a form of social monitoring through social media, where individuals or groups are criticized, shamed, and ostracized for behavior or viewpoints deemed unacceptable by communities or societies at large. This auto-panoptification is of incredible importance. Not only have we become the subjects of the imperialist dynamics of neo-capitalism, but it is us who prevent our inescapability.
POST-POSTMODERNISM AND BEYOND
The first step to freedom is to realize one’s enslavement. If one cannot see the prison walls, they will never learn that they are captive. Much like Plato’s subjects in his Cave, the shadows the digital world presents to us are our reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. I firmly believe humanity can improve its relationship with the digital world. Awareness, however, must ultimately be the first step.
