The aim of my contribution to this session is, primarily, to underline the deep interconnection, incremental and contradictory, that is maturing in contemporary world between communication and financial capital. Such a phenomenon will be analyzed by taking into account their new respective forms, ambits, functions, and modes of development, as well as the pivotal, inedited roles they recently acquired in human history and in the current system. The methodological choice to understand such both communication and finance throughout the analysis of their reciprocal point of contact and friction, is suggest not only by the increasing amount of empirical evidences. It is also based on the theoretical assumption about the nature of contemporary capitalism I defend. According to this, nowadays social and individual lives themselves are the autonomous source and cooperative actors of value production - even outside, beside and beyond the traditional formal ambits of labour. Thus, within the new social structure shaped by the capitalistic processes of accumulation, the conventional conception, extent, and functions of communication and finance explode. The one becomes the trendily universal ambit in which the entire reality is caught and "represented." the other turns into the historical adequate form in which capital can economically express material, cognitive, and relational value, and politically command and direct social forces. I argue that both communication and finance, as well as the process of their mutual and contradictory development, are shaped by the new vector of capitalistic structure of power/knowledge relations consisting of the mechanism of "digitalization." On this bases, I will finally try to contribute to the necessary effort to adjourn the modern concept of "public sphere" to the contemporary statute and role acquired by communication, by proposing the concept of "general sphere." In fact, I argue it could be able to better highlight, understand, and politically face the effective and potential consequences of the ongoing historical processes, on the social and political levels, and from a geo-hegemonic point of view.

Finance, Communication, and the "General Sphere"

BUSCEMA, Carmelo
2012-01-01

Abstract

The aim of my contribution to this session is, primarily, to underline the deep interconnection, incremental and contradictory, that is maturing in contemporary world between communication and financial capital. Such a phenomenon will be analyzed by taking into account their new respective forms, ambits, functions, and modes of development, as well as the pivotal, inedited roles they recently acquired in human history and in the current system. The methodological choice to understand such both communication and finance throughout the analysis of their reciprocal point of contact and friction, is suggest not only by the increasing amount of empirical evidences. It is also based on the theoretical assumption about the nature of contemporary capitalism I defend. According to this, nowadays social and individual lives themselves are the autonomous source and cooperative actors of value production - even outside, beside and beyond the traditional formal ambits of labour. Thus, within the new social structure shaped by the capitalistic processes of accumulation, the conventional conception, extent, and functions of communication and finance explode. The one becomes the trendily universal ambit in which the entire reality is caught and "represented." the other turns into the historical adequate form in which capital can economically express material, cognitive, and relational value, and politically command and direct social forces. I argue that both communication and finance, as well as the process of their mutual and contradictory development, are shaped by the new vector of capitalistic structure of power/knowledge relations consisting of the mechanism of "digitalization." On this bases, I will finally try to contribute to the necessary effort to adjourn the modern concept of "public sphere" to the contemporary statute and role acquired by communication, by proposing the concept of "general sphere." In fact, I argue it could be able to better highlight, understand, and politically face the effective and potential consequences of the ongoing historical processes, on the social and political levels, and from a geo-hegemonic point of view.
2012
Financialization; ICTs
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11770/187498
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