[ecrea] New OA book - Trevor Smith: Politicizing Digital Space

Trevor Garrison Smith: Politicizing Digital Space -
Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy

New book in the open access book series "Critical Digital and Social 
Media Studies" (ed. Christian Fuchs), published by University of 
Westminster Press

http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/si…/books/10.16997/book5/

The objective of this book is to outline how a radically democratic 
politics can be reinvigorated in theory and practice through the use of 
the internet. The author argues that politics in its proper sense can be 
distinguished from anti-politics by analyzing the configuration of 
public space, subjectivity, participation, and conflict. Each of these 
terrains can be configured in a more or less political manner, though 
the contemporary status quo heavily skews them towards anti-political 
configuration.

Using this understanding of what exactly politics entails, this book 
considers how the internet can both help and hinder efforts to move each 
area in a more political direction. By explicitly interpreting 
contemporary theories of the political in terms of the internet, this 
analysis avoids the twin traps of both technological determinism and 
technological cynicism.

Raising awareness of what the word ‘politics’ means, the author develops 
theoretical work by Arendt, Rancière, Žižek and Mouffe to present a 
clear and coherent view of how in theory, politics can be digitized and 
alternatively how the internet can be deployed in the service of truly 
democratic politics.


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