Critical Paths into DH : Jodi Dean

[submitted by Melissa Seifert]

Jodi Dean, “Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics” Cultural Politics 1.1 (2005): 51-74.

Most of my research focuses on the physical and performative communication strategies employed in moments of political activism. Dean’s essay works as one path into DH, allowing me to explore digital activism and the implications of what Dean calls “the post-political formation of communicative capitalism.” She raises important questions about the political impact of networked communication technologies arguing that digital spaces are depoliticizing and that they normalize our acceptance of unresponsiveness, in lieu of mass communication.