Twilight of the Social by Henry A. Giroux

Author:Henry A. Giroux [Giroux, Henry A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General
ISBN: 9781612050553
Google: otkmtAEACAAJ
Publisher: Paradigm Publishers
Published: 2012-01-15T02:51:16+00:00

The New Media and Public Values

The call for a revitalized politics grounded in an effective democracy is one point of entry in challenging the culture of neoliberalism. Instead of the fulfillment of the utopian promises made by neoliberal capital, people around the world increasingly face an all-consuming emphasis on insecurity, market relations, commercialization, privatization, and the creation of a global economy of part-time and itinerant workers. Initiating the challenge to neoliberalism’s dystopian reality is important because it confronts Americans with the problem of developing those public spheres—such as the old and new media, higher education, and other cultural institutions—that provide the conditions for creating citizens who are capable of exercising their freedoms, competent to question the basic assumptions that govern political life, and skilled enough to participate in developing social movements that will enable them to shape the basic social, political, and economic orders that govern their lives.

In spite of the fact that some notions of the public good have been recalled from exile in light of the economic recession and the collective resistance being mobilized among workers, students, and others in defense of social protections and the most basic elements of the common good, many young people and adults today still view the private as the only space in which to imagine any sense of hope, pleasure, or possibility. Paradoxically, the expansion of the ideology of privatization through the public sector is made all the more powerful by the erosion of those intimate spaces that once offered some refuge from the market-driven values of the larger society. How else to understand a culture in which thoughtfulness is sacrificed to speed and multitasking and identities are defined through logos, brands, and labels? The domain of the private is increasingly erased through the ubiquitous presence of television in the home as well as the new electronic communication systems made possible by portable computers, wireless Internet connectivity, instant video and text messaging, surveillance technologies, and various mobile applications that unite humans and machines so as to infiltrate even the spaces and moments of personal reflection necessary to nurture critical modes of individual and social agency. The speed, rhythms, and modes of appropriation of the new electronic media, as Jacques Derrida has shown, work to undermine institutions and make critical thought and democratic speech difficult because of their relentless ability to colonize and commodify all aspects of everyday life.51

We live in a media-saturated culture in which the proliferation of the new, the emphasis on flexibility, and the rapid pace of change prevent experiences from crystalizing, events from being seriously discussed, and commitments to a just society from developing. Market forces continue to focus on the related issues of consumption, excessive profits, and fear. Reduced to the act of consuming, citizenship is “mostly about forgetting, not learning,”52 despite the hyped-up and increasing appeal to bear collectively the burden of hard times—a burden that always seems to fall on the shoulders of working people but not on the banks or other commanding financial institutions that owe their survival to government bailouts.

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