Jonathan Beller

Bio

Beller is the author of The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle and Acquiring Eyes: Philippine Visuality, Nationalist Struggle and the World-Media System. He has taught at History of Consciousness and Literature at UC Santa Cruz, at SFSU, at Barnard College and is currently Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute.

Abstract

The Digital Ideology

"The Digital" has become the mantra for all things contemporary and as such signals that the capitalist market is present in the very articulation of digitality. We can be sure that unless we ourselves develop an antagonistic relation to "the digital" and "digital culture" our creativity, if that's what it is, will continue to serve that system which structurally guarantees the accumulation of wealth by a tiny minority and the intensifying immiseration of the global majority. Thus, from the standpoint of social justice, any theory of labor/value that does not reckon with structural inequality and the larger contradictions of capitalism is pernicious.