Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (Diaeresis)

Flisfeder, Matthew

ISBN 10: 081014333X / ISBN 13: 9780810143333

Published by Northwestern University Press, 2021

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media (Diaeresis)
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081014333X
• ISBN 13: 9780810143333
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In Algorithmic Desire, Matthew Flisfeder shows that social media is a metaphor that reveals the dominant form of contemporary ideology: neoliberal capitalism. The preeminent medium of our time, social media’s digital platform and algorithmic logic shape our experience of democracy, enjoyment, and desire. Weaving between critical theory and analyses of popular culture, Flisfeder uses examples from The King’s Speech, Black Mirror, Gone Girl, The Circle, and Arrival to argue that social media highlights the antisocial dimensions of twenty‑first-century capitalism. He counters leading critical theories of social media—such as new materialism and accelerationism—and thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, proposing instead a new structuralist account of the ideology and metaphor of social media. Emphasizing the structural role of crises, gaps, and negativity as central to our experiences of reality, Flisfeder interprets the social media metaphor through a combination of dialectical, Marxist, and Lacanian frameworks to show that algorithms may indeed read our desire, but capitalism, not social media, truly makes us antisocial. Wholly original in its interdisciplinary approach to social media and ideology, Flisfeder’s conception of “algorithmic desire” is timely, intriguing, and sure to inspire debate.
 

About the Author

MATTHEW FLISFEDER is an associate professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Postmodern Theory and “Blade Runner” and The Symbolic, the Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film.