story © Michael Betancourt | published May 13, 2010 | permalink |  |  

Here is a short teaser sample from an article soon-to-be published on CTheory:

... designation is agnotologic capitalism: a capitalism systemically based on the production and maintenance of ignorance. [13] The accusations of fraud against banks such as Goldman Sachs for creating derivatives “designed to fail” and then claiming that these commodities are of the highest value—demonstrates this process of misinformation designed to obfuscate, confuse and confound functions to create ignorance. This situation is partly a function of ideological blindness, and partly a reflection of the all-too-human desire to believe in positive scenarios such as the well known, but hypothetical, “free lunch.” Coupled with an affective performance, the agnotological dimension can only produce a social dynamic of misinformation.

This agnotism affects all participants within digital capitalism, precisely because it is the enabling factor for the perpetuation of the cycle of bubbles and the escalation of values they create. The limited horizons produced within this social network of agents and immaterial assets constrains the range of potential solutions to those that reinforce the established dynamic; this is the Ponzi formulation in action—as with the caucus-race in Alice in Wonderland, there is no alternative but to run faster simply to remain in place. It is this perverse dynamic that generates the need for affective remedial services. Juan Martin Prada’s affective capitalism is thus a symptom of the disassociation between the reality of capitalist economy and the alienation it produces