ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes the notion of the “neodialectic” in order to designate a new model of interactions among power, digital media, and resistances. In this neodialectic model, a number of distinctive characteristics emerge that differentiate it from the dialectic of the pre-digital era: first, an acceleration of the social time that affects the expressions of popular resistance, which become more spasmodic; second, a conditioning of human action through digital filters, meaning that collective agency is more mediated; and last, a dissociation between power structures that are strongly material—distribution of resources, governmental control of means of coercion—and forms of protest that are increasingly visual, symbolic, and self-communicative. A first defining characteristic of the neodialectic model is that of a greater visuality of resistance actions. This is linked to the way in which expressions of contemporary resistance adopt distinctive characteristics conditioned by the filters of the digital media.
