ABSTRACT
The truth of the ‘postmodern moment’ that took place between 1979 and 1995, I will argue, consists in the underlying tension between two technological processes: the biopolitical integration of human beings into the networks of global capital and the emergence of a techno-aesthetic sphere in which ‘the subject’ is able to constantly reimagine his/her freedom and identity. An essential part of the media revolution that happened in the 1980s and 1990s, therefore, is revealed in the development of a neoliberal aesthetic that constantly reforms and re-presents the tension between the biotechnological integration of human beings and the subjective-aesthetic imagination of freedom, individuality, and desire. I will argue that this period marks the emergence of neoliberalism as a flexible conjunction of images and discursive strategies that radically alters the reproduction of capital, and that French poststructural analyses of mass media events, virtual capital, and the encoding of knowledge anticipate the political and economic effects of digital media on the global economy. The critiques of representation, identity, and truth set out by Baudrillard, Lyotard, and Derrida, in other terms, point to a critical understanding of the development of neoliberalism into a multiple determined ideology of corporate power, virtual freedom, and authoritarian sovereignty.
