ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary mainstream criticism in the context of communicative capitalism, investigating the means of the operationalisation of our critical paradox at the level of affect. Specifically, it focuses on the relation between social media and desire, reflecting upon our critical compulsion against the backdrop of the proliferation of digital means of critical engagement. This reflection upon our obsession with the technology of critique is intended to explicate the social effects of the process of the digitalisation of the critical engagement rituals referred to in Chapter 3. Using an episode of the dystopian English TV series Black Mirror entitled ‘The National Anthem’ as a case study, the chapter accordingly dramatises the consequences of our critical paradox at the intersection point of politics, morality and ethics. It examines both the allegedly drug-like euphoric quality of contemporary criticism as well as the role played by the networked communication technologies in the maintenance of the former. Contending that the ecstatic dimension of critique is sustained through digital hyper-ritualisation of indignation, the chapter augments its discussion through the application of Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘extreme phenomena’ to critique. This, in turn, culminates in the conceptualisation of our digital critical compulsion as ‘hyper-critique’.
