From the Multitude (Back) to the People: Emerging Figures in Technocratic Populism

• In Event: Critical Perspectives on “the People” and the Popular in Networked Media Cultures

Abstract

In autonomist social theory, the “popular” is complicated via a critique of the sovereign collective subject underpinning it, favoring the concept Multitude (Spinozan multiplicity expanding on a global networked scale) over the People (Hobbesian unity tied to nation-state). But what happens when the multitude shows signs of devolving into, or reviving elements of, the People? This paper explores this question by delineating three subjective figures or tendencies within a contemporary technopopulist milieu: 1) The Techno-Statist (e.g. Jared Cohen and the Alliance of Youth Movements); 2) The Techno-activist Entrepreneur (e.g. former Adbusters editor and Occupy Wall Street figure Micah White and his Boutique Activist Consultancy) and 3) The Techno-Neoroyalist (e.g. former OWS TechOps member Justine Tunney’s online expressions of “Dark Enlightenment” and neoreactionary sentiments). Each is a type of emergent technocrat that pushes political analysis to revisit a reversal, namely the multitude-becoming-people, or the vexed affective attachments to Empire and State.

Author

• Jack Zeljko Bratich, Rutgers U