Book review: Blog Theory by Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean’s analysis of the economic, political and social impacts of blogging (and social networking more generally) covers broad themes that will be familiar to readers of technology authors such as Clay Shirky or media commentators such as Charlie Beckett. However, the particular aspects, the style of argument and even the vocabulary are heavily different – for this is a work of critical literary theory. The lack of overlap in cited sources, points of debate and choice of jargon highlights how even in the interconnected world of online punditry (all three frequently write online) there are many distinct niches and communities who rarely interact even when the broad subjects of their interest are the same.

For readers unfamiliar with such literary theory Jodi Dean’s book will be hard going in parts, with Hegel and Foucault both making an entrance on page 1 – even if at under 130 pages it is not a long text.

Underneath the layers of literary theory are issues that people who have never penned a word of such theory also address, as when Dean talks about the irony of the military and big government roots of an internet which then spawned a cyberculture amongst early enthusiasts that was decidedly non-military and anti-government.

From this Dean extends her argument to make the point that the internet should not only be seen as a tool for freedom but also as a possible tool for repression. It is an argument similar to that made by Evgeny Morozov, though whilst he presents practical examples of this double-edged nature at work, Dean relies on trains of literary theory argument rather than direct evidence.

Similarly, an argument roaming across people such as Lacan and Freud leads to the view that there have been “increases in economic inequality and consolidation of neoliberal capitalism in and through globally networked communication”. What this book doesn’t attempt to do is present either economic evidence or business anecdotes to substantiate its case, which is a shame as there are a range of different arguments that can be made – not all of which fit with the conclusion of the largely psychoanalytic discussion.

Has improved communication via networks made it easier for large Western companies to become larger and not just Western? Or has improved network communication allowed small scale businesses to prosper at their expense, as you can see each day online with a multitude of small firms able to sell goods and services thanks to much lower entry barriers? Or has improved network communication taken activity away from business, as in the way Wikipedia has largely replaced paid-for encyclopaedias with free, voluntary effort?

All three are to an extent true, leaving a plenty of scope for debate on whether the internet and other communication advances are strengthening, changing or weakening neoliberal capitalism. That debate is not to be found in this book however.

Some of the book’s applications of literary theory to online developments do not fully convince. So Dean takes to task one of the impacts of word-clouds (such as those generated via Wordle), rightly highlighting that an analysis purely based on the frequency of words misses out on context, wider meaning, subtleties of language such as irony and the sense that a speech or article is more than simply the sum of its words. But Dean goes on to then say of a word-cloud that it, “The word-cloud might transmit the intensity, it might incite a feeling or a response, but it doesn’t invite the interrogation of that response or what induced it”. That is a curious claim, both at the pragmatic technical level (many word-clouds are clickable and do therefore invite interrogation; why did that politician use the word ‘goldfish’ so often? Click on the word-cloud and find out by seeing all its uses) and at the more theoretical level (is not telling you the pattern of an event an intellectual invitation to find out what caused the pattern?).

More convincing is the book’s pair of warnings about the enticing nature of online activity and against confusing online activity with political impact:

As we share our opinions and upload our videos, there are more opinions to read and videos to watch and then more responses to craft and elements to mash up. And then there are still more responses to read, and as these increase so do the challenges of finding the ones we want … It’s easier to set up a new blog that it is to undertake the ground-level organizational work of building alternatives. It’s also difficult to think through the ways our practices and activities are producing new subjectivities, subjectivities that may well be more accustomed to quick satisfaction and bits of enjoyment than to planning, discipline, sacrifice and delay.

Those sorts of questions are discussed by people across many different disciplines. In Blog Theory they are considered almost exclusively from the perspective of critical theory, which is both the book’s strength and its weakness.

You can buy Jodi Dean’s Blog Theory here. Her own blog is I Cite.