Historical Prefigurations of Vitriol

Abstract

The historical pivot of this chapter is the baroque 17th-century Dutch Republic where the rapidly developing printing press facilitated new forms of masking and of speed. Masked speaking allowed an anonymity in which communities came to intermingle with constituencies. In the current situation, the often used phrase of ‘online communities’ needs scrutiny, for there is little that makes such groups communities. They are entangled with social businesses and lack a complicated texture. Vitriolic online collectives are much like the religious constituencies in earlier times, in that they depend on iconic figures or platforms that attract and form groups and that vilify one another. Vitriol has become a form of socio-symbolic capital, partaking in neoliberal insurgencies that superimpose constituencies over communities.