The Spread of Viral Politics

This chapter introduced the significance of virality for deepening our understanding of social ordering and hegemony both fundamentally and as specific to the contemporary period. It highlighted the existence of “viral logics” as representative of the capacity of a dominant discourse to spread across contexts. To a certain extent, virality is a foundational dimension to any and all social orders and forms of hegemonic domination. However, it has become especially prescient in this time of greater mobile organisation, where the emphasis is less on controlling territories or conforming populations and more on shaping and forming hegemonic networks and connections. In our viral times it is, hence, not a question of whether or not different and new worlds will be created. The very mobility of power and the virality of modern life make this not only inevitable but a defining feature of our existence. The real question, rather, is what type of mobile and viral worlds will emerge? More precisely, will we be exposed to the infection of more contagious capitalism or can we build our resistances to this viral discourse in the name of spreading a new revolutionary contagion?