Strategies of difference

This essay centers on the question of political action in a technologically mediated abundance of political possibility. It argues that from the election of Trump through the politicizations of Covid, tech-enabled discourses exacerbated an intransigent rhetorics of opposition and division. This atmosphere is and continues to be fueled by mimetic reproductions of capitalist news media strategies acted out by individuals on social media platforms. The liberal/enlightenment tradition of dialectics — opposition, contradiction and negation — emerges as religious struggle of good versus evil. For politics to change, strategies must change. To shake the resentment of our time, we must, as political voices, embrace an ethics of difference and engage in viral expressions of creative action. At issue is not side against side, nor even power against power, but an affirmation of living in an age that demands survival.