How Should Men Be Made? Preciado in the Gender Laboratory

Ranger, J. (2024) How Should Men Be Made? Preciado in the Gender Laboratory, Technophany: A Journal for Philosophy and Technology, forthcoming.

Paul B. Preciado’s theory of the pharmacopornographic regime provides a radical theoretical analysis of the relationship between gender, technology and capitalism. Firstly, I explicate Preciado’s key concepts and argue that their overarching theoretical project illuminates neoliberal capitalism’s capture and commodification of sexual energies and desire. I contend that contemporary toxic heteronormativity in extreme online communities may be explained as reactionary internalisation/resistance to this process. I conclude by suggesting Preciado’s theoretical insights gesture toward a progressive and emancipatory pathway for rethinking masculinity.

Populism, Social Media and the Technospheric

Ranger, J. (2024) “Populism, Social Media and the Technospheric” in Populism and Time: Temporalities of a Disruptive Politics, edited by Andy Knott. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

I argue that Laclau’s discursive approach to populism must accommodate what I refer to as the technospheric condition. Drawing on the work of Bernard Stiegler and Hartmut Rosa, I characterise contemporary social life as heavily influenced by the forces of social acceleration, the industrialisation of memory and mediatisation. These broadly compatible accounts of the technical configuration of social life are then positioned as a structural catalyst for the repoliticisation of the status quo. Politicisation and its accompanying social disruptions (politically solidified in emancipatory and reactionary populisms) are counter-hegemonic responses to social problems exacerbated by the technospheric condition yet are themselves influenced by algorithmic steering on social media as much as by populist strategy.

Book Review: Returning to Judgment: Bernard Stiegler and Continental Political Theory by Ben Turner

Ranger, J. (2023). Book Review: Returning to Judgment: Bernard Stiegler and Continental Political Theory by Ben Turner, Technophany, A Journal for Philosophy and Technology, 2(1),1-5.

Towards a Resonant Theory of Memory Politics

Ranger, J., & Ranger, W. (2023). Towards a resonant theory of memory politics. Memory Studies, 16(2), 451–464.

It is argued that Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance provides memory activists (those actors engaged in memory politics) with both a normative justification and qualitative metric by which sites of memory may be compared and evaluated. Resonance is a plausible candidate for an assessing concept on the grounds that there is overlap between Rosa’s sociological approach and the implicit appeal to resonance in the memory studies literature.

Book Review: Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Power by Lee Artz

Ranger, J. (2022). Book Review: Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Power by Lee Artz.. tripleC: communication, capitalism, critique, 20(1), 138-142.

Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture - Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data by Jacob Johanssen & Event Horizon - Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism by Bonni Rambatan & Jacob Johanssen

Ranger, J. (2021). Book Review: Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture – Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data by Jacob Johanssen & Event Horizon – Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism by Bonni Rambatan & Jacob Johanssen tripleC: communication, capitalism, critique, 20(1), 37-44.

Book Review: The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech by Grafton Tanner

Ranger, J. (2021). Book Review: The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech by Grafton Tanner. tripleC: communication, capitalism, critique, 19(2), 301-306.

Book Review: The Internet Myth: The Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies by Paolo Bory

Ranger, J. (2020). Book Review: The Internet Myth: The Internet Imaginary to Network Ideologies by Paolo Bory. tripleC: communication, capitalism, critique, 18(2), 556-559.

Slow Down! Digital Deceleration Towards A Socialist Social Media

Ranger, J. (2020). Slow Down! Digital Deceleration Towards A Socialist Social Media. tripleC: communication, capitalism, critique, 18(1), 254-267.

Hartmut Rosa argues that three systems of social acceleration (technical acceleration, the acceleration of social change and the acceleration of the pace of life) have emerged as fundamental to the human experience of late modernity. It is here argued that the digital imaginary, specifically curated by the “universal” social media platforms causes what Dominic Pettman has dubbed the “hypermodulation” of the subject, which contributes to the reproduction of the capitalist status quo. Consequently, I here argue that a socialist approach to the digital must commit to what Rosa would term an ideological (oppositional) deceleration to counteract such tendencies.