Call for submissions Dossier #25. Spaces, images and technologies. On the ways politics manifests itself in a digitally dominated landscape. Editors: Betina Guindi and Ernesto Schtivelband

The current late-capitalist landscape, in its neoliberal and technocratic phase, is undergoing profound transformations in the ways in which the public sphere exists. Public space—the quintessential realm of the citizen’s being and appearing—is currently undergoing a process of radical reconfiguration: a hybridization of the physical and the digital, reorganizations in the ways these spaces are inhabited, subjective mutations associated with these new conditions, the expansion of algorithmic and extractivist logics, and the encroachment of private capital upon common spaces.

The dynamics of virtual platforms constitute the paradigmatic case of this: new contested spatialities that are configured and shaped through a multiplicity of contents and interventions that dialogue and juxtapose with the experiences of traditional urban space. Technological mediation increasingly shapes human experiences: individuals interact through information networks and digital platforms that reorganize the perception of reality and forms of affective communication. A crisis of logical-critical analysis is evident in the face of the growing predominance of mythical thinking mediated through the circulation of images and symbolic narratives that appeal profusely to the emotions, shaping beliefs, identities, and collective representations, often bypassing a rational critical process.

Added to this is the private nature of digital platforms, whose technological convergence, algorithmic logic, and moderation policies determine which content is visible, which narratives are amplified, and which voices are marginalized. Indeed, although they present themselves as free from any rules other than those of algorithmic freedom, neither are such algorithms truly free nor are their dynamics truly horizontal. Under these conditions, the question of the forms of political emergence resurfaces—albeit in a displaced form—as does the question of how to reclaim the commons in the face of its privatization and fragmentation: in what ways does politics unfold in contemporary spatialities?; what subjective reconfigurations are emerging?; through what interventions and formats do the renewed modes of political emergence manifest themselves?

Political campaigns defined primarily within a platformed spatiality, armies of trolls bursting into that digital space with a biased agenda, and a proliferation of visual representations and other interventions whose performative power lies, most of the time, in the appeal to resources that elicit emotional responses conducive to the promotion and strengthening of anti-democratic, warmongering, racist, sexist, and classist political expressions, with geopolitical implications at both the international and global levels.

This evolving situation, which reveals the erosion of traditional critical strategies in politics, calls for a thorough rethinking of the current possibilities for democratic intervention, as well as the complex landscape within which the figure of the state is situated.

We invite submissions that address this issue, with a special emphasis on those that engage with relevant debates in the current political landscape. We welcome academic articles that explore the dossier’s theme from a variety of approaches and methodological frameworks. We also encourage proposals with an interdisciplinary focus that incorporate a diversity of languages, materials, and aesthetic resources.

More details at https://revistas.ungs.edu.ar/index.php/ensambles/index

Contact revensambles@gmail.com

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)