WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, UCADI, #175 - NO ONE WILL GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE * (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 For some time the left seems to have lost along the way some critical

skills that in the last century seemed to make it much less lacking.
Now, mind you, the term "left" should already be declined, specified,
divided, etc ..., but this is not the place (if there was one) for such
a discourse. In these few lines I wanted to talk about the agile, but
dense, book by Francesca, "dada" Knorr, Neurobiscotti. Pandemic and
advertising. ---- So, I was saying, apart from the appropriate
declination of the term "left", something very significant has happened
in recent decades. If, on the one hand, information technology and that
linked to communication have made unimaginable steps just a decade ago,
on the left the ability to study seems to have weakened considerably.
Namely the ability to propose a gaze that is able not only to keep pace
with the transformations, but which retains the critical capacity
necessary to face all the facets. And that, above all, he has kept the
straight edge of a structural critique of capitalism in all its forms.
Instead, on the one hand, we have radical subjectivities which, although
skilled users of the new communication technologies, do not seem able to
move within this machine that has literally transformed the brains, and,
on the other, in the "liberal" left , we see approaches devoid of any
critical weight. As if the "moustache" of the 1950s had been replaced by
other wonderful progressives: the European Union and social networks.
Without a shred of thought.
The dense introduction to the book (by Bruno Ballardini) is an attack in
no uncertain terms on the prevalence of Marketing and the virtual
future. Apart from the "Adornian" echoes of these introductory pages, it
is certainly significant that this word has by now become endemic in
language, not just advertising, and now seems to belong to the political
universe and tout-court to our social panorama. Especially since it was
taken "in charge" by public institutions. We now have territories that
are sold out, open-air Disneylands where real history appears to have
faded. The purpose of public administrations is no longer that of
governing and responding to social and cultural needs, but of creating
new ones, inventing and measuring them (measurability is now the real
fundamental flow, together with economic value and social control).
The author instead focuses on the transformation of "advertising" and
its acceleration during the covid 19 pandemic, indeed during its
management. Now, even if it is a short text, as I indicated at the
beginning, its considerable density does not allow for a complete
examination in this space and, in my case, a considerable dose of
subjectivity is also added. Which is why I recommend reading this work
first.
The points touched are really many. First of all, the pervasiveness of
"surveillance" capitalism combined with the power of social media and
personalisation/profiling now at paroxysmal levels (but things will get
much worse) is directed towards the creation of a radically new human
being (where the "new man" does not succeeded in the totalitarianisms of
the last century, which today appear more and more ancient). A subject
radically alone and moved by his own desires that must come true
(obviously subject to the necessary financial availability). Thus
advertising uses and subsumes the "inclusiveness" of the new frontiers
of "civil rights", literally overturning the sign. Indeed, it is a
question of favoring individual, atomistic choices, or rather the
opposite of every libertarian and liberating form. Everyone is
invited/forced to build their own subjective (but actually objective)
personal bubble, even within individual families. Who, if before they
gathered in silence in front of the generalist TV, now they do it
individually, each creating their own universe.
The increasingly necessary brevity of messages, which run on a very
broad but superficial terrain, "remap" the brain, increasingly
eliminating depth. Allow me to add that, for example, this can be seen,
precisely in the world of social media, in the increasingly difficult
metaphorical communication. Lacking a common level on which to insert a
dialogue, each affirmation must be measured by prefiguring the
multi-sectioned and increasingly susceptible audience (bearer of
individual and atomized instances).
The author illustrates well the fate of the most narrative and
"intelligent" advertisements such as that of the "buondì motta" a few
years ago. To tell the truth, something similar had already happened
with the advertising of the Valdas and Paolo Hendel in the 1980s).

In this context, of a real redefinition of the social context, what
Colin Crouch defined "post-democracy" a decade ago, has taken the
plunge, eliminating even the formal appearances of representative
democracy. Quick, practical, superficial decisions, managed with
stakeholders who bypass any electoral participation, now at levels of
insignificance.
I'll stop here, leaving the many ideas that the book is able to initiate
to the reader's curiosity.
There is so much in this text that it covers a space that, faced in
these terms, was missing.

Andrea Bellucci

*Francesca, "dada" Knorr, Neurobiscotti. Pandemic and advertising,
Novalogos 2023, EUR10.00

http://www.ucadi.org/2023/08/18/nessuno-uscira-vivo-di-qui/
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