Critical Theory of Society in the Age of the Digital

The paper contains the critical analysis of the digitalization discourse which is reflecting not social innovations but managerial and bureaucratic appropriation of routine practices of virtualization (the research is supported by Russian Science Foundation, project #24-18-00261). Virtualization as a replacement of things and real actions by images and communications was the anti-system tendency at the end of the 20th century when digital technologies enthusiasts created virtual networks escaping control of reified institutions of late industrial society. But now that ‘Great Escape’ of cyberpunks, hackers, pirates, and copyleft activists has been absorbed by the system as digital technologies usage became social routine and simultaneously the newest form of social control. Social life is alienated into virtual realities arising on the digital platforms exploiting human interactions.

To reveal contradictions and true direction of digitalization, we need a development of critical theory following the dialectical line of the Frankfurt School neo-Marxism. The totality of domination structures and new forms of social control in postindustrial society are analyzed with use of the algorithmic rationality conception. Algorithmic rationality now has replaced instrumental reason (Horkheimer) and technological rationality (Marcuse) which organized praxis and thinking of people in the early and late industrial ages. Algorithmic rationality is a new domination logic as reality is perceived to be dynamic and hybrid network of objects functioning automatically without human subjectivity. The current post-virtualization tendencies and micromovements in everyday life can be treated as a source for an authenticity resistance to the virtual and artificial substitutes of humanity brought by total digitalization / coercive virtualization of social life. Distinction between emancipative digital technologies and oppressive algorithmic rationality should become the basis for the new critical theorizing in the age of the digital.