Digital Commons Network^™

Viral Possibilities: Media, The Body, And The Phenomenon Of Infection, Daniel Mcfadden

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines how the concept of virality is articulated in popular culture, and the connection that this articulation shares with notions of the virus in philosophical thought. The first chapter traces the emergence of a new wave of virus media following the geopolitical changes following the end of the Cold War, and the further shifts that have occurred in how the virus is culturally considered. The second chapter examines the politics of a phenomenological encounter with media depicting viruses. The third and final chapter discusses how understandings of the virus shape the notion of community as both a material …

Will Work For Free: Examining The Biopolitics Of Unwaged Immaterial Labour, Brian A. Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

According to Maurizio Lazzarato, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, immaterial labour is biopolitical in that it purchases, commands, and comes to progressively control the communicative and affective capacities of immaterial workers. Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault, the above authors argue that waged immaterial labour reshapes the subjectivities of workers by reorienting their communicative and affective capacities towards the prerogatives and desires of those persons who purchased the right to control them. In this way, it is biopolitical.

Extending the concept of immaterial labour into the Web 2.0 era, Tiziana Terranova and Christian Fuchs, for instance, argue that all of the …