In their article “Recombinant Theatre and Digital Resistance”, the Critical Art Ensemble argue for an expanded consideration of digitality, beyond its associations with the fields of information and communication technology. The piece presents a broad range of examples that show the ways in which the digital (as opposed to the analogue) manifests as an ideological formation in post-Enlightenment society. It describes the changes in the industrial revolution, the increasing alienation of people from their labor, as an example of digital formations. The scientific development of DNA as a way of understanding biology is also used as an example of a shift towards digital thinking, towards thinking in terms of discrete units as opposed to continuous beings.
This discussion of the discrete units that make up the digital paradigm is expanded by the concept of networks, the new structured relationships between these units. Both Edwards and Poster discuss the implications of these global networks to our understanding of sovereignty. In his chapter titled “Citizens, Digital Media and Globalization”, Mark Poster develops the concept of the “netizen” as a new category for advocating rights in an era of digital communication. Along similar lines, Brian Edwards discusses the “selfie-determination of nations” to consider the blurred national boundaries in the circulation of content online. I was particularly struck by the discussion, in both of these texts, of the implications of a media sphere that combines entertainment and politics, developing similar registers for their consumption. The overlapping functions of these media might help us think through the ways political spectacles mimic other kinds of spectacles and produce similar kinds of spectatorship practices.