On new public spheres of production: public spheres of the Internet

Abstract

The public spheres of the Internet have been analysed on the basis of a positive concept of democracy that provides variables according to which the Internet may or may not be an appropriate place for the development of citizenship competencies. This research proposes a materialist analysis of the political and social functioning of the Internet that manages to immanently derive its determinations, as well as its own contradictions. To this end, the assumptions of the theory of the public sphere and the blockages of experience put forward by Kluge and Negt will be established as a starting point. The public spheres of the Internet in the process of political legitimation will then be discussed. Finally, it will be concluded that the levels of experience involved in political legitimation are indicative of a processing of human experience in which it is no longer only labour that is actually subsumed by capital, but also human life.