Some remarks and questions about philosophy & social media for SPEP 2014

This is the outline from which I will be speaking at the Advocacy Committee session on Philosophy & Social Media at SPEP 2014.

• I’m happy to talk about more practical things like how I incorporate social media into my teaching and research, and these opening remarks will draw, to some extent, on my own experience. However, I’d like to focus my opening remarks on some broader issues that I hope we can discuss more extensively in the main part of the session: mediality, digital labor, and ‘toxic’ feminism/’the new misogyny’ aka how social media is a technology of white supremacist patriarchy (add ‘embarrassed etc’ here).

• First, MEDIALITY: “Social Media” is not one thing
  • just like print is not homogeneous (conference papers, articles, books), digital social media is not homogeneous
  • twitter, facebook, tumblr, blogs–all have different affordances and limitations, different material and thus social/intellectual features. just as you can’t conflate painting and sculpture and printmaking, you can’t conflate social media platforms.
    • instead of “social media”, which social medium?
    • what’s the specific type of ‘sociality’ facilitated by the medium?
    • which kinds of philosophical work are most appropriate for each medium? how can a specific medium transform philosophiacal work?
  • however, they do share a political economy and (being very general here) an interface or set of interfaces.
  • “Philosophy” itself is a set of media practices (writing, lecturing, etc.). What is the relationship between legacy philosophical media and ‘new’ philosophy media? Or, how can we think about using social media to supplement ‘traditional’ philosophical work (articles, books, teaching), on the one hand, and about using social media to transform the practice of philosophy (and transform it to what end)?
• Second: DIGITAL LABOR
  • Social media exists as we know it because social interaction is now a source of surplus value extraction. Sociality is a medium for capitalism.
  • This is work…and we’re not the main or primary beneficiaries of that work. For all the benefits social media can bring to our teaching and research, it’s also (at least supposed to) make somebody a lot more money than it’s making us.
  • In an academic context, I think we can consider social media labor as a kind of unpaid, uncounted, and undervalued service work. In a lot of respects, social media labor is another kind of “care” work: it’s PR, it’s accessibility to students, etc.  And, as Leigh Johnson has noted, online as IRL, this labor is generally doled out to those members of the profession who are already disadvantaged in some way.
  • So, post-Salita conversations about social media and academia often focus on issues of academic freedom, but would argue that you can’t think about academic freedom apart from digital labor.
  • A few questions on this point:
    • Blackboard & other CMS brands make money off of us and our students. Is using social media instead of Blackboard just robbing Peter to pay Paul?
    • I work at a state university. Is the use of social media another way to get the university to use state money to generate profits for private corporations?
• Second and a half: THE HUSTLE
  • Social media labor is a hustle–capitalists extract surplus value from our digital labor. But under what conditions and with what methods can we, erm, hustle in return?
  • On social media, visibility, especially when combined with other disadvantages, increases vulnerability. So, if you’re in a highly prestigious position with a lot of traditional academic visibility and the resources that come with it, the social media hustle might be a pretty bad investment. Social media labor is not writing a million dollar NSF grant or a book manuscript for Duke. It both takes time away from that, and it might get you in trouble with your Dean or sully your reputation with other people in your field.
  • But if you are in a department or contingent situation that doesn’t afford you the resources you need to be the PI of a million dollar grant or to write a book for the leading press in your field, then social media labor can be time well spent. This is basically how I built my career. I had to work to build the visibility and impact that something like a position at an elite institution would afford me.
  • But this is still all complicated by the visibility/vulnerability issue. Thus:
• Third: WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING A WOMAN IN PHILOSOPHY ON TEH INTERNETS
  • AKA: social media as medium of white supremacist cis/heteropatriarchy.
  • I am not aware of anyone who has written specifically on how the issues raised in 2013’s “toxic twitter feminism” debates or the ongoing GamerGate controversy apply to, relate to, or manifest in professional philosophy. (If you know of any, please let me know!)
    • Toxic twitter feminism: “Feminists” presented as unhealthy, toxic to progressive movements (Goldberg’s Nation article, cited above; Mark Fisher’s screed against “vampiric” intersectionality).
    • GamerGate: Organized attacks against feminists who speak out against misogyny in video games and gaming culture.
    • To these, I would actually add Leitergate: The systematic use of internet media to harass (generally) female critics. To what extent is the behavior that finally got BL kicked out of the PGR not unique to him, but a feature both of social media misogyny, and the misogyny that women experience being a woman in philosophy on the internet?
  • These issues are all about social media as a technology of white supremacy, patriarchy, embarrassed etc.
    • How does social media both (a) incorporate the most advantaged members of traditionally underrepresented groups into positions of institutional privilege, such that (b) the least advantaged members of traditionally underrepresented groups are further and more intensely oppressed?
    • How does the ‘envoicement’ of traditionally silenced groups (i.e., women) actually work as a way to silence feminist/anti-racist criticism?
      • How does this post-feminist silencing of toxic, vampiric members of the profession relate to new-ish concepts of and commitments to “crossing the analytic/continental divide” or to “globalizing” the philosophy curriculum actually work to reinforce existing relations of privilege and marginalization in the discipline?