Complicit subversions: Cultural new media activism and ‘high’ theory

Abstract

How do current technological structures change the activist landscape and its use of certain academic theories? And what, in turn, could this relationship tell us about a possible exacerbation of contemporary forms of in- and exclusion? This article will argue that the productive crossovers in the Internet between cultural new media activism and ‘high’ theory mark precisely the humanist subject’s complicity in contemporary technocratic neo-liberalism. It will do so by analyzing in detail how cultural new media activism defines itself in relation to the ‘complicit’ university with its ‘elitist’ theories, especially through these activists’ problematic perception of the Internet as a neutral realm.