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CRANO_POSTHUMAN CAPITAL.pdf (1.42 MB)

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Posthuman Capital: Neoliberalism, Telematics, and the Project of Self-Control

Crano, Ricky D'Andrea
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405531247

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Comparative Studies.
The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate some of the ways in which neoliberal social and economic discourse, in particular the work of Friedrich Hayek and Gary Becker, has influenced the cultural evolution of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Chapter One introduces the scope and methods of the project and situates market-oriented social epistemology alongside the development of complexity theory in the physical and information sciences. Chapter Two situates Hayek’s philosophies of social science and communication within the broader science cultures of the postwar decades, arguing that his conceptualization of prices and markets is deeply rooted in coterminous projects of cybernetics and general systems theory. Consequently, Hayek’s ideas about autonomy, information, and cultural transmission are seen to dovetail with the dominant scientific paradigms and media technologies of the late twentieth century. Chapter Three argues that contemporary financial markets and telematic screen cultures have become operationally analogous in their actualization of neoliberal rationality and social thought. Expanding my reading of neoliberalism beyond Hayek’s macrological approach to examine the emerging and all-consuming micrological approach of “human capital” theorists like Becker, this chapter details the ways in which new media platforms, algorithmic cultural practices, and what cultural critics have named the “financialization of daily life” have become primary agents of governmentality today. Chapter Four offers an original interpretation of Michel Foucault’s 1979 lectures on neoliberalism, one that reads the abrupt change of course in his research—which, directly following his interrogations of Hayek, Becker, and others, jumped from contemporary political economy to ancient cultures of self-care—as an attempt to locate a genealogical precedent for the subjectivist governmental rationality he had revealed as a dominant theme of neoliberal discourse.
Brian Rotman (Committee Co-Chair)
Philip Armstrong (Committee Co-Chair)
Eugene Holland (Committee Member)
Kris Paulsen (Committee Member)
220 p.
Communication; Comparative; Economic Theory; Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Social Research; Social Structure; Technology; Web Studies
neoliberalism; cybernetics; autopoiesis; posthumanism; social control; Hayek; Becker; Foucault; digital culture; subjectivity; epistemology; human capital theory; human sciences; governmentality; networks; new media; intellectual history

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Crano, R. D. (2014). Posthuman Capital: Neoliberalism, Telematics, and the Project of Self-Control [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405531247

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Crano, Ricky. Posthuman Capital: Neoliberalism, Telematics, and the Project of Self-Control. 2014. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405531247.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Crano, Ricky. "Posthuman Capital: Neoliberalism, Telematics, and the Project of Self-Control." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1405531247

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1405531247
431
© 2014, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.