Value and Slavery, or the Longue Durée of the Analog-Digital Distinction

• Published in: Representations (Berkeley, Calif.) Vol. 168; no. 1; pp. 24 - 47
• Main Author: Franklin, Seb
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berkeley University of California Press Books Division 01.11.2024
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Internet; Slavery; Word meaning
• ISSN: 0734-6018; 1533-855X
• DOI: 10.1525/rep.2024.168.2.24

What does it mean to speak in terms of aesthetics of an object whose distinctive property is its mode of production-in-circulation? Theories of internet memes emphasize “aggregate texts, collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless cultural participants,” texts that put “more voices in the air,” and that exhibit a “mystifying” capacity to change in the course of their circulation, to the extent that they appear the “instrument of an unconscious drive.”1 The formulation meme aesthetics thus seems like a trap—an invitation to isolate single instances or genres and, in so doing, to jettison the circulatory operations that make a meme a meme, rather than, say, an image with some text on it, or a particular format of image-with-text, or a GIF of this or that person reacting to something in this or that manner, or the genre of GIFs of people reacting to things. The question of meme aesthetics