Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: This paper examines the role of alien conspiracy myths in popular culture in highlighting the dearth of personal agency in the postmodern era. By “alien conspiracy myth” I refer to the variety of conspiracy theories, both actual and fictionalized in television series like The X-Files and the Stargate franchise, that posit an otherwise realistic world in which government cover-ups have masked from the public the presence of extraterrestrial intelligent life on Earth. That these are stories of conspiracies in realistic worlds is especially important; it entails a desire for a world in which, while a conspiracy exactly like the myth described may not exist, it nevertheless could exist in some similar form; the intrinsic possibility of it is attractive regardless of its truth-value. Using Deleuze and Guattari’s vision of humanity as “desiring machines,” laid out in full in their cooperative text A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, this paper argues that the principle drive of those obsessed with or enamored by alien conspiracies is the desire for “something more.” The problem of agency can be framed thus: “I cannot create meaning in an existentially meaningless world, unless there is a realistic and plausible possibility that there is more that has been concealed from me.” This paper argues that the alien conspiracy myth is consistently constructed so as to fulfill the need for agency in the cogs of the human desiring machine. The problem for the believer then becomes how to distinguish that which is real from a Baudrillardian simulacra of the real: that which is desired.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Contemporary globalization has impacted the social, cultural, and subjective to foster transformations of identity and new forms of subjectivity. Globalization in its current instantiation, as a new articulation of political economy, has depended on fusion of capitalism and advanced technologies, what Kellner (1991) has called “techno-capital”. While globalization is the dominant hegemon of the present age, consumerism has become the basis of its wealth, the ideology that fosters “willing assent to the system, and consumer based forms of selfhood (Sklair, 2001). The rise of this globalized system, an “Empire” (Negri and Hardt, 2001), together with the emergence of cyberspace, has had profound impact on governance, the polity, culture, various realms of subjectivity, and identity.
Globalization produces forces that both homogenize and differentiate identity. With the rise of the Internet, we have seen a wide range of new forms of community and self-articulation. For Castells (1996), identities in network society may serve to 1) legitimate the status quo, 2) resist society, or 3) articulate new social transformation projects. But further, we note that global consumerism fosters certain 4) ludic identities, self at play, expressed in spectacles, games and hedonistic lifestyles where fantasies of self can be articulated in virtual realms. As will be seen, these may become moments of hegemonic process. Identities as self-referential cultural narratives, and integral moments of self are articulated in the routine presentations and performances that embodied subjects enact in daily life, but so too are certain submerged identities realized in various liminal sites. The problematics of contemporary identity can be seen in various debates over hegemony, resistance, social fragmentation, identity politics, or youth cultures. Moreover, insofar as consumer based identities are dependent on commodities and commodified forms of selfhood, we can see how reification has moved from the production of commodities to the realms of identity giving rise to new postmodern articulations of alienation. As we will argue, in a globalized world, linked through the Internet, those idenitity formations that sustain contemporary hegemony, do so at the cost of alienated subjectivities.
In the paper to follow, we extend Castells’ model of identity and networks to interrogate the problematics of identity, as refracted through some of the cultural moments of globalization, particularly the emergence of cyberspace. There are some who celebrate globalization through consumerism or fandom; such people legitimate the new political economy and its goods, gadgets, and entertainment products. But while some may locate selfhood in a consumerism sustaining the status quo, others would resist and others escape from the effects of the global political economy in the various forms of the ludic, indulgence that often permit the expression of the transgressive in symbolic forms . Insofar as “techno-capital” has either automated, deskilled or exported many jobs, many younger people, alienated by global capital, and/or “squeezed” by the new global order, are likely to retreat into subcultures of inversion based resistance ranging from the shock rock of Marilyn Manson or Eminem, to the fandoms of violence such as “professional” wrestling or subcultures of extreme body modifications. Such realms of opposition varying from the “cool” to the grotesque provide sites where some can find jouissance as they create and/or embrace transgressive identities that mark opposition to and anger toward the global order. At the same time, cultural resistance, in lieu of political action serves to sustain the very alienation and domination that engender its emergence. Finally, others interrogate the adversities of the global economy. An emergent global justice identity is challenging the economic disparities, environmental despoliation and human rights abuses associated with the new global economy. In face of the globalization of capital, with the grinding poverty of the majorities, environmental despoliation and human rights abuses, growing numbers seek engagement in organizations that would challenge the new forms of alienation, power and exploitation in a word dominated by transnational capitalist corporations.
We would like to suggest that these articulations of identity, celebratory (consumer), transgressive ludic, and global justice transformative instantiate the problematics of alienation and identity in our current age. While small minorities celebrate capitalist globalization, especially through consumerism, the new forms of wealth and power alienate others. Some would create subcultures of transgression to find meaning and dignity. Others would seek to overcome this alienation through political action . A fundamental aspect of these cases is that the Internet has been a key medium for both social domination and resistance and for the emergence of new types of communities and identity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Durkheim offers a multi-dimensional account of social regulation, and one that can only be fully understood when we come to terms with the binary nature of Durkheim’s anomic-fatalistic distinction. Unlike Marx’s alienation—which I will argue here is quite unexpectedly consistent with the concept of fatalism—Durkheim offers opposing social conditions that are rooted in social structure and that each encompass quite distinct human possibilities. From this foundation, I hope to argue against Lukes’ contention that Durkheim’s anomie is in tension with Marx’s alienation. Lukes’ error, in my view, is in disregarding Durkheim’s concealed “fatalism” concept. Consequently, Lukes does not allow for a Durkheimian critique of over regulation; a theoretical position that can only be extracted from Durkheim if we turn away from anomie and towards his idea of fatalism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Recent works in sociology and history have opened up new issues about emotions and culture closed off by constructionist studies: how to evaluate and judge the emotional "regimes" that societies impose on their members. Questions raised by these studies concern the interaction between human emotional capacities and the changing historical circumstances to which human beings are subject; other questions concern the constraints to which all emotional cultures might be subject. Based on a number of recent studies, I am proposing a theory of the alienation or commodification of emotion in today's world of late modernity. Its centerpiece is the experience today of a disjuncture between what we feel and what we think we should feel. Reasons for this disjuncture of are discussed using both sociologies and histories of emotion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines a new attempt to make U.S. corporations accountable for their complicity in human rights violations occurring abroad by using the Alien Torts Claims Act (ATCA) in U.S. courts. Although these cases have yet to be resolved, a preliminary analysis shows that powerful actors from the state and the business community have come together to oppose this use of the ATCA, commonly invoking free-market rhetoric. Furthermore, the ATCA cases allow us to look into a novel, legal approach to affecting human rights in a global world.