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RESEARCH PAPERS

No. 70

Digital Hyperconnectivity, Safetyism and Postpolitics: an analysis from the thoughts of Hannah Arendt, José Ortega y Gasset and Matthew Crawford

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12795/themata.2024.i70.12
Submitted
May 30, 2024
Published
2024-12-31

Abstract

Hannah Arendt and José Ortega y Gasset saw with concern the emergence of new modern historical subjects: the animal laborans and the mass-man, respectively. In this article I will try to show how their criticisms are illuminating to understand the direction that societies are taking towards digital hyperconnection, articulating their diagnoses with those of the contemporary philosopher Matthew Crawford. I will propose that, in digitally mediated societies, politics is replaced with a technocratic and bureaucratic administration under an imperative of security. This leads to a post-political situation that brings with it a loss of agency and self-determination that reduces human life.

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