Bowie and The Network Society

Bowie: The Network Society and Opening Themes (Death; Sex/ Gender; Economics; Love; Medium/ Form; The Future)

The key claim of the Cracked-Actor Network Theory is that Bowie exemplifies the conditions of post-war western society. This was named by Manuel Castells as The Network Society by which he meant those social orders that emerged more or less during Bowie’s adult life. It is characterised by the historical and cultural impact of electronic technologies including the New Media of telecommunication and computation systems and the subsequent primacy of information as a metaphor for communication and organisation.

In this sense Network Society describes the conditions and cultures of late capitalism. Frederic Jameson argues that these conditions are synonymous with both postmodernity and the emergence of “the world system” in which the power of nation states is effaced by global networks of capital and communication where information becomes the primary unit of capitalist exchange. In such cultures power no longer operates according to a disciplinary logic (as Foucault observed of modernity) but rather control where power is distributed across networks (as Deleuze claimed in his famous “postscript” essay).

Subjectivity is similarly understood to be both distributed across different communicative networks and also mediated by them; in other words human identity does not exist a-priori but is in fact constituted by those different networks within which it is situated (such as social media.) Hence, the conditions of the Network Society present radical challenges to the account of autonomous and rational humanity that emerges in the European Enlightenment. As in other accounts of the conditions of subjectivity in late capitalism, such as Posthumanism humans are identified as enmeshed within and reliant upon existing economic, technological and ecological networks that are beyond their control.

Taking this as a starting point we can consider how Bowie’s own persona as “more than one, less than many” mimicked these effects of late capitalism and the Network Society. His multiple identities were also, performatively, contingent upon those conditions he found himself in.

In doing so we can use the following themes to think about both Bowie and human subjectivity in the age of “the world system”:

DEATH; SEX/ GENDER; ECONOMICS; LOVE; MEDIUM (STUDIO); THE FUTURE

[These ideas were first explored in an MA Seminar for Art in the Contemporary World lead by Francis Halsall and Vaari Claffey]