Abstract

Here I am attempting to explore blogging from a marxian perspective. What does this mean? Foremost, a marxian critique must be undertaken from a historical materialist perspective which sees human consciousness determined by its physical environment; the social organization of society flows from the relationship between the forces of production and the relations of production. Many marxist critics (as well as non-marxists) see media, like blogs, as tools of the dominant class in a society reinforcing the ideology that concretes their power in the society. After a critical assessment of blogs as media brings to light the economic relations operating beneath them, I will attempt to examine blogging from a a marxian perspective more philosophical than methodological. Marx has been accused of technological determinism in his assertions that technology is the driving force of class struggle; I intend to look at the effectiveness of blogging as technology-based resistance to global capitalist hegemony. Is blogging a subversive form of revolutionary expression or simply the substitution of capital for labor?

There is a growing body of legitimate academic inquiry examining the non-linear nature of the hypertext (HTML) documentation central to the phenomenon known as blogging. (For example, this dissertation.) As such, I am attempting to develop a marxian critique of blogging in the same non-linear format in which it appears in popular culture, not as a gimmicky escape from the rigors of a critical approach but to explore firsthand the implications of the form in theory and practice.