Reflex and Retribution: what do reaction videos have to do with reactionary politics?
Abstract:
Amidst ample discussion of how online culture seems to amplify and facilitate reactionary political ideologies, there has been less attention paid to the common thread of 'reaction' as a simultaneously behavioural, moral and ideological vector. The phenomenon of 'reaction videos' that emerged out of gaming culture in the 2000s now provides a whole new template of public interaction, cultural production and valuation. But what does 'reaction' in this sense have to do with forces of 'reaction' in the political sense? Drawing on a forthcoming book, this talk will examine the multiple overlapping meanings of 'reaction', and examine via the work of Nietzsche and others how the behavioural idea of reaction intersects with the moral and ideological one - a confluence that sits at the heart of contemporary digital reaction culture.
Biographies:
Will Davies is a sociologist and political economist, working on diverse topics, including neoliberalism, happiness science, environmental politics and anti-expert politics. What links this work is an interest in the interface of knowledge and power, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Luc Boltanski and Max Weber. I am Co-Director of the interdisciplinary Political Economy Research Centre and convene the BA in Politics Philosophy & Economics. He is author of Nervous States: How feeling took over the world (2018), The Happiness Industry: How the government and big business sold us wellbeing (2015) and The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition (2016).
Malcolm James is an Associate Professor in Media and Cultural Studies, and a member of the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies steering committee at the 天美传媒影视, UK. He is the author of Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury) and Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Cultural Transformation (Palgrave); and co-editor of Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Investment and Loss in East London (Repeater).