// Reflections on the book by Trevor G. Smith.

von Rahel Süß

In times of a rise of the post-fascist alt-right, when the internet is increasingly becoming a site of political dispute, Smith assembles an array of perspectives around a fundamental political question: How does politics can be reinvigorated and transformed into something more participatory and agonistic by placing it online?

The current discussions about the internet, its personalised technologies and echo chambers, its filter bubbles, its racist bots and pervasive trolls, reveal the need for a more precise analysis of this question. And yet Smith is mainly interested in the sort of problems and arguments that arise when we seek to be political online. Given this context, Smith’s book can be read as an intervention in both digitizing the political and politicising the digital. What is the role of the internet for political participation? What are the benefits of politicising the digital?

Smith’s approach is a fresh move to politicise the current debate about the internet by drawing attention to the notion of the political and engaging with a number of scholars, from Arendt to Rancière, from Žižek to Mouffe. By doing so, he moves beyond perspectives of communication theory and political economy and asks: how does the use of the internet can bring about more politicisation without turning a blind eye towards its many depoliticising ways? He reaches for reinvigorating the idea of politics by outlining a form of internet-enabled politics that inspire engagement and empowerment, rather than cynicism and alienation. He does so by showing that the online political realm is not simply a space where activists debate issues and organise offline protests, but also an important site of political action itself.

There are several powerful arguments animating Smith’s book. One is that the internet is a useful tool for reinvigorating politics because it can provide possibilities for new beginnings. Another argument is that political theory can help restoring the “poor reputation of politics”, provided it takes into consideration people’s daily lives and their technological aspect (6).

The book is divided in six chapters. After a general introduction, the second chapter deals with the questions of public space and the place of politics: What does appear publicly when someone enters the (online) political realm? The third chapter turns to political subjectivity discussing questions of the “contestation” between anti-political identification versus political subjectivation (43). In the fourth chapter he addresses the importance of political participation in debates and decisions. In the fifth chapter, Smith emphasises the need of participating in conflicts and disagreements. The sixth chapter draws a conclusion by laying down the steps toward the digitalization of politics.

The basic lines of Smith’s argument, that politics can be reinvigorated and transformed into something more participatory and agonistic by placing it online, are structured along five key points. Firstly, he starts from stating that politics does not enjoy a good reputation. This assumption is, secondly, followed by a call for a new and positive conception of politics in an online political realm. In order to elaborate how politics can operate online, as a third line of his argument, Smith claims that politics can be reinvigorated and transformed on four terrains: public space, subjectivity, participation and conflict.

According to the author, all these terrains are spaces of contestation between politics and anti-politics, where anti-politics is defined as a mechanism which attempts to foreclose the emergence of political realms, political subjects, participation or conflict, by keeping everyone in their assigned place. This line of argument leads to another level of analysis. The political subject in an online political realm finds itself in a situation of universal emptiness in which its identity traits are unknown to others and this can cause the improvement of political participation. Finally, he argues that politics can be reinvigorated and transformed into something more agonistic by placing it online, if conflict, as a driver of politics in a pluralistic society, becomes the content of online political debates.

Structural exclusion and other challenges in an online political realm

Smith´s argument that the internet opens up the potential for a political space and political subject formation process that is unavailable elsewhere is a provocative one (129). He seems to draw a blind eye to the challenges which affect both the offline and the online political realm. He tends to elide the crucial question linked to democracy that is the limited access to participation and decision making as a consequence of structural exclusions when he points out:

“The act of going online can be emancipatory in itself, as a person´s offline minority status can be obscured, allowing individuals to easily emerge from their minority position which are used to disqualify them from taking part in offline politics. When one´s identity is the source of prejudice, to keep it hidden online makes revealing oneself as a unique individual with unique

thoughts and opinion much easier.” (48)