Sociology is the science that deals with the relationship of the individual to society, and which means nothing other than the dependence of individuals on the totality that they form as a social network. For the whole is maintained only through the interaction of individual members, their practices and functions. However, because this interaction of members in society cannot be defined or demonstrated in the medium of concept or mere empiricism, or in any other medium, social phenomena inevitably demand a medium, the organ of which is theory. And theory here initially means ‘mediation’ between individual and society, nature and culture, subject and object, identity and non-identity, inside and outside, appearance and essence, semblance and being, where an immediate is always already in its mediation, relation and relationship. In Western democracies today: the relatedness of modern individuals to the capitals, to the information monopolies of liberal or illiberal systems, where they must assert themselves; for capitalism today has developed numerous forms, which can be liberal-democratic, authoritarian-democratic, totalitarian-autocratic, archaic-primitive or religious-Islamic. It is the relatedness to a financial, attention, design, affect and information economy and to a national state law economy, where market participants must assert themselves as netizens and citizens. In this respect, there has never been so much mediation in immediacy in the world around us in the history of mankind. This social relatedness of modern individuals does not merely mean the rational and instrumental relationship, but also the irrationality of affects as a neurophysiological and psychosomatic emotion economy. In such a sociology of media, perspectives are therefore challenged which do not describe the history of capitalist economy solely as a process of rationalization or profit-rational abstraction. Rather, they focus primarily on the productive forces of irrationalities, affects, desires, ignorance and phantasms. It is the dense network of immanent relationships that makes individuals in their productions and creations controllable and psychosocially manageable through their social linkage. Thus, the relation as self-determination in the middle of the media (an individual relative to an objective, related to society and history) cannot be thought of without a foreign power relationship. A medial relatedness, which means the ‘law of media economy’ as a modern, manifest and at the same time original power relationship.

Practices of Domination and Practices of Liberation

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发表日期：

2025年

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Stavros Arabatzis

摘要

Sociology is the science that deals with the relationship of the individual to society, and which means nothing other than the dependence of individuals on the totality that they form as a social network. For the whole is maintained only through the interaction of individual members, their practices and functions. However, because this interaction of members in society cannot be defined or demonstrated in the medium of concept or mere empiricism, or in any other medium, social phenomena inevitably demand a medium, the organ of which is theory. And theory here initially means ‘mediation’ between individual and society, nature and culture, subject and object, identity and non-identity, inside and outside, appearance and essence, semblance and being, where an immediate is always already in its mediation, relation and relationship. In Western democracies today: the relatedness of modern individuals to the capitals, to the information monopolies of liberal or illiberal systems, where they must assert themselves; for capitalism today has developed numerous forms, which can be liberal-democratic, authoritarian-democratic, totalitarian-autocratic, archaic-primitive or religious-Islamic. It is the relatedness to a financial, attention, design, affect and information economy and to a national state law economy, where market participants must assert themselves as netizens and citizens. In this respect, there has never been so much mediation in immediacy in the world around us in the history of mankind. This social relatedness of modern individuals does not merely mean the rational and instrumental relationship, but also the irrationality of affects as a neurophysiological and psychosomatic emotion economy. In such a sociology of media, perspectives are therefore challenged which do not describe the history of capitalist economy solely as a process of rationalization or profit-rational abstraction. Rather, they focus primarily on the productive forces of irrationalities, affects, desires, ignorance and phantasms. It is the dense network of immanent relationships that makes individuals in their productions and creations controllable and psychosocially manageable through their social linkage. Thus, the relation as self-determination in the middle of the media (an individual relative to an objective, related to society and history) cannot be thought of without a foreign power relationship. A medial relatedness, which means the ‘law of media economy’ as a modern, manifest and at the same time original power relationship.