Marco Briziarelli
Biographic Data
| ID | 640530 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marco Briziarelli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marco |
| FAMILY NAME | Briziarelli |
| SIGNATURE | BRIZIARELLI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4311-2534 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Finding Closure
This paper examines how digital platforms reorganise the circulation of meaning. It argues that platform infrastructures systematically privilege interpretations that minimise cognitive effort and maximise transmissibility, thus transforming epistemic closure into a site of rent extraction and differential value appropriation. By introducing the concepts of interpretive friction and epistemic rent, the paper shows how platforms function as rentie…
The political economy of suspicion
This article advances a political economic analysis of the transformation of critique into conspiratorial certainty in late-modern Europe. Arguing that this shift is rooted in the commodification and alienation of cognitive work, I theorize a mechanism centered around commodification-alienation-fetishization through which critique becomes a mass cultural commodity, detached from institutional mediation, and finally stabilized as ideological closu…
Between commodification and politicization
This paper explores the intricate relationship between popular music, popularity and politics, using the song Bella Ciao as a focal point. Through the notion of ‘social invention’, i.e. grasping a complex and contradictory process of social production/consumption and mediation, the analysis examines how Bella Ciao functions as a particular cultural commodity, adapting to shifting cultural contexts. I argue that the song’s fortune can be explained…
Vagues de luttes dans le travail. Décomposition et recomposition des pratiques de recherche dans les Universités
L'article explore la relation entre le capital néolibéral, la technologie numérique et l'enseignement supérieur, sa capacité à décomposer le travail, ainsi que les conditions de sa propre recomposition
Digital Platforms and Algorithmic Subjectivities
Algorithms are a form of productive power – so how may we conceptualise the newly merged terrains of social life, economy and self in a world of digital platforms? How do multiple self-quantifying practices interact with questions of class, race and gender? This edited collection considers algorithms at work – for what purposes encoded data about behaviour, attitudes, dispositions, relationships and preferences are deployed – and black box contro…
Against gig academia
In this paper, we examine the process of decomposition as well as the struggle for recomposition of academic labor, which we understand as a contradictory positionality within so-called “gig academy.” Ours is a rhetorical intervention to, first of all, explicitly connect contemporary working conditions in academia to the general process of neoliberalization; second, illustrate how online education platforms (or LMS) mediate important aspects of t…
The social production of radical space
In this article, we explore the antagonism between capital and labour from a distinctive spatial and connective perspective: by examining the tension between the production of digital abstract space in the context of machines and computational automation, and the powerful pushbacks of embodied labour struggles of gig-economy workers advancing alternative connective strategies. Our goal is to advance a spatial approach to digital labour practices …
Spatial politics in the digital realm
This paper uses the case of mobilization of delivery workers from digital platform Deliveroo in order to illustrate the production of space of resistance, which develops as a result of the tension of two emerging factors shaping the digital labour realm: logistics and precarity. On the one hand, I consider how logistics in the digital capitalist context produce precarious workers whose ICT-driven connectivity and flexibility responds to the logis…
Snapchat’s Dialectics of Socialization
In this paper, I use the online app Snapchat as a prism through which I illustrate a “spectacular” power of current informational/communicative capitalism: the ability to subsume and integrate a broad range of practices into a holistic socialization process that operates both at the level of media platform structures and at the level of subjectivization mechanisms. I advance this argument by historicizing Guy Debord’s notion of the Spectacle via …
Podemos and the New Political Cycle
Podemos’ Twofold Assault on Hegemony
Professing Contradictions
In this paper, we will provide an interpretation of the condition of academic labor, which is understood as a particular kind of knowledge work and labor. Our objective is to explore the contradictory condition of academics in terms of class position, production of value and subjectivity, showing both its idiosyncrasies as well as its alignment with the broader experience of working in current post-Fordist capitalism. First, paying particular att…
Invisible Play and Invisible Game
In this paper, I examine video game testing as a lens through which exploring broader aspects of digital economy such as the intersection of different kind productive practices—working, labouring, playing and gaming—as well as the tendency to conceal the labour associated with them. Drawing on Lund’s (2014) distinction between the creative aspects of “work-playing” and the constraining/instrumental aspects of “game-labouring”, I claim that video …
Reviving Gramsci
Engaging debates within cultural studies, media and communication studies, and critical theory, this book addresses whether Gramscian thought continues to be relevant for social and cultural analysis, in particular when examining times of crisis and social change. The book is motivated by two intertwined but distinct purposes: first, to show the privileged and fruitful link between a "Gramscian Theory of Communication" and a "Communicative Theory…
To “Feel” and to “Understand” Political Struggle
While communication scholars who have invoked the Gramscian concept of hegemony have approached it primarily as a designation for cultural stability and domination, there have been fewer calls for its closer consideration in relation to human agency in the process of social change. Receptive of these calls, in this article, I develop an alternative to the dominant reading of the concept to show its productiveness in the analysis of a political gr…
Comradely Greetings
Žižek and Tolokonnikova’s exchange letters provides the reader with the suggestive image and evocative words of two intellectuals speaking from very different contexts. This article discusses the relevance of this volume in the context of localized global capitalism and an equally localized global struggle against it
The Red Brigades and the Discourse of Violence
This book explores the communicative practices of the Italian radical group Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse, or BR), the relationship the group established with the Italian press, and the specific social historical context in which the BR developed both its own self-understanding and its complex dialectical connection with the society at large. The BR’s worldview and the dominant ideology(ies) mediated by the press are treated as competing responses …
The Ideological Reproduction
The present paper explores the role of (neo-)liberal ideology in reproducing digital labour. Drawing on Terranova’s concept of “free labour”, and Fuchs and Sevignani’s distinction between “work” and “labour”, the author claims that theorization of Web 2.0 practices requires the exploration of ideology as a material force and a contradictory phenomenon. More specifically, the paper considers the capability of ideology to mediate between the valori…
Hide and Seek
The author claims that neoliberal discourse plays “hide and seek” with the state, which appears at the same time absent and present, negated, and necessitated. In order to test its limits, the paper historicizes such discourse by engaging with the Italian case. More specifically, this study examines the most representative figure of Italian neoliberalism, former prime minister and media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, and his ambiguous relationship wi…
The Moral Neoliberal
Andrea Muehlebach, (2012) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 228 pp, ISBN 9780226545400, $27.50, soft cover Recounting the vicissitudes of Milanese Italians who have become gradually more invo
Social drama in the academic-media nexus
This article applies ‘social drama’ – adapted from the anthropology of Victor Turner – to portray a performance of media ritual in control of critical academic discourse. Insights from newspaper coverage of a controversy surrounding Ward Churchill allow us to trace theoretical connections between strategic ritual at the occupational level and media ritual in cultural practice. We observe a fractal-like structure, such that ritualistic punishment …
Neoliberalism as a state-centric class project
This essay sheds light on the neoliberal aspects of the Italian political-economic system exemplified in the relationship between capital, state and media. The main argument is that the specific marriage between neoliberalism and neocorporatism that characterizes Italy reveals a distinctive characteristic of neoliberalism: a class project relying heavily on the state. As Polanyi has suggested through the concept of ‘embeddedness’, capitalism has …
Social drama in the academic-media nexus
This article applies ‘social drama’ – adapted from the anthropology of Victor Turner – to portray a performance of media ritual in control of critical academic discourse. Insights from newspaper coverage of a controversy surrounding Ward Churchill allow us to trace theoretical connections between strategic ritual at the occupational level and media ritual in cultural practice. We observe a fractal-like structure, such that ritualistic punishment …
Hide and Seek
The author claims that neoliberal discourse plays “hide and seek” with the state, which appears at the same time absent and present, negated, and necessitated. In order to test its limits, the paper historicizes such discourse by engaging with the Italian case. More specifically, this study examines the most representative figure of Italian neoliberalism, former prime minister and media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, and his ambiguous relationship wi…
The social production of radical space
In this article, we explore the antagonism between capital and labour from a distinctive spatial and connective perspective: by examining the tension between the production of digital abstract space in the context of machines and computational automation, and the powerful pushbacks of embodied labour struggles of gig-economy workers advancing alternative connective strategies. Our goal is to advance a spatial approach to digital labour practices …
Snapchat’s Dialectics of Socialization
In this paper, I use the online app Snapchat as a prism through which I illustrate a “spectacular” power of current informational/communicative capitalism: the ability to subsume and integrate a broad range of practices into a holistic socialization process that operates both at the level of media platform structures and at the level of subjectivization mechanisms. I advance this argument by historicizing Guy Debord’s notion of the Spectacle via …
Neoliberalism as a state-centric class project
This essay sheds light on the neoliberal aspects of the Italian political-economic system exemplified in the relationship between capital, state and media. The main argument is that the specific marriage between neoliberalism and neocorporatism that characterizes Italy reveals a distinctive characteristic of neoliberalism: a class project relying heavily on the state. As Polanyi has suggested through the concept of ‘embeddedness’, capitalism has …
To “Feel” and to “Understand” Political Struggle
While communication scholars who have invoked the Gramscian concept of hegemony have approached it primarily as a designation for cultural stability and domination, there have been fewer calls for its closer consideration in relation to human agency in the process of social change. Receptive of these calls, in this article, I develop an alternative to the dominant reading of the concept to show its productiveness in the analysis of a political gr…
The Moral Neoliberal
Andrea Muehlebach, (2012) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 228 pp, ISBN 9780226545400, $27.50, soft cover Recounting the vicissitudes of Milanese Italians who have become gradually more invo
Neoliberalism as a state-centric class project
This essay sheds light on the neoliberal aspects of the Italian political-economic system exemplified in the relationship between capital, state and media. The main argument is that the specific marriage between neoliberalism and neocorporatism that characterizes Italy reveals a distinctive characteristic of neoliberalism: a class project relying heavily on the state. As Polanyi has suggested through the concept of ‘embeddedness’, capitalism has …
Social drama in the academic-media nexus
This article applies ‘social drama’ – adapted from the anthropology of Victor Turner – to portray a performance of media ritual in control of critical academic discourse. Insights from newspaper coverage of a controversy surrounding Ward Churchill allow us to trace theoretical connections between strategic ritual at the occupational level and media ritual in cultural practice. We observe a fractal-like structure, such that ritualistic punishment …
The Moral Neoliberal
Andrea Muehlebach, (2012) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 228 pp, ISBN 9780226545400, $27.50, soft cover Recounting the vicissitudes of Milanese Italians who have become gradually more invo
The Red Brigades and the Discourse of Violence
This book explores the communicative practices of the Italian radical group Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse, or BR), the relationship the group established with the Italian press, and the specific social historical context in which the BR developed both its own self-understanding and its complex dialectical connection with the society at large. The BR’s worldview and the dominant ideology(ies) mediated by the press are treated as competing responses …
The Ideological Reproduction
The present paper explores the role of (neo-)liberal ideology in reproducing digital labour. Drawing on Terranova’s concept of “free labour”, and Fuchs and Sevignani’s distinction between “work” and “labour”, the author claims that theorization of Web 2.0 practices requires the exploration of ideology as a material force and a contradictory phenomenon. More specifically, the paper considers the capability of ideology to mediate between the valori…
Hide and Seek
The author claims that neoliberal discourse plays “hide and seek” with the state, which appears at the same time absent and present, negated, and necessitated. In order to test its limits, the paper historicizes such discourse by engaging with the Italian case. More specifically, this study examines the most representative figure of Italian neoliberalism, former prime minister and media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, and his ambiguous relationship wi…
Comradely Greetings
Žižek and Tolokonnikova’s exchange letters provides the reader with the suggestive image and evocative words of two intellectuals speaking from very different contexts. This article discusses the relevance of this volume in the context of localized global capitalism and an equally localized global struggle against it
Invisible Play and Invisible Game
In this paper, I examine video game testing as a lens through which exploring broader aspects of digital economy such as the intersection of different kind productive practices—working, labouring, playing and gaming—as well as the tendency to conceal the labour associated with them. Drawing on Lund’s (2014) distinction between the creative aspects of “work-playing” and the constraining/instrumental aspects of “game-labouring”, I claim that video …
Reviving Gramsci
Engaging debates within cultural studies, media and communication studies, and critical theory, this book addresses whether Gramscian thought continues to be relevant for social and cultural analysis, in particular when examining times of crisis and social change. The book is motivated by two intertwined but distinct purposes: first, to show the privileged and fruitful link between a "Gramscian Theory of Communication" and a "Communicative Theory…
To “Feel” and to “Understand” Political Struggle
While communication scholars who have invoked the Gramscian concept of hegemony have approached it primarily as a designation for cultural stability and domination, there have been fewer calls for its closer consideration in relation to human agency in the process of social change. Receptive of these calls, in this article, I develop an alternative to the dominant reading of the concept to show its productiveness in the analysis of a political gr…
Podemos and the New Political Cycle
Podemos’ Twofold Assault on Hegemony
Professing Contradictions
In this paper, we will provide an interpretation of the condition of academic labor, which is understood as a particular kind of knowledge work and labor. Our objective is to explore the contradictory condition of academics in terms of class position, production of value and subjectivity, showing both its idiosyncrasies as well as its alignment with the broader experience of working in current post-Fordist capitalism. First, paying particular att…
Spatial politics in the digital realm
This paper uses the case of mobilization of delivery workers from digital platform Deliveroo in order to illustrate the production of space of resistance, which develops as a result of the tension of two emerging factors shaping the digital labour realm: logistics and precarity. On the one hand, I consider how logistics in the digital capitalist context produce precarious workers whose ICT-driven connectivity and flexibility responds to the logis…
Snapchat’s Dialectics of Socialization
In this paper, I use the online app Snapchat as a prism through which I illustrate a “spectacular” power of current informational/communicative capitalism: the ability to subsume and integrate a broad range of practices into a holistic socialization process that operates both at the level of media platform structures and at the level of subjectivization mechanisms. I advance this argument by historicizing Guy Debord’s notion of the Spectacle via …
Against gig academia
In this paper, we examine the process of decomposition as well as the struggle for recomposition of academic labor, which we understand as a contradictory positionality within so-called “gig academy.” Ours is a rhetorical intervention to, first of all, explicitly connect contemporary working conditions in academia to the general process of neoliberalization; second, illustrate how online education platforms (or LMS) mediate important aspects of t…
The social production of radical space
In this article, we explore the antagonism between capital and labour from a distinctive spatial and connective perspective: by examining the tension between the production of digital abstract space in the context of machines and computational automation, and the powerful pushbacks of embodied labour struggles of gig-economy workers advancing alternative connective strategies. Our goal is to advance a spatial approach to digital labour practices …
Vagues de luttes dans le travail. Décomposition et recomposition des pratiques de recherche dans les Universités
L'article explore la relation entre le capital néolibéral, la technologie numérique et l'enseignement supérieur, sa capacité à décomposer le travail, ainsi que les conditions de sa propre recomposition
Digital Platforms and Algorithmic Subjectivities
Algorithms are a form of productive power – so how may we conceptualise the newly merged terrains of social life, economy and self in a world of digital platforms? How do multiple self-quantifying practices interact with questions of class, race and gender? This edited collection considers algorithms at work – for what purposes encoded data about behaviour, attitudes, dispositions, relationships and preferences are deployed – and black box contro…
Between commodification and politicization
This paper explores the intricate relationship between popular music, popularity and politics, using the song Bella Ciao as a focal point. Through the notion of ‘social invention’, i.e. grasping a complex and contradictory process of social production/consumption and mediation, the analysis examines how Bella Ciao functions as a particular cultural commodity, adapting to shifting cultural contexts. I argue that the song’s fortune can be explained…
Finding Closure
This paper examines how digital platforms reorganise the circulation of meaning. It argues that platform infrastructures systematically privilege interpretations that minimise cognitive effort and maximise transmissibility, thus transforming epistemic closure into a site of rent extraction and differential value appropriation. By introducing the concepts of interpretive friction and epistemic rent, the paper shows how platforms function as rentie…
The political economy of suspicion
This article advances a political economic analysis of the transformation of critique into conspiratorial certainty in late-modern Europe. Arguing that this shift is rooted in the commodification and alienation of cognitive work, I theorize a mechanism centered around commodification-alienation-fetishization through which critique becomes a mass cultural commodity, detached from institutional mediation, and finally stabilized as ideological closu…
Political science (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (13 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Digital Economy and Work Transformation (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Capitalism (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works)