The Contraction of the Possible

Algorithmic Infrastructures and the Erosion of Critical Imagination

Bibliographic Data

ID24236709
AuthorsGil Baptista Ferreira (0000-0002-5917-1248, Polytechnic University of Coimbra)
Year2026
Publication date2026-10-21
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePhilosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01914537261496517
OpenAlexW7223168281
LanguageEN
References cited23

This article argues that the contemporary crisis of the public sphere cannot be adequately understood as a crisis of communication alone. What is at stake is a contraction of the horizon of the possible: a narrowing of the conditions under which alternatives can be imagined. Drawing on the Frankfurt School tradition, it develops a concept of imagination as a critical faculty grounded in Walter Benjamin’s characterisation of it as the “awareness of the de-formations of the future,” and traces its erosion through Marcuse’s analysis of one-dimensional society. The article proposes the model of Infrastructural Conditioning of Imagination (ICI), identifying three interdependent dynamics (filtering, familiarisation and anticipation) through which algorithmic systems pre-structure the field of the thinkable. Each dynamic bears on a distinct dimension of experience: filtering concerns the structure of access, familiarisation the structure of reception, and anticipation the structure of temporality. The article argues that this conditioning operates as a suppression of non-identity in Adorno’s sense, eroding the conditions of Erfahrung under which the preponderance of the object can function as a critical moment, at the level of the conditions through which subjectivity itself is formed.

Critical Theory and Philosophy · Cultural Studies and Postmodernism · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access