On Foucault's account, power doesn't work through a large-scale finality, a closed teleology, or a centralized organizing principle. On the contrary, power is deployed through a series of local, diffuse, and everyday practices. Accordingly, for Foucault, our discourses are manifestations and enactments of an omnipresent discourse-power complex. Probably, that is why he said: "My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So, my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger".

if we "always have something to do", does it not become imperative to control all aspects of discourse, everywhere? In which case how can we avoid legitimizing our own particular use of "violence"? If discourse is violence would it not be better to remain silent? — PuerAzaelis

The implicit connection of our discourse to power should not be simply interpreted as "violence". After all, it is impossible to control all aspects of discourse or
to stay completely silent. Foucault's own choice was an attempt to extend, broaden, or saturate specific effects and social presuppositions within a given field while trying to downplay or limit others.

https://wofdeho.firebaseapp.com/20/Crowds-and-Party.pdf

It's not the new kinds of subjectivities that need to be 'taken into account' per se - at this point I take it for granted that different kinds of subjectivities are produced in varying circumstances - so much as how they are produced. If fact, one wants to say that the question is not even so much to do with the production of certain subjectivities, but in looking to think about 'counter-productions' of subjectivity, 'our' productions against 'their' productions. — StreetlightX

When one is successful in dismantling, disassembling a complex of
prevailing subjectivities, one functions not just as a political philosopher or a radical thinker. One is already engaged in counter-production.
Due to their totalizing, penetrating effects, “the neoliberal subjectivities,” produced
by the capitalist neoliberal network, are acting on everybody.
The task is simultaneously theoretical, existential and aesthetic – one inevitably encounters the net of mighty, unrecognizable forces, so that “analysis is no longer the transferential interpretation of symptoms as a function of a preexisting, latent content, but the invention of new catalytic nuclei capable of bifurcating existence.”
Cuattari, “Chaosmosis”.

As Deleuze wrote, the collective becomes "samples, data, or markets". What's missing in this latter approach to collectivity is solidarity, an acting together and with one another. — StreetlightX

the dominant mode of subjectivity production today, is atomistic and - in D&G's terms which you are familiar with - 'dividual'. — StreetlightX

I think that this is a misinterpretation of how Deleuze and Guattari conceived
collectivity, solidarity, and a subject-to-come. All in all, Jodi Dean has ultimately
rejected their approach (without mentioning their names) as prioritizing the vanguard and the rupture. Yet, in spite of providing the comprehensive historical analyses of the Paris Commune, is her theory workable?

What's missing in this latter approach to collectivity is solidarity, an acting together and with one another. Thinking in terms of masses you ironically end-up getting individualized solutions — StreetlightX

Solidarity, the ability of working together, should be built, constructed by the real counter-production
of the militant subjectivities (and it is what D&G left for us); it cannot be achieved through the nostalgic declarations and the reminiscent slogans.

can we speak of crowds having histories in this way? Have there been transformations in how crowds have related to the world around them? Can we think of how the agency of the crowds has been shaped and changed under different conditions? I think the answer is yes, especially when one looks to things like techniques of crowd management — StreetlightX

if we retake the historical perspective, we should conclude, that in the West, spontaneous crowd eruptions, acquiring the political will and threatening the existing regime, have become exclusively
rare events. And, to amplify this argument, it is necessary to exclude the protest movements in Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Probably, the last time when the left parties got a chance to grub a power, was in France in May of 1968.
Dean mentioned that the crowd could be created without the physical proximity of people.
(I downloaded a pdf file of her book)
Gerald Raunig has also developed a similar idea in “A thousand machines.” Starting from the 20th century, radio, cinema, TV, and further recent various Internet platforms have begun to function in a crowd’s manner. I mean, that masses experience the effects of proximity without being physically gathered together. The virtual groups, created by the newest means of mass media, communication, and entertainment, to a considerable extent, can reproduce the crowd’ effects, described by Canetti. Further, they also can simulate and imitate the whole spectrum of the political or social life of society; they have a broader audience and a much more powerful means of reproduction. They can be scheduled in advance, easily manipulated, and they are connected to the global network of capitalistic monetary flows. Even the most “innocent” entertainment program functions as an reproductive generator of subjectivities, simulating an active social group.

Dean, again, speaks about how subjectivity has continually been 'enclosed', both historically and philosophically, much in the same way in which the commons have been enclosed, linking the enclosure of the commons with the enclosure of the subject (in the individual, rather than the crowd), and in parallel, thinking about crowds in terms of the commons. — StreetlightX

So far, it is not clear how the newest forms of social organization and production of subjectivities are related to the development of unpredictable, spontaneous, crowd-like events, taken by Dean as a leading condition of the revolutionary situation. Probably, it would be reasonable to assume that the latest forms of social interaction do restrict, confine, and even displace Le Bon and Canneti’s crowds. One of the ways to reflect on this situation was the creating
of the concept of the precarious. (Butler, Raunig, Lorey, maybe some others).
Raunig writes: “The precarious indicates dispersion, fragility, and multitude. The precariat does not represent a unified, homogeneous or even ontological formation, but instead distributed and dispersed among many spots. Yet, instead of the clearly negative connotation of dispersion as obstructing all social intercourse, there are the potentiality of new forms of communication and generation of concatenations of singularities”. The precariat, the 21st century analog of the proletariat, is radically opposed to Canneti’s crowd. Without a doubt, the new concept can be justified with the help of sociological or economic perspectives. Yet, the position of the leading political collective subjectivity has remained vacant.

the ballooning of debt has made a lot of things shit, — StreetlightX

Thank you for raising the issue of the global debt! It is quite surprising that the vast majority of people do not share your perception of the global debt as awful. Probably, the typical attitude is quite similar to the relation to the weather: it happens, it is out of our control, and we simply need to adjust ourselves to it. Yet, on the contrary to what Justin Trudeau recently noted, the debt does not work itself out. There are institutions and organizations, full of bureaucrats and financiers, who are not elected, and who are not known public figures; but since they are managing the most monetized and liberalized capitalist sphere, they prescribe what will be produced, the conditions for production, and the distribution of roles and functions. They exercise power over the political, economy, and society. Therefore, the global debt is not a neutral, objective phenomenon. It is based on a ceaseless hidden reproduction of the asymmetrical relations of inequality and subordination. Zizek, reflecting on this situation, said: “ we do indeed enjoy the freedom of choice, but we are deprived of the freedom to change”.

'I am not sold on the idea of parallel institutions. I think it's important as a strtegic peice of the puzzle, but as Zizek pointed out, such instiutions rely on, and owe thier very existence to their being embedded in the larger captialist orders: "the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left." (Resistence is Surrender) — StreetlightX

Zizek wrote this essay before the events of 2011. The Occupy movement was able to create the real threat, much more dangerous than the 9/11 attacks. Nevertheless, Zizek made excellent points! Though, he has not explained how the neoliberal capitalism was able to convert a variety of protest movements into the working parts of the existing system; and how the neoliberal elite could appropriate the most progressive, humanist discourse, “leading” the struggle for various noblest aims.

my interest in this comes from reading Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party where she argues that the crowd represents a potential for political action, and that it's weakness lies in an inability to translate that potential into a sustained programme that has temporal and institutional consistency. To this end, she argues that what the left needs is a revival of the party form, and to get over its instinctive distrust of power. As far as the crowd goes, the need lies in harnessing its potential, in directing and putting it to work. — StreetlightX

I did not read Jodi Dean’s book, but I found that it was discussed in this review:

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/16161_assembly-by-michael-hardt-and-antonio-negri-reviewed-by-lewis-george-bloodworth/

The book was compared with Hardt and Negri' Assembly (unfortunately, I did not read it either). Probably, without reading the books, I should not take any position about Dean vs. Hardt and Negri. Yet, I think that any discussion of the political action should take into account the existence of subjectivities of a new kind as well as their relation to Canetti’s crowd subjectivities. If we accept that regularly repeated mass actions, subordinating, managing, and organizing individuals are political, we should include “the streetwalker’s subjectivity” in the (bio)-political field.
It seems that Hardt and Negri tackle the problem of collective subjectivities:
“Hardt and Negri conceptualize “machinic subjectivities,” which draws upon the Deleuzian assemblage: “a machinic assemblage … is a dynamic composition of heterogeneous elements that eschew identity but nonetheless function together, subjectively, socially, in cooperation”. The concept of the multitude draws on this logic of the machinic, as it is singularities which assemble, cooperate, and resist the diffuse nature of capital and biopolitical power.”
Can the Deleuzian assemblage help to explain “the streetwalker’s subjectivity” ?

Re: agency - I wouldn't say that agency is like a kind of 'not as good' way to speak of subjectivity. I would rather say something like: subjectivity structures agency; or, agency is shaped by subjectivity.I mean if subjectivity is a set of capacities (to act and be acted upon), then subjectivity is a way to think about agency (as distinct from, say, 'the will'). — StreetlightX

While it is quite customary to think the political in Canetti’s manner, conceptualization of the political dimension of the new “subjectivities” could be challenging. Compared with a situation where an individual is becoming a part of a crowd, we do not realize that we unintentionally obey, being involved in, acted upon, and operated by a hidden ensemble.
Yet, simultaneously, we amplify our agency. And, differently from Foucault’s panoptical disciplinary mechanisms, the newest subjectivation processes are substantially convenient, safe, miniaturized, and unrecognizable. Anyway, the non-crowd subjectivities have become
the unavoidable condition of any political action.

my interest in this comes from reading Jodi Dean's Crowds and Party where she argues that crowd represents a potential for political action, and that it's weakness lies in an inability to translate that potential into a sustained programme that has temporal and institutional consistency. To this end, she argues that what the left needs is a revival of the party form, and to get over its instinctive distrust of power. I totally agree with her that institutionalization and organization is crucial to any possible left politics today. — StreetlightX

The recent history has shown that institutionalization and hierarchization of a few prominent protest movements have involved them in the totalizing sphere of neoliberal politics. They have progressively lost their explosive potential and have been converted into the working parts of the existing system. Differently, in spite of The Occupy Movement’s failure, it had explored various unordinary activities. In addition to the attempts to experiment with the forms of direct democracy, there was the try to build in Zuccotti Park a kind of the self – sustaining community. Christopher Key, one of the founders of the Occupy Wall Street movement, writes: “For a truly transformative revolution to take place a parallel, alternative society must be created that is robust enough for the people to live their entire lives within it from the cradle to the grave.” However naïve and unrealistic this proposal may look, it could point at a way of rethinking the concept of “collective subjectivity” as well as its relation to the political agency. If Canetti’s “crowd collectivity” has lost its central role, we need to find another locus of the collective power.

"Now, of the various reasons why studying different subjectivities is important, chief among them are the political and ethical implications of these differing subjectivities: every kind of subject is bound, in some way or another, by the possibilities afforded by the environment of which that subject is (this is what it means to be a subject: to be subject-to-...): subjectivities, in other words, are contextual, and more than that, are produced by those very contexts in which they inhere. ".[/quote]

I will try to expand your attempt to take account of the ethical and political implications of different “subjectivities”. Retaking your example of the streetwalker: the existence of this subjectivity is not just about traversing a particular urban terrain. It involves the normative knowledge of specific semiotics and its immediate, automatic application. Ignorance and unwillingness to follow the rules are punishable. Learning and receptiveness are mandatory. Further, crossing a street is not a singular event: it is a routine, mass action; it cannot be related just to the specific context of where and when it is performed - it is a part of collective essential equipment, organizing and managing our lives; the subjectivity of the streetwalker is commonly shared and acts upon everybody, it is supported and maintained by the ensemble of various factors. “Subjectivities” are interrelated and interpenetrated, creating a totalizing network of the possible and recognizable. Have they replaced Cannetti’ collective subjectivities? A rupture, a complete break with causality, necessary for the crystallization of the protest potentialities, has become much more difficult. And, even if the ultimate rupture occurs, protesters still could be swiftly pulled back to their ordinary routine. That is why Christopher Key called for the creation of the alternate society.

"In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself, and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd". — StreetlightX

“Crowds and Power” is a great book. Nevertheless, it is not clear if Canetti’ insights
could be expanded to explain the social ineffectiveness of the public assemblies and demonstrations in the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the emergence of mass numbers of people in Tahrir Square in the winter of 2010, or the recent series of the yellow vest’ protests in Paris. As usual, masses have gathered in the significant, symbolic, and central locations; and protesters have probably experienced effects of the unity and regeneration, described by Canetti. But, differently from former successful protest movements, none of these movements have become a subject of change of an established political order or a cause of transformation of the symbolic foundation of legitimacy.
They could not convert
their anti-systemic potential into far-reaching social changes.

This kind of agency tends to run counter to the predominant ways in which agency is often talked about as a capacity or possession of the individual. Crowd agency, the correlate of crowd subjectivity, tends then to pose a pretty massive threat to social orders where individual atomization (the predominant effect of modern neoliberal governance - "there is no such thing as society") is championed as the only kind of agency available. — StreetlightX

Following the recent events, manifesting “crowd agency” in Canetti’s sense, it is reasonable to assume that this kind of collective subjectivity is not able to undermine the existing neoliberal order to produce the long-term irreversible social outcomes.

My question was related to the adjectives 'fascistic' v 'protofascistic' and how significant were the actual differences between them. — Amity

Sorry, I did not understand your question.Probably, so far, there is no
workable model, based on a research of the real historical fascistic regimes. Are you interested in my view of fascistic vs. proto-fascistic tendencies?

Yes, labels matter, fuck wit. — unenlightened

Does the label matter ? — Amity

The answer entirely depends on the context of the labeling. When GOP Minority Leader starts accusing Nancy Pelosi of abusing her power, and when he says that leading democrats in congress manipulate and distort the formal procedures of impeachment, it is not labeling. Yet, he supports Trump’s labeling allegations, including "which hunt" and "coup". As a result, the trust in democratic institutions has been damaged. When Clinton labeled Trump’s supporters deplorable, she meant to disqualify their right to decide who will be the next president. If deplorable voters elected Trump, he is not the legitimate president himself. All these examples of labeling can lead to a growth of violence and civil disobedience. The question about fascistic vs. proto-fascistic tendencies requires much more serious effort. Yet, when somebody labels some aspects of Trump’s presidency as proto-fascistic, the real intention is once again to question his legitimacy.
When you write :

Democratic institutions are at risk. I am thinking of recent events in the UK.
Following the court decisions on the prorogation of Parliament, there were hostile accusations against both Parliament and the judiciary.
There are extreme right wing forces gathering, using similar tactics and chipping away... — Amity

you are not labeling, but you tacitly assume that one side is more responsible for
the current crises than the other. Similarly, when Timothy Snyder in his interview tries to lay out his vision of Trump’s phenomenon - in addition to his academic qualities and analytic resources applied, he involves some rhetorical arguments and personal judgments. So, his attempt should be reduced to a level of another partisan intellectual project. In the current hysteric atmosphere, taking a partisan position prevents a deeper understanding and blocks the conditions of a dialogue.

Does the label matter ? — Amity

the body politic under threat from foreign bodies and so on. I reject the framing of the crisis in terms of us and them — unenlightened

Nevertheless,, this is precisely our situation: it is the formation of different "foreign bodies" within our societies through various gradations of hatred: dehumanization, labeling, delegitimization, and intolerance. Essentially, the true borders are not the outer ones, but the invisible internal barriers, so that the extreme partisanship has been advancing.

Democratic institutions are at risk. I am thinking of recent events in the UK.
Following the court decisions on the prorogation of Parliament, there were hostile accusations against both Parliament and the judiciary.
There are extreme right wing forces gathering, using similar tactics and chipping away... — Amity

I assume that in the US, there is the process quite similar to what is going on in the UK. Recently, the GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has accused Nancy Pelosi that she started impeachment against Trump in an unconstitutional manner. Should we consider it as a fascistic or proto-fascistic attack against a democratic institution?

who are the 'elites' ? Parliamentarians, the representatives, are supposed to speak for the electorate.They are being attacked by another kind of 'elite' within; the lying, extremist Tory who pretend to speak for the people. — Amity

Probably, it is difficult to single out a group that has a monopoly on
a prevailing agenda. (That is why the appearence of Trump, or "the lying, extremist Tory" looks like the "tectonic shift"). A conglomerate of leading parliamentarians, journalists, and intellectuals speaks a dominating discourse through the medium and censorship of the contemporary mass media. This situation has cardinally transformed the fundamental relations between the field of a public political discourse and so-called “real facts.” It is worth to come back to Timothy Snyder’s claim that differently from the rest of politicians,
Trump never refers to “real facts".

objective, academic analysis as explained here:

5 min Ch4 interview related to the fragility of democracy. Yale professor Timothy Snyder :

https://www.channel4.com/news/some-of-todays-politicians-have-learned-propaganda-tricks-from-1930s-fascists-says-yale-professor — Amity

It looks like Snyder mistakenly substitutes the status of a “fact” in scientific research for the use of a “fact” in contemporary politics. Any fact, spoken by a politician and taken by mass media, loses its character of an index of the apparent and transparent truth. It can be immediately challenged by a counter fact, replaced by an adjacent fact, distorted by a fact from a different area, shifted to a conflicting context, and/or confronted by a hostile, affectively charged commentary.

This from StreetlightX :
"Less than a day after President Donald Trump bragged to supporters at a campaign-style rally in Minnesota Thursday that he was working hard to bring U.S. soldiers home from foreign wars, the Pentagon announced Friday that 1,800 troops and advanced weapons systems have been ordered to Saudi Arabia"

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/11/less-24-hours-after-saying-time-bring-em-home-trump-orders-1800-us-troops-saudi

The question is: does it even matter to his core voters ? Do they even see that they are being played ? — Amity

Anyway, Trump still can say that he ordered to withdraw troops from an immediate
warfare area in Syria while sending them to relatively calm Saudi Arabia. Further, Trump could claim that his administration has initiated a process of withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. So, a Trump supporter could agree with his claim: “We are slowly going away from the Middle East,” while a Trump hater could rightly accuse him of lying.

From the OP. How many posters actually watched the 'Deplorables' ? — Amity

The main point of the video is against efforts to represent Trump’s voters and brexiters as deplorable, unspeakable, racist, xenophobic, etc. Also, according to the video, the political establishment has lost its touch with the vast masses of ordinary people in the US and the UK. So, elites have stopped to express the masses’ concerns. Bat mass does not speak itself; it speaks through its representatives. Does Trump speak on behalf of its base? Does he speak what it wants to hear? If it is correct, there is an apparent controversy between what we see in the video and the numerous accounts of Trump. Because if they are correct, we should agree that Trump’s base is comprised of the deplorable and unspeakable.

In his first campaign stop since the inquiry was announced, the US president and a 20,000-capacity crowd staged a formidable show of defiance at a basketball arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Trump mesmerised his fans for 102 minutes with a verbal cannon of conspiracy theories, blatant falsehoods, profane insults and anti-refugee bigotry.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/11/trump-minneapolis-rally-biden — David Smith

This account of Trump’s rally confirms that his base is indeed comprised of deplorable and “unspeakable” people. “Trump mesmerised his fans for 102 minutes with a verbal cannon of conspiracy theories, blatant falsehoods, profane insults, and anti-refugee bigotry” - Trump speaks what his rally wants to hear, and he speaks on behalf of it. Farther, he could expand his discourse far beyond this particular rally. Probably, so far, this change has been the central part of the so-called “tectonic shift” of Trump’s presidency. All allegations of fascistic transformations, and of destroying democratic institutions have not been verified yet.

academic analysis as explained here:

5 min Ch4 interview related to the fragility of democracy. Yale professor Timothy Snyder :

https://www.channel4.com/news/some-of-todays-politicians-have-learned-propaganda-tricks-from-1930s-fascists-says-yale-professor — Amity

It is an interesting attempt to understand Trump’s phenomenon. In Germany, the fascistic body politic had been constituted so that the body, the intellect, the affection, and even the mimics of the fuhrer had embodied the German masses’ desires, aspirations, and hopes. The individuals’ anxieties, emotions, traumatic experiences, and fantasies had been mobilized and transformed. Is that possible to apply this account on one of the main aspects of fascism to the relations between Trump and his supporters? Trump could establish a unique channel of immediate communication with a vast audience, trying to address its concerns and appeal to its interests. Should Trump’s proximity to his voters be categorized as the fascistic or proto-fascistic body politic that threatens to destroy the existing political regime? And, does Trump’s base constitute the hysteric mass, subordinated to the irrational impulses of the maniacal leader?

In a world where identity is properly understood — TheWillowOfDarkness

Jordan Peterson claims that the term of identity should not be overused; he insists that the gender identities under the question should have been constructed through the continuous and long-term of social construction:
“To refuse to engage in the social aspect of identity negotiation — to insist that what you say you are is what everyone must accept — is simply to confuse yourself and everyone else (as no one at all understands the rules of your game, not least because they have not yet been formulated).
The continually expanded plethora of “identities” recently constructed and provided with legal status thus consist of empty terms which (1) do not provide those who claim them with any real social role or direction; (2) confuse all who must deal with the narcissism of the claimant, as the only rule that can exist in the absence of painstakingly, voluntarily and mutually negotiated social role is “it’s morally wrong to say or do anything that hurts my feelings”; (3) risks generating psychological chaos among the vast majority of individuals exposed to the doctrines that insist that identity is essentially fluid and self-generating”.
One could reject Peterson’s arguments as too reactionary and obstructionistic, neglecting the essential rights of the oppressed group. Or, maybe he simply
cannot catch up with our fast-changing time?

If you read his essay on Epic vs Novel, he establishes a clear opposition between the closed monological world view of the epic and the problematized and dialogic world view of the great novels. — uncanni

I started to understand your OP better. It looks like that based on Bakhtin’s essay on Epic vs Novel, you tried to reconstruct the central theme of Bakhtin’s philosophy. But, even if we
assume that it was indeed the collision between dialogism and monologism, it is still not clear to what extent the dichotomy, grounded on comparing and contrasting the epical world view with the novels' one, can become a fruitful model for understanding our contemporary discursive realities. Even during Bakhtin’s own lifetime, the dominating forms of the monological – the Stalinist totalitarian discourse, as well as socialist realism literature, were quite different from the epical literary forms. Definitely, Bakhtin tried to undermine the prevailing enclosing oppressing discourses. Probably, his analyses of ordinary language may be more actual today than his literary criticism.
“However monological the utterance may be… it cannot but be in some measure,
a response to what has already been said about the given topic…The utterance is filled with dialogic overtone…After all, our thought itself – is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with other thought…” (Bakhtin “The problem of speech genres”). Yet, however successful these strategies of opening and breaking through could be while confronting the soviet totalitarian regimes, they may not be effective today anymore.

“The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of compelx interrelationships, merges with some, recoils from others, itnersects with yet a third group: and all this may crucially shape discourse....The word is born in a dialogue as a living rejoinder within it; the word is shaped in dialogic interaction with an alien word that is already in the object.” — uncanni

There are so many contemporary ways of framing, enclosing the dialogical sphere. Tolerance, openness to Other’s word, advocated by Bakhtin, often has been incorporated into the already-made, enclosed discourse. Have borders between monological and dialogical become blurred and indiscernible?

I am sorry, I meant collision, not collusion. Anyway, my point is that Bakhtin’s
project was about the universality of dialogic relations so that any monological
would be essentially dialogical. It was not about the dichotomy:

Bakhtin's ideas about dialogism vs monologism. — uncanni

Next, I don’t think that Bakhtin intended to reduce his vision of the dialogic just to the literary, or imaginary world. Some critics propose that he discovered a new,
dialogical sphere of being, not limited to mere replies between speakers in a dialogue.

The quotation is from “Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics”; and "dialogic collision" is the proper translation – Bakhtin especially underscored “the violent intersection of a few voices” as the fundamental feature of consciousness of Dostoyevsky’s characters.

This is the fundamental question Bakhtin asks, in the most fundamental philosophical sense: Can I listen to difference with tolerance? — uncanni

Bakhtin's point is that there are dialogic strategies which open a space for broader mutual understanding, and monologic strategies that shut down the possibility of responding. — uncanni

Bakhtin's notion of dialogic relationships should not be reduced to a mere field of communication between interlocutors in a dialogue:
"Dialogic relationships are possible not only among whole (relatively
whole) utterances; a dialogic approach is possible toward any signifying
part of an utterance, even toward an individual word, if that
word is perceived not as the impersonal word of language but as a
sign of someone else's semantic position, as the representative of
another person's utterance; that is if we hear in it someone else's
voice. Thus dialogic relationships can permeate inside the utterance,
even inside the individual word, as long as two voices collide within it
dialogically."
According to Bakhtin, a dialogic relation plays an essential role in any verbal act, including inner speech. Even an internal monologue is addressed to someone or something; replies to someone or something.

“Communism has a rather orthodox definition including the abolition of private property, the cessation of class relations of domination, and the withering away of the state. Left-accelerationism [i.e. data democratization -SX] is a total non-starter on this issue for me because it remains a technocratic state socialist project rather than communist one. [One should] propose blocking, sabotage, and ungovernability as a shared exodus from an Empire that operates according to communication (the precise cybernetic system that left-accelerationists advocate). The speed of such revolt may actually be experienced as a slowing down, as the complicity between cybernetics and capitalism is that both speed things up because they perceive most problems to be an issue of efficiency.“

This would be a third option. Not ethics, not politics, just escape, inoperativity — StreetlightX

It is still not clear how Culp’s idea of escape (definitely Deleuzian) is related to his vision of communism. “Darkness advances the secret as an alternative to the liberal obsession with transparency…The conspiracy is against the consistency
of everything being in its proper place, and the secret is the fact that nothing is as it seems. It circulates as an open secret that retains its secrecy only by operating against connectivism through the principle of selective engagement…We all must live double lives”. (Andrew Culp, Dark Deleuze). Doubtfully, that such interpretation of Deleuze and Guattari’s insight of taking flight can ground Culp’s assumption that “Deleuze’s metaphysics suggests that there are non-legislative processes that could passively produce the conditions of communism.” To escape, or to take flight, does not necessarily mean to get read of any political or ethical responsibility in favour of the violent anarchistic deconstruction. The most immediate effect of the escape is the work of self by self,
self-subjectivation, created by folding. Can this work be considered as an action under our control?

We're all really bloody ethical now, super sensitive to the desires, wants, needs of the other (the corollary to this, one might say the mechanism for this, is shame, or weaponized shame: we shame those who are (deemed?) unethical on a literal global scale. — StreetlightX

The ubiquitous discourse of shame, taken up by the establishment, has become a part of totalizing strategies of closing the field of politics. As a consequence, independence of thought, autonomy, and the possibility of political opposition are being deprived of their basic spontaneity.

it might be only my consciousness, which comprises a very small part of my overall being, which is oriented toward the past. — Metaphysician Undercover

My consciousness can function just through its temporality, which
has existed as an organized structure. The three so-called dimensions of time: past, present, and future, should not be considered as a collection of isolated "givens." The only possible method by which to study temporality is to approach it as a totality, as an original synthesis, which dominates its secondary structures and which confers on them their meaning.

Recently, Judith Butler further developed her account on responsibility. She discussed various aspects of a question that Adorno posed: “Can one lead a good life
in a bad life?” Butler assumes that there are different modes of life involved here: my own life, “a good life” as a moral directive, and
”a bad life” as a vast complex of our social, economic, and biological living conditions. “The life I am living is already connected with broader networks of life…My own life depends on a life that is not mine, not just a life of the other, but a broader social and economic organization of life…They constitute who I am. If we might still think about what a good life might be, we can no longer think of it exclusively in terms of the good life of the individual”. (Butler, Notes Toward A Performative Theory Of Assembly). Sharing with Adorno the idea that the pursuit of the good life is possible just through resistance, Butler, nevertheless, stresses the importance of taking part in the protest collective actions. If my individuality is entirely determined by different regimes of power, just “radical democracy’s
movements can articulate what it might mean to lead a good life in the sense of a livable life.” Therefore, my personal responsibility is in becoming a part of an appropriate social movement struggle. Adorno himself proposed a different notion of responsibility and resistance. He thought that we are still able to create our own individual space: “This resistance to what the world has made of us does not imply merely an opposition to the external world…We ought also to mobilize our own powers of resistance in order to resist those parts of us that are tempted to join in.”
(Adorno, Minima Moralia).

sex, gender or sexual orientation is it's own fact about a person itself. A truth not given by properties (e.g. "I'm a man because I have a penis"), but rather one given in itself (e.g. "I am a man") which occurs alongside their properties (whatever those might be, be they a penis or a vagina, burly or scrawny, short hair or long, etc.) — TheWillowOfDarkness

What is the truth of belonging to identity itself? What kind of identity do you use here?
Do we need the principle of identity to define gender or sexual orientation? Butler claims that categories themselves, as products of regimes of power, produce the identity they are deemed to be simply representing.
"A genealogical critique refuses to search for the origins of
gender, the inner truth of female desire, a genuine or authentic
sexual identity that repression has kept from view; rather
genealogy investigates the political stakes in designating as
an origin and cause those identity categories that are in fact
the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple
and diffuse points of origin."

Responsibility enters precisely at the point at which our actions exceed us. — StreetlightX

Doubtless, Butler and Arendt accounts of responsibility are correct. Nevertheless,
they are incomplete: Sartre laid out a different outlook on what is under our control. Each of our actions has two levels: the first one maintains our intimate tie with action, and what makes it our possibility is an ability to interrupt the action, stop ourselves. “This possibility of interrupting the action is rejected on a second level by the fact that the action which discovers itself to me through my act tends to crystallize as a transcendent, relatively independent form. The consciousness of man in action is non-reflective consciousness. It is consciousness of something, and the transcendent which discloses itself to this consciousness is of a particular nature: it is a structure of exigency in the world, and the world correlatively discloses in it complex relations of instrumentality”. While acting, we inevitably contain ourselves within the unforeseen chain of consequences, relations, or commitments, which are definitely out of our control. Yet, we are still responsible for our behavioral patterns. It does not mean that we have to make an explicit decision at every moment about how to behave. Instead, the ability to interrupt our actions manifests our control over the motives that we find ourselves within. The character, existing through our given or chosen projects, forms the motives.

A person can think about anything in a meaningful way. And they can also refrain from thinking about anything in a meaningful way. — Terrapin Station

Meaning is something mental that we do. Namely, it's the mental process of associative thinking, of thinking about something so that it implies, refers to, connotes, denotes, suggests or "pushes" or "leans towards", etc. other things. — Terrapin Station

When we have a dream – does it satisfy your definition of meaningful mental activity? Is it a process of associative thinking? And what about fits of delirium? Also, it is not clear if your understanding of “the mental process of associative thinking” includes just verbal thinking.

I tried to give myself some wiggle room here by speaking of such variables as modular, but it's true that one could go alot further here. One thing that comes to mind here is that tracking the variations of such changes (of 'dimensions') through time might correspond to the practice of conceptual genealogy, in the sense practised by Nietzsche and Foucault. — StreetlightX

It may look like Foucault’s genealogy is the development of Nietzsche’s one. Yet, he could not avoid the influence of Austin’s
discovery of performativity. Further, the problematization of the Foucault’s encounter of “words” and “things” become a central theme of Deleuze’s reading of Foucault, as well as of his philosophy of language. Accordingly, both two Pitkin’s dimensions are taken as the two form-substance complexes. Pitkin’s “Delicious,” as well as “green,” can be considered as related to the state of mind and the state of things expressions. As per the state of mind, “delicious” would designate a variable of particular uses, having more social-collective, than an individual, cognitive character. As per the state of things, “green” would express the complex of bodily effects and perceptions, also having the collectively shared functions. And, according to Deleuze, the third dimension of “just-ification” is necessitated with the enunciation of any sentence; it is a diagram that acts as an immanent cause, coextensive with the whole social field.
When we say: “It is delicious,” or “Green,” we effectuate the three dimensions simultaneously. The expression has an ultimate performative character. If we say what we should, or ought to, or must (Cavell’s just-ification), our minds and bodies are becoming related and activated by the regimes of social, collective, and individuating presuppositions. We continuously “do things with words,” practicing the illocutionary force of language.
“The transformation applies to bodies but is itself incorporeal, internal to enunciation. In expressing the noncorporeal attribute, and by that token attributing it to the body, one is not representing or referring but intervening in a way; it is a speech act. The warp of the instantaneous transformations is always inserted into the woof of the continuous modifications.”

Yeah, the point I was making (via Pitkin) is different from Cavell's, but different by way of what I understand as an elaboration and extention of what he says. Cavell's general point is that yes, language and world are always elaborated together, and that we bring the world to our words (or vice versa). What I take Pitkin to add is that words and world are themselves plurivocal, and that exactly which bits of the world, and how it is that our words come to bear on it are essential to pay attention to. This is what I take from her idea of 'axes' or dimentions of meaning, which can be comprised of other words, bits of the world, standards of justification, or whatnot. This allows one to bring out, in a way not possible with Cavell's general point, the idea of differing kinds of words (although of course Cavell goes into this sort of thing elsewhere and at length). — StreetlightX

It could be interesting to compare Cavell's project with Pitkin’s one in more details.
(Though, it is possible that my understanding of your account of Pitkin's approach is quite distorted). It looks like Pitkin wants to stress out
that different words can be classified according to their proximity and direction towards the poles of "meaning" and "thing." (Both terms are ambiguous; therefore, Cavell and Pitkin probably apply them differently). Pitkin's
"meaning" could be apprehended as an intellectual, cognitive operation
of thinking or an act of perception; whereas "thing" would designate an independently existing object ("the fact of the world"). Your example of the word "green" could affirm the correctness of this account: "the meaning of green is tied directly to what is green." In short, some words directly point to activity of mind, and there are words, firmly tied with "things." The relation between the two categories is maintained by the third dimension of just-ification, relating "the meanings of the words with the facts of the world." One could easily find all the three dimensions at the center of Cavell's project: "We need to remind ourselves of what we should say when. When the philosopher asks, "What should we say here?" "What would be the normal thing to say here?" or perhaps, "What is the most natural thing we could say here?" …the point of the question is this: answering it is sometimes the only way to tell others and tell for ourselves what the situation is." For Cavell, the meaning is our state of mind,
when we face a particular context (and not a single "thing"). And, "should" functions as the Pitkin's third dimension of justification, it is an ethical-political imperative of what must be said. The essential linguistic element of analysis is not a single word, but a sentence, articulating the encounter between the "dictionary" and the "world." Pitkin could effectively articulate the existence of the three dimensions. Yet, the task of classifying and categorizing single words could be exhausting, unproductive, and static. At the same time, Cavell's philosophy combines the most general notions with the rigorous analyses of ordinary language

One potentially interesting philosophical puzzle is the distinction and connection between what a thing is called, and what a thing is. This roughly accords to the distinction between language (what a thing is called) and world (what a thing 'is'), but things are slightly more complicated, as we will see. Stanley Cavell raises the question thus: when we encounter something new we've never seen before (a distinctive Inuit boat, say), what do we want to know? What it is, or what it is called? If one says: "oh, that's an umiak", what kind of answer is this? An answer about how we use our words, or an answer about things in the world? — StreetlightX

I think that Cavell’s intention is different. “What seemed like finding the world in a dictionary was really a case of bringing the world to the dictionary. We had the world with us all the time, in that armchair; but we felt the weight of it only when we felt a lack in it. Sometimes we will
need to bring the dictionary to the world. That will happen when
(say) we run across a small boat in Alaska of a sort we have never
seen and wonder-what? What it is, or what it is called? In either
case, the learning is a question of aligning language and the world.”
Our permanent position is to have the world in a dictionary while sitting
in the armchair. So, we need to bring “our dictionary” to the world. Further, the relation between an unknown (single) thing and a meaning of a corresponding hidden word (while traveling) has just preliminary importance. All in all, Cavell’s question is about problematization of what we need to say in a particular ordinary context.

He uses the word "collusion" again, which is not a crime anyone was actually looking to charge him with — NKBJ

Hasn’t Mueller been appointed to investigate the alleged collusion of Trump’s campaign with Russia? And, hasn’t it been the alleged crime?

Passive voice in the first sentence hides the details of who's asking Mueller to testify.
He points out that Mueller "must" stick to the report. The way he says it, implies that it Mueller does so, then Trump will look good. But anyone familiar with the report knows that it implies that Trump has been linked to a large number of crimes. But Trump bets on his followers not looking, and so he presents it in this positive light for himself.
He uses the metaphor of a witch hunt to imply that the accusers are baseless and fanatical. — NKBJ

Personification of the "Great Hoax" as some (presumably) evil creature which is now dead.
He uses (ungrammatical) capitalization to emphasize words.
He uses incomplete sentences for emphasis and simplicity.
He's ungrammatical on purpose, because it makes him look less intellectually elitist and his followers like a leader who's not too much smarter than they are. They want to think that they could be him, that he's one of them.
And finally, he uses ampersands, in part because they help with the character count for tweets, but also because they look official and business. — NKBJ

Thank you for the comprehensive analyses! (I think that Trump himself would be
surprised to learn how sophisticated his communicative devices are :smile: ). I would like to tackle a few key points of your account. The most important one is about the regime of truth, effectuated in this tweet, in Fake news, and, probably, in contemporary politics. When you say that Trump lies, (and, we can substitute a lot of other politicians
for him), your basic premise is that objective truth exists, and there is a solid frame of reference and verification methods. You wrote: “But anyone familiar with the report knows that it implies that Trump has been linked to a large number of crimes.” What do you mean by the expression “familiar with the report”? Do you actually expect Trump audience to read a redacted version of 448 pages report? Of course, they are familiar with the report, but through a partisan interpretation and hermeneutics, taking place in a space absolutely different from an academic field. The vast majority of people who are talking, writing, and judging about the report did not read it. Yet, we are not in the world of the endless exegesis, where the sacred text (The Bible, or Marx’s “Capital”) has been continuously reinterpreted. Trump’s audience got familiar with the report even before it was published! Social media, as well as Mainstream media,
have transformed Mueller’s investigation into an object of a new kind, where “the real and the imaginary, the actual and the virtual, chase after each other, exchange their roles and become indiscernible.” Deleuze differentiates between two regimes of truth: there are an “organic” regime and a “crystalline” regime. In an “organic” regime, descriptions and narrations presuppose a pre-existing external reality.
In contrast, a crystalline description or narration stands for its object, replaces it, both creates and erases it. Deleuze’s ideas are indispensable for understanding and explaining Fake news! While an organic regime requires the clear difference between truth and false, a crystalline regime has been grounded on endless metamorphosis, the power of the false. Does Deleuzian crystalline image (or Trump, or a talk show host) lie? Jeffrey Nealon: “The time image’s direct power of the false does not work through the mediation of the true (by interpreting, deconstructing, or the questioning the objectivist truth – (they are still major tasks of literary criticism)), but gives another account of the real altogether…There is a shift from a focus on understanding something to a concern with manipulating it, from meaning to usage”.

Moreover, Trump's rhetoric and his oratorical style are not prominent at all, they are quite modest and monotonic.
— Number2018

And yet effective. Hence the usage of rhetoric to examine them.

Narratives that are going viral in social media usually have simple and poor structure, so that literary
criticism would not be an appropriate research tool here.
— Number2018

And yet effective. Hence the usage of literary criticism to examine them. — NKBJ

Trump's tweeting hyperactivity by many people has been considered as one of the examples of Fake News. Apparently, they are functional and effective! Nevertheless, I doubt that their textual or literary analyses (though it could be helpful) can fully explain their effectiveness. (The same is right about the subway graffitis)
They are short, simple, and rough literary devices. Therefore, we need to evolve various contextual factors, maintaining and ensuring their success. The analyses of the overall situation on social media could be useful. While in literature, as well as in our lives, there is not a black and white message, but a far more nuanced one, the public Internet sphere is primarily occupied by trivial and oversimplified "meme" that "resonates" with a person's prejudices, so gets sent around the globe in an instant. The people who are posting complete rubbish on social media, day in and day out, as a sort of obsession in life, are not able to make timely efforts to get focused and sit down for hours to analyze and reflect on the problems we face.

From ancient mythology to Hemingway to subway graffiti, literary criticism has not let the simplicity of a text deter it from fulfilling its job. — NKBJ

I do not argue that literary criticism is not a relevant tool for analyzing Fake News. However, I would appreciate it if you could provide an example of its application. :smile:

Literary criticism covers the analysis of rhetoric. That's most of what fake news is. Ergo, literary analysis would be helpful to the analysis of fake news. — NKBJ

Rhetoric! That would relate the phenomenon of Fake news to the art of affecting the audience. Further, it could imply the oversimplification, explaining its emergence by outstanding qualities of a few leaders (Trump, Farage, Johnson…). Of course, one could examine their rhetorical devices; yet, one would find a lot of better contemporary or past speakers or politicians. Moreover, Trump's rhetoric and his oratorical style are not prominent at all, they are quite modest and monotonic.

I'd go so far as to say any close analysis of the wording of fake news is literary criticism, whether intentional or not. — NKBJ

Narratives that are going viral in social media usually have simple and poor structure, so that literary
criticism would not be an appropriate research tool here.
Getting back to literature: There was a quote from Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves To Death."
I started thinking that interpretation of some Kafka’s texts ("The giant Mole," and "The Burrow"), could become relevant for understanding Fake news.

Fake news is when the establishment sells big lies to the public. It's NOT when little alt-websites question the establishment. Fake news is the Big Lie that the government sells to the people. That's the point, which in retrospect I should have just said right up front several posts ago. Fake news is how the powers that be keep everyone frightened and compliant. That's what fake news is. — fishfry

In Pakistan, the vast majority of people are completely convinced that the entire story of Bin Laden’s killing was fabricated by the Obama administration. In Russia, almost the whole population believes that 9/11 was wholly prepared and organized by the CIA to create the pretext for invasion into Afghanistan. Numerous Russian political analysts and various experts support this narrative. Yet, most likely, these false narratives have become dominant without governments’ involvement. Apparently, these examples do not comply with your understanding of Fake news.

Both Huxley and Orwell grounded their narrations on simple ideas of utopia and dystopia, and both are in perfect fit with regimes of the truth of grand narratives of modernity. Within our postmodern conditions, grand narratives have been wholly compromised and transformed.
— Number2018

That does not answer my question. In fact, it kind of suggests literary criticism would be pretty helpful, if you know anything at all about literary criticism. — NKBJ

Well, say that you are right, and I don't know. But what is your vision? How would you apply
literary criticism for analyzing Fake news?

I've been depressed to notice that many friends and people I respect, are now convinced that 'climate change is not established by the science', and that 'there's nothing Australia can do to combat climate change' - the kinds of fake news memes that merchants of doubt have been disseminating since Al Gore came out with Inconvenient Truth. — Wayfarer

So, how are you going to convince your friends to change their minds? What is the
non-partisan, common ground for dialog?

the role of Fox News in manipulating both the electorate, and Donald J. Trump, is one of the (many) current scandals of the administration and prime examples of "pushing an agenda". Fox News routinely peddles misinformation, parrots Trump's untruths, and feeds inflammatory content to the Watcher in Chief, with whom it enjoys a symbiotic relationship. There have been numerous articles in the so-called 'liberal media' about this fact. So they're really trying, and succeeding, to shape the agenda; as do many of the Chinese state media, and sections of the Russian media, and many other players, large and small, in this hyper-connected age. — Wayfarer

There is a deep abyss between CNN viewers and Fox ones. Both sides are sure that they possess the truth and blame the opponents' media for imposing agenda, fabrication, propaganda, and manipulation. And this state of affairs also contributes to the explosion of Fake news.

There is a distinction between "fake news" and false information. The intent of fake news is to deceive. Without that intent it is simple false information. Although it may not be the intent of someone who repeats fake news to deceive, the information was still manufactured with the intent to deceive. When Trump accuses news sources of being fake news he deliberately blurs the distinction. There is always the implication that the story is manufactured with the intent to deceive, to lie, but this implication hides behind the more benign accusation that the information is simply false. — Fooloso4

I do not think that the phenomenon of “Fake news” could be explained by someone’s
intentional fabrication and/or manipulation.
Michael Sawer writes:
"Regimes of post-truth seem to depend upon establishing an archive
(that is accessible to and understandable by the public) of self-referential
data points that are not verifiable through other methods of establishing
objective facts... Social media becomes an apparatus that implodes the concept of “truth”
and allows the creation of regimes of discourse (political conversation as
just one instantiation of this phenomenon) that are potentially purposefully
at a distance from what is traditionally framed as “facts” in that they
were dependent upon being part of a produced and hierarchical media
ecosystem...
The era of post-truth is related to the evolution of
the media to “social” media…Donald Trump rode
the wave of this transitional space into the presidency.
“Trump Phenomenon” has been uniquely positioned
to take advantage of the seismic shift in the manner in which
individuals receive news and understand the presentation of this material
to represent something like facts."

Magritte said that a painting of a weeping face does not express grief. To believe so, he thought, would be as naive as believing that a cake expresses what the baker was thinking when she created it. — frank

We should not understand his words literally.
Magritte’s entire project was about the deconstruction of the ordinary, conventional perceptions and the building of a new frame of reference, where visible, ostensible, and sayable would function differently.

Differently, Zizek assumes that “Fake news” has been the indispensable result of our
post-modern conditions; implicitly, he involves the emergence of new regimes of truth (“post-facts” and “post-truth”
— Number2018
And this is why I don't believe in Post-Modernism. It's criticized from both left and right. It simply is bullshit. — ssu

Unfortunately, this is the state of affairs; it does not depend on yours or my personal
beliefs. We can call it variously if you don’t like Post-Modernism. Nietzsche called it
"will to power," and Deleuze – "the power of the false."

Besides, false propaganda has existed for a long time, no matter what Trump says. Social media has just given it some credibility, because people want to hear what they want to hear. — ssu

You are right. Yet, Zizek also points out that there are positive aspects of "fake news":
spontaneity, uncontrollability, and freedom of expression.

unlike genuine fake news (!), the NYT at least publishes corrections, listens to criticism, and tries to correct the record. — Wayfarer

It could be interesting to compare the “two kinds of news”: “genuine fake news,” and that of mainstream media. From the one side, mainstream media has institutional, legal, and professional restrains, comparing to independent and almost unregulated social media. From another side, we can doubt that mainstream media report things because they’re true, they talk about them because of their importance, and they write articles because “the public need to know.” The MSM primarily report things that serve an agenda, true or false, real or imaginary. The narrative matters much more than the facts. Further, the (in)compatibility and interchangeability of narratives, their short life and high speed of their circulation create a ground for what we call “genuine fake news.”

fake news memes that merchants of doubt have been disseminating since Al Gore came out with Inconvenient Truth. — Wayfarer

Al Gore made a remarkable presentation; unfortunately, I lost its tracks. Yet, its merits,
style, and form, so different from academic research, could be taken up by opposite narratives.

As it turned out in the fullness of time, those articles were lies. To be absolutely clear, they were not well-intended mistakes. They were deliberate fabrications for the purpose of lying the country into war. — fishfry

The problem with your example that you make the judgment "in the fullness of time".
Yet, maybe at the time of publication, those articles relied on plausible information.

Now, would you or would you not define that as Fake News? — fishfry

To answer your question, we need a well formulated and operative definition of fake news. The following definitions are insufficient:

"false news stories, often of a sensational nature, created to be widely shared or distributed for the purpose of generating revenue, oor promoting or discrediting a public figure, political movement, company, etc."
"false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke"
"Fake news, also known as junk news or pseudo-news, is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media (print and broadcast) or online social media. ... The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics."