Managed Sociabilities: technological discourse and disempowerment of the Imaginary

Abstract

This article intendeds to explore the relationship between technology, speech and sociability. From Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology, the paper argues that all technical object has an inherent sociability: values and representations of the world are “encoded” in the apparatuses, inducing certain types of social relations at the expense of other, equally possible. Thus, the “technological discourse” appears as a form of disempowerment of the Imaginary or a strategy to contain the social weightlessness, interfering at expectations of the subjects to reproduce sociabilities consistent with the assumptions and requirements of the capitalist mode of production.