Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
world is not a tool for reality description, but rather for reality construction. Through
said knowledge, ever more decentralized and more peripheral — procommons —,
new forms of exercising power over one’s self and over others are structured. In a
classic environment of presential exchanges among human beings, ethics can find
defined principles: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” The problem lies in
the fact that citizenship is based on participation on a common physical space. Not
even human interventions are conditioned to presence. A system of ethics or politics
teaching us how to treat our neighbor is no longer applicable. The distances are canceled
and the territory is deterritorialized by the cyberspace, even if for a moment 2 .
Historically, the concept of citizenship has been bound to the concept of physical
space, of a shared territory. Aristotle stated that the polis could not extend beyond
the reach of the citizens’ voice, for its essence was the democratic dialogue manifested
at the Agora as a meeting point. We agree with Aristotle. There is no community
without the possibility of dialogue. Other examples appear throughout History. The
national states appear in Europe from processes of political unification potentialized
by the leverage of communication technologies of the time, such as the trolley car.
2. It is interesting to think over the alleged deterritorialization associated with interaction through
cyberspace. According to authors such as André Lemos (2004, 2007), I am inclined to think that
there really is a posterior phase of reterritorialization. In a previous article (Bustamante, 2010a), I
advocated that a virtualization process is necessarily a process of deterritorialization. The social appropriation
of technology allows us to continuously create new territorialities in a context of deterritorialization
that is a characteristic of the globalized society. Lemos shows us how is the appearance
of new deterritorializing phenomena engendered by the digital media, by the floating of the cultural
and subjective boundaries, by movements of comprehension of space-time. Politics is deterritorialized
by the appearance of new power performers. Economy is deterritorialized by the relocation of
capitals in tax havens, by the displacement of the worker with respect to the work location, of the
factories with respect to the headquarters of the companies. Cyberculture is, apparently, a deterritorialization
culture. However, Lemos indicates, very accurately, that cyberculture not only dislocates,
but also relocates and creates new forms of power and control. Thus, new forms of territorialization
appear: mapping, control, surveillance etc. The digital diasporas (immigrants connected through
virtual social networks) create new forms of territorialization that destabilize the power structures,
modify the perception of personal identity, and, thanks to the intersection between cyberspace and
urban space, transform the signification of the contemporary cities. The distinctions between public
and private space are inverted. An internaut who is closed at home and connected to different virtual
communities can live open to the world by nomad and diasporic interactions. He can be, in the
terms of Javier Echeverría, a domestic cosmopolitan, even though the Agora, a paradigm of the city’s
public space as an assembly meeting point, can be converted for him in a space of absolute anonymity
and isolation, where he knows no one and does not want to share anything with anybody. The
idea of cyberspace as a disconnection from the physical-spatial dimension is, to Lemos and also to
me, an exaggerated idea (Bustamante, 2010a).
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