Politics and the Internet: A Phenomenological Critique

“Politics and the Internet” is a critique of the political potential of the internet from the perspective of Husserl’s discussion of intersubjectivity and objectivity in Cartesian Meditations and Origins of Geometry. Unlike other critiques of the internet from a phenomenological perspective, this paper does not consider the limitations of internet communication from the perspective of the body. Here, rather, the prime concern is with the constitution of objectivity and the ways in which the internet limits this constitution. The paper builds towards a consideration of the essential role of objectivity as a condition of possibility for politics and community. Implicit in the argument is a defence of print and broadcast media.