Content area
Full text
This essay analyzes the way Bernardo Carvalho's novel, Reprodução, intervenes in an essential contemporary debate: What are the political possibilities of today's globalized mass media? Can we still imagine an alliance between progressive political projects based on equality, diversity, and tolerance on the one hand, and global communications, on the other? These questions gain special relevance in the context of recent historical developments. Several political developments around the world-Great Britain's exit from the European Union, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Colombia's refusal to uphold the peace dialogues with the FARC guerrillas, and the election of Donald Trump-suggest that the relationship between a postmodern politics (based, among other theoretical foundations, on a recognition of all forms of otherness) and mass media has entered a period of crisis. These events were widely understood as a global refusal by the general population to endorse key postmodern discourses like multiculturalism, political correctness, gender and racial equality, free immigration, gay rights, etc. They were also linked to a particularly weaponized use of the media against these ideas: Instead of portraying a diversity of points of view in historical context, news sources with ties to specific political interests (like Breitbart and Fox News in the U.S., The Sun in Great Britain, Globo in Brazil, and RCN in Colombia, not to mention a variety of "independent" internet media outlets and personalities) broadcast partisan and willfully decontextualized messages that, in the end, had a significant influence on the public's views. Such outlets have always existed, but they seem to have gained new levels of visibility and impact today.
The growing influence of such outlets has been facilitated by, and is perhaps a consequence of, radical technological transformations in the media landscape. The internet has united most forms of traditional mass media (newspapers, books, films, audio recordings, and radio and television shows) in one single channel. That, combined with the widening use of personal digital devices (like laptops and smart phones) among global middle classes have made the web a pervasive part of their everyday life and a perfect venue for the dissemination of political messages. The emergence of social media, like Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, has also turned users into active participants in current communications markets. Today, they not only consume...