The Mammoletta-Mammet complex and the sexed truth of neoliberal digitality.

Abstract

In this essay, I lay out a critique of neoliberal digitality from the vantage point of the thought of sexual difference. I consider the ways in which crowdworking platforms such as the Mechanical Turk micromanage digital living labor thus generating surplus value in the form of piece-work labor, rent, and increased scalability of the system. I then provide a discussion of the genealogy of Mechanical Turk demonstrating its clear sexed origins –what I identify as the mammet complex– as well as its relations to the sphere of reproduction. This forms the basis for a reconsideration of the potential for opposition that lurks in this model that I assemble by recapitulating key insights in Luisa Muraro’s considerations on what she calls the maternal continuum through a reading of Walter Benjamin.

Keywords:

Digitality Platform capitalism Sexual difference Temporality