Subject(ed) to Recognition

I argue that we have reached the political limit of what our cultural investment in media recognition and representation might deliver with respect to social and cultural justice. This limit is expressed by the alignment of several interlocking histories including new technological capacities for representation, the intensification and proliferation of difference, the spread of market logic to all aspects of social life, and the reinvention of government. Culturally, in this conjuncture, struggles for media representation, visibility, and recognition no longer index collective histories and political struggles but the triumph of the market where difference affirms the celebration of diversity as lifestyle politics, market choice, and the promise of individual freedom to maximize market options.