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| The Fog Around Subject Liberation of Cyberspace and Its Dispersion: From the Perspective of Historical Materialism |
| Zhang Yan, Zhao Xinshu |
| School of Marxism, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China |
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Abstract Cyberspace, a private virtual network space in the form of various social platforms, is a new communication space for people in the contemporary era, and meanwhile shapes a new way of existence for people. The existence and the status quo of subjects in cyberspace as their new mode of existence in the contemporary era is a major practical issue that Marxism as a human liberation theory needs to respond to.At present, there are three main viewpoints in the theoretical circle on the promotion of human liberation by cyberspace. The first is the historical change in the subject’s lifeworld, of which cyberspace has a liberating function as a “new platform” to calm the compulsion of modernity. The second is the historical change of the subject itself, in which the “virtual subject” (virtual body) in the cyberspace has acquired a “brand new subjectivity”. The third is the new stage of the subject’s communication, when the subject has formed an “autonomous, voluntary and open” equal communication in the cyberspace.However, historical materialism believes that this view that the subject has been liberated in cyberspace or that cyberspace is the field of subject’s liberation actually only sees the surface of the issue. Historical materialism maintains that the “subject” is an individual who actively carries out practical activities, i.e., a conscious real existence. The consciousness of the objective and essential power of the real man, i.e., the conceptual reflection of the proactive existence of the man, is sensuous consciousness.In the cyberspace, the interaction among subjects and the existence of subjects, which had to be supported and carried by bodies, are now detached from the bodies through the mediation of data. Based on this, the relationship among individuals in cyberspace would be the relationship of ideas, and the existence of ideas. In fact, the subject in cyberspace turns out to be an abstract existence which is independent and completely alienated from material reality, called abstract consciousness (virtual body). Therefore, the cyberspace is a place where there is the freedom of abstract body-free consciousness after the binary separation of the body and the consciousness. This freedom of abstract consciousness is essentially the arbitrariness of the data-supported consciousness. However, abstract consciousness is not equal to the real man as the subject, because the man’s subjectivity is not the subjectivity of abstract consciousness and thus the freedom of arbitrary consciousness in cyberspace is not equated with real human liberation and the realization of communism. Furthermore, the arbitrary self is represented in cyberspace as a virtual body under the mediation of data. The relationship between virtual bodies is represented by accidental encounters and exchanges of data in specific scenarios (e.g. Tik Tok, Weibo). There is a stipulated special meaning behind this “specificity”, for example, the objects (users) in Tik Tok are small video sharers or consumers. This stipulation reflects the existence of capital power behind the data. It can therefore be concluded that data has become a new form and carrier for capital to realize itself in the contemporary era, and that cyberspace, as a data factory, has become a new production tool for capital in the contemporary era, just like workers and machines. In cyberspace, the capital exerts control over the subjects in the form of data, so the subjects unconsciously turns to be unpaid laborers for digital capital, which shows that the subject’s practical and revolutionary reflective judgment is dying out. On this basis, the cyberspace has produced severe ethical problems, and has become a field of crimes and capitalist ideology infiltration.In this regard, only by establishing the subjectivity of historical materialism—sensuous consciousness—in cyberspace, can the fog of liberation in cyberspace effectively disperse, and can true freedom develop. This is because the conscious acquisition of sensuous consciousness is the individual’s consciousness of its real existence, i.e., the consciousness of the real existence as the subject. That is to say, the realization of an individual’s sensuous consciousness is the conceptual reflection of the realization of the organic unity of body and mind. Therefore, in the body-free cyberspace, the formation of sensuous consciousness is the realization of the organic unity of body and mind. Since sensuous consciousness is the consciousness upon the subject status of real man, it shows that this kind of consciousness is of a practical and revolutionary nature, which means that it does not allow human beings as subjects to be reduced to the objects enslaved and dominated by others, or let human beings remain in a state of digital alienation dominated by capital in cyberspace. The cultivation of sensuous consciousness in cyberspace requires that socialist countries, as a political community organically united by the real man, play the role of a political guarantee for human values in terms of guidance and institutional regulations.
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Received: 06 December 2021
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2022, Vol. 52 
