Au-delà du techno-féodalisme: pour une critique de l’impérialisme numérique

Nikos Smyrnaios ()
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Nikos Smyrnaios: LERASS - Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches Appliquées en Sciences Sociales - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - UT3 - Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse

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Abstract: This article proposes to move beyond the analytical framework of techno-feudalism — in the versions put forward by Varoufakis and Durand — and replace it with the concept of digital imperialism, understood not as a geopolitical metaphor but as a political economy framework. After identifying the limitations of the feudalist diagnosis, particularly its failure to address the political dimension and ideological superstructure of digital capitalism, the author constructs a theoretical framework articulating five constitutive dimensions: the monopolistic concentration of capital, driven to an unprecedented scale by Big Tech; the organic integration of these firms into the military-digital-industrial complex, strikingly illustrated by the 2026 war against Iran; inter-imperial rivalries, especially between the United States and China, as the systemic dynamic of an emerging multipolar world; the oligarchic recomposition of political power, whose authoritarian turn is a structural tendency; and finally the platformization of the public sphere, the communicational dimension through which platforms no longer merely distribute content but constitute the very architecture of democratic deliberation. Building on Herbert Schiller's cultural imperialism framework while moving beyond it, the article argues that artificial intelligence and digital platforms act simultaneously on the economic base and on the political superstructure, producing a public sphere that is at once a terrain of domination and a terrain of struggle for hegemony in the Gramscian sense.

Keywords: Impérialisme numérique; techno-féodalisme; plateformisation; espace public; monopole (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05-28
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