Contribution short abstract:

By drawing on various examples from Muslim activists in India to "Die Letzte Generation" in Germany, I'll discuss how actors attempt to sustain their activism online and how this crucially involves coming to terms with digital capitalism's affective ecology and morality.

Contribution long abstract:

In this presentation, I will explore the tensions between political ethics and political agency by drawing on case studies of Muslim activists in India (online star-personas and influencers) and German environmental activists (Die Letzte Generation). The question I will pursue is how certain notions of justice are folded into the affective immediacy of digital capitalist environments. Often, a sentiment to "do justice" may lead to actions that bestow visibility on the political opponent or even endanger activists' lives. Furthermore, there is a temporality to such sentiments of justice that cannot be disentangled from the affective relationality that comes with social networking sites. I will argue that it is often a "deontological"—duty-oriented—modality of practical reasoning that folds moral reasoning into the affective environment of social media. Hence, I will discuss how agency—the conditioned power to act—and ethics—the reflective work on the self—at times point in different directions and continue to produce the kind of antinomies that online activism implies in times of digital capitalism.