Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Mediatization and virtuality in human sciences: An announced crossroads 67 quite different domains, frommore intimate social relationships to global government actions. Such nature no longer allows us to speak of social fields, but of normative logics that cross them and, strictly speaking, is indifferent to their specificities. The dif - ference now would be in the way in which such logics act posi- tively, producing ways of living that supposedly are recognized as increasingly free. Unlike disciplinary society, in which the do- mestication of bodies made freedom a counter-coercion figure, the positive society has freedom as its possibility (HAN, 2015). For her, “governing is not governing against freedom or despite freedom, but governing for freedom, that is, acting actively in the space of freedom given to individuals so that they will con- form themselves to certain norms” ( DARDOT; LAVAL, 2016, p. 19). In other words, “far from referring to discipline to reach the most intimate of the individual, [governments now aim] [...] to obtain a self-government of men” (ibid., p. 18). In short, it is the idea that “to govern is to conduct the behavior of men, as long as it is specified that this behavior is both that which one has towards himself [...] and that which one has towards others” (ibid., p. 19). Now, the novelty would be the enthronement of freedom and desire as types of personal assets, independent of social and/or institutional conditions, as the only ones capable of leading us to the current ideals of a successful life. Therefore, from them, we must take all risks on our destinies, which means that the historical figure of neoliberalism is the total responsi - bility of the individual for his successes and failures. In the field of work, therefore, the achievement of professional recognition would depend on the merit of our personal entrepreneurship. Each of us is the company or is still a company. For this rea- son, affirm Dardot and Laval (ibid., P. 327), “the effect sought by the new manufacturing and management practices of the new subject is to make the individual work for the company as if he worked for himself, and, thus, eliminate any feeling of alienation and even any distance between the individual and the company that employs him.” All of this makes desire and freedom become the main focus of new investments, strategies, and ways of ad- hering to the recent work formats. It is now a matter of mak- ing good management of desire and freedom, governed by the pleasure principle, in which the cheerful and relaxed humor