Algorithmic Domination and Oligarchic Worldmaking

This talk examines how algorithmic systems enable oligarchic power to shape society while appearing to operate through popular choice.
About this Event

In the age of oligarchic democracies, algorithmic systems have become the primary technology through which oligarchic power shapes the social world with the seeming consent of the oppressed. This presentation examines algorithmic domination as a form of oligarchic worldmaking —the capacity to craft socio-political orders based on oligarchic principles and enact them through economic and social technologies. Drawing on Machiavelli’s oligarchic umori - the desire to possess and to dominate—I trace how algorithmic infrastructures perform the function of spreading these desires among the common people. Following Bourdieu's “cleft habitus,” I analyse how desire is coded into people's psyche through recommendation systems, scoring mechanisms, and platform architectures that render domination legible as choice. Finally, I engage with the inner workings of this algorithmic power, which prompts the masses to participate in the rooting and growth of oligarchy through their data, attention, and behavioural compliance. I argue that algorithmic worldmaking constitutes the decisive mechanism by which the few shape our mediated reality, not merely reflecting oligarchic power, but manufacturing the conditions of its own reproduction.