59 Hacktivism: The modern machete Adam Purdy These extracts are taken from an essay that was originally a response to the question “What are the dramaturgical and aesthetic dimensions of hacktivism, and how have hacktivists intervened in the wider ‘performance’ of global capital?” (DRA2087). Historically, the machete has stood as a symbolic double entendre, an object integrated into systems of extraction which is reappropriated as a means of collective resistance (Desch-Obi 2010:145). Much like the machete, hacktivism operates through a comparable transformation of the ordinary, as online infrastructure is turned against institutions too powerful to confront directly, turning cyberspace into a contested theatrical stage where competing performances of resistance unfold, since the internet is also a cultural scene in which corporations, governments, and activists struggle to maintain control of the dominant narrative. Giannachi defines hacktivism as “a form of activism that manifests itself through electronic civic disobedience and similar Internet-related activities” (Giannachi 2006: 13), framing it as a political practice that works through symbolic force as much as technical skill, while Zuboff clarifies the system this force confronts, one in which human experience is translated into “be- havioral data” and power operates through “asymmetries in knowledge” (Zuboff 2019: 14–15). Debord writes that “THE SPECTACLE IS NOT a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images” (Debord 1994: 12). Thus, if global capital appears as an unfaltering spectacle managed through frontstage legitimacy and backstage extraction (Goffman 1959; Zuboff 2019), hacktivists interrupt that performance by exposing backstage operations, reworking public signs and inviting spectators into the struggle over information. The dramaturgical dimension of hacktivism is most transparent in its production of collective characters, ritual scripts and staged antagonisms, by which online action becomes legible as a theatre of power rather than a sequence of isolated technical events. Hacker group Anonymous serves as a popular example of this phenomenon, since its declaration “We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us” (Anonymous, 2008) functions as a ritualised entrance speech through which a scattered network gives itself a single voice. Critical Art Ensemble explains this collective authorship, arguing that “Recombinant theatre begins by eliminating the privileged position of the director, auteur, genius, or any other reductive, privatizing category” (Critical Art Ensemble 2000), a principle echoed in Anonymous’s claim that “Anonymous is everyone and everywhere. We have no leaders.” (Anonymous 2008). Leaderlessness becomes an aesthetic strategy as well as a guerrilla organisational structure, since the mask,
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