Abstract

This project discusses and advocates social change, for plural and radical democracy, by analyzing cyberspace as a heterotopia of contemporary cultural/political geography. This project advances its discussion on two levels: on the analytical level, by advancing cultural geography in conjunction with critical rhetoric, this project discusses the discursivity and the spatiality of cyberspace, in terms of its cultural, political, and economic ramifications. On the theoretical and political level, by advancing critical rhetoric in conjunction with Foucault's notion of discourse and Laclau's notion of hegemony, this project advances its discussion of social change in contemporary society and advocates radical and plural democracy, by deconstructing techno-scientific capitalism, for it is the foundation of contemporary society. ;This project reveals that the history of the Internet shows that there was a gradual transformation of the Internet as a military battlefield to the cyberspace as an e-market. Within this history, a hegemonic alliance of the military-industrial complex played constitutive and ideological roles, within which the CERT/CC and the NIPC serve as academic and governmental nodes, while forming a discursive regime. The discursive regime articulates the truth of cyberspace, by declaring a war, by articulating the clear and present threat of computer viruses and hackers, in defense of safe, clean, and orderly cyberspace for e-commerce. In this discourse, computer hackers and viruses manifest the perfect negativity, constituting a notorious crime, which in turn constitutes a communitas of crisis, constructing the general victim. This hegemonic discourse manifests an extremely commodified version of Cartesian Idealism, Liberalism, and technological optimism, which lacks criticality and democratic participation. However, this articulation is an impossible project due to the undecidability of the subjectivity of hackers. By deconstructing the very ground of hegemonic articulation, this projects compels us to move beyond the contemporary hegemonic imagination of cyberspace, a religio-political battle field where corporate rules dominate, toward cyber-democracy, a space of openness and pluralism, and permanent negotiation between the universal and the particular