Hacktivists as Heirs of the New Left

The issue of Quaderni journal dedicated to hacking has just been published. In it, I published an article on hacker action repertoires and their connection to the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.

Here is the abstract:

After recalling the connection between the pioneers of hacker activism and the anti-technocratic tactics employed by the New Left, this article proposes to interpret the wave of repression that hit hackers in the late 1980s as one of the power strategies designed to end the crisis of governmentality that began in the 1960s — a strategy that has since been reactivated whenever a “hacker front” has seemed on the verge of reconstituting itself. In doing so, it invites us to see this episode of securing cyberspace and repressing transgressive repertoires of action as a critical moment in the genealogy of authoritarian liberalism.

The article is available on HAL-SHS.