The Contingent Foundations of Universality in Control Societies: Spiritual Fetishism and the Autoimmune Logic of Capital
Operational Universality and Its Discontents
Control societies contrive a universalism that presents itself as frictionless and inevitable. In fields as diverse as logistics, public policy, finance, and healthcare, algorithmic systems claim objectivity, while in fact embedding certain normative assumptions—efficiency, competition, perpetual growth—constitutive of capital’s hegemony. As Emily Noether’s theorem in physics and mathematics demonstrates, symmetrical conditions often imply conserved quantities; analogously, the appearance of neutrality in these systems conserves capitalist imperatives, with each symmetrical data-analytic gesture (risk assessment, pattern recognition) quietly reinforcing the priority of commodification.
While “universality” often risks flattening particularities under hegemonic norms, the theoretical task is not to abandon universal claims altogether, but to reconfigure them. Étienne Balibar’s concept of “equaliberty” suggests a universalism that emerges from democratic struggles rather than abstract principles imposed from above. Likewise, universal feminist praxis—akin to the Women, Life, Freedom movements—foregrounds solidarity as a political imperative that contests exploitative infrastructures. In such a formulation, difference is not erased but becomes the substrate through which a genuinely emancipatory, polyvocal universal might arise.