Guattari's Post-Media Era Revisited: From Liberation to Algorithmic Servitude

A text published on La Tempestad revisits Félix Guattari's concept of the 'post-media era' from his 1992 book 'Caosmosis', contrasting his optimistic vision with today's digital reality. Guattari hoped technological evolution combined with social experimentation would lead to a reappropriation of media and singularization of communication, freeing individuals from mass media stupefaction. However, the article argues that the current post-media era is characterized by immediacy (as critiqued by Anna Kornbluh in her 2024 book 'Immediacy'), algorithmic control, and corporate domination by Google, Meta, X, and OpenAI. The touchscreen is described as the quintessential post-media medium, and Big Data as pure post-media information. The text questions whether Guattari's envisioned 'molecular revolution' and 'invention of new Universes of reference' can still be achieved, noting that contemporary power (Deleuze's 'society of control') operates through asignifying semiotics, as Maurizio Lazzarato argued in 'Signs and Machines' (2014). The article concludes that creating a different post-media universe remains an aesthetic and political challenge. The piece was originally presented as an intervention in the virtual panel 'Aesthetics, Politics and Resistance', coordinated by Karla Villapudua and Sabrina Andrade, as part of the III International Colloquium Félix Guattari at the University of Costa Rica, held May 6–8, 2026.