Social media as a new form of collective literature: Emanuele Coccia's philosophical vision

Philosopher Emanuele Coccia argues that social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Zoom have become a new form of collective literature, where users are simultaneously authors, characters, and readers. Writing in Artribune Magazine #55, Coccia contends that the COVID-19 lockdowns forced cultural, political, and affective life into digital spaces, revealing the underlying unity of all social manifestations. He traces the evolution from traditional machines that imitated physical organs to modern 'psychomorphic' machines that externalize the psyche. Coccia claims that social media realize the avant-garde dream of art coinciding with life, creating a 'post-autonomous literature' that fabricates reality rather than representing it. He cites Josephine Ludmer's concept of literature absorbing mimesis to produce the present. Coccia asserts that identity is now constructed through auto-fiction, where one must become a fictional character to be an author of one's own life. He envisions a collective 'world-soul' being built through these psycho-mimetic machines, with everyone as both scriptwriter and character. The essay references Joyce, Woolf, Proust, Pollock, and contemporary influencers Chiara Ferragni and Sofia Viscardi. Coccia teaches at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and is author of 'La vita delle piante' (2018).