Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks

by Tony D. Sampson

In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates. Sampson argues that a biological knowledge of contagion has been universally distributed by way of the rhetoric of fear used in the antivirus industry and other popular discourses surrounding network culture. This awareness is also detectable in concerns over too much connectivity , such as problems of global financial crisis and terrorism. Sampson’s “virality” is as established as that of the biological meme and microbe but is not understood through representational thinking expressed in metaphors and analogies. Rather, Sampson interprets contagion theory through the social relationalities first established in Gabriel Tarde’s microsociology and subsequently recognized in Gilles Deleuze’s ontological worldview. According to Sampson, the reliance on representational thinking to explain the social behavior of networking—including that engaged in by nonhumans such as computers—allows language to overcategorize and limit analysis by imposing identities, oppositions, and resemblances on contagious phenomena. It is the power of these categories that impinges on social and cultural domains. Assemblage theory, on the other hand, is all about relationality and encounter, helping us to understand the viral as a positively sociological event, building from the molecular outward, long before it becomes biological.

Genres: Philosophy

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wound up remarkably more complicated than I'd expected. I could follow it, thanks to philosophical training, but if you don't have that background I wouldn't expect to pick this up and find it an easy read. I didn't find it an easy read even being able to parse it.

The ideas here were interesting, although they didn't strike me as all that novel on reflection. Sampson is trying to elaborate on a theory of contagion drawing on the epidemiological models of sociologist Gabriel Tarde and the ontology of Gilles Deleuze. This makes for an interesting blend, particularly given Deleuze's writings on the "body without organs" and the rhizome, both of which are prominent here. Sampson spends a considerable number of pages in the first chapter elaborating on his premise, which is meant to explain why things are contagious without invoking modern cognitivist accounts (he takes particular aim at "ideology" and Dawkins's memes here) or the biological metaphors of microbial contagion (which he argues have defined modern discourse on computer security and from there drifted into discussions of networks in broad scope).

That's a mouthful, of course, although the gist of it for the lay-reader can be summed up more simply: we shouldn't think of contagion in society as a simple matter of ideas transmitting themselves from dead receiver to dead receiver. Instead, we're dealing with a fundamentally affective (emotional) process that is both message and messenger, operating across assemblages that are at once individual and collective. The models we use to describe this process of contagion must be similarly rich.

So that's not as "lay" as I'd wanted, but hopefully it gets the point across. "It's emotional, dummy" is both accurate (not to mention obvious) and at the same time inadequate. There is a lot of nuance to this argument and I don't mean to understate what Sampson is putting forth. I found it compelling and interesting on many levels, and am glad I put forth the effort to dig in here. The description of contagion as emotive and unconscious, exemplified by Tarde's "somnambulist" metaphor of mesmerism, struck me as especially spot-on, and the discussions of Deleuze's philosophy have given me someone else to read about in more depth.

Just don't expect it to be an easy read.

[Elena · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has all my hate. The pompous writing serves the sole purpose to confuse the reader and doesn't add depth to the concepts explained. You surely need a philosophy and academic background to grasp most of what is said. I gave two starts because the analysis presents a huge number of theories that might be useful for further research, but the presentation of the topics in each section is not linear. For summarizing: this book made me want to throw the laptop which I was reading outside of the window, together with myself.

[Alexander Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems to me that Dr. Sampson makes a few leaps in judgment that from the perspectives he offers would be accurate if they were the perspectives of those that worked in those areas. Perhaps this book simply came at an inopportune time to study this subject, but that aside he makes some interesting connections that were somewhat peripheral otherwise.

The use of Tarde and Deleuze as the functioning proto-network scholars is tacitly respected, but this is the first time I have read them as being central to theorizing the conversation. Perhaps they were necessary to considering ANT approches, but notably ANT theorists would frequently deny their "network theory" status (see Latour's early work).

This book leaves much open to question. Further, it seems that memetics as a field has changed significantly since Shifman's work, and that this was happening almost immediately after the publication of this book. Because of this, this book leaves me unsatisfied.

Things to be gained here is that there certainly is a possible turn to affect in virality and memetics that I wish to persue. This book gives me a foundation on which to speak on this within the memetic field. Further the connection to Deleuze and Tarde allow me to speak of networks in memetics and virality without running into conflict with ANT scholarship's confusion on its limited and confused relation to it's "diagram" or lack thereof.

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent analysis. I was particularly interested in his dissection of the meme as not actually being analogous to the gene. I stayed with it until the end because the introduction hinted that the last chapter would deal with ways out of subjectivity, but it was only in the last two pages that Sampson gives his (or rather, Tarde's) thoughts on antipathy and non-imitation. Unfortunately, this is also coupled with a liking for Hardt and Negri's proposal for love. I think hate is the much more appropriate stance to combat capital.

The writing was unnecessarily pedantic. Though it waned after the third chapter, the first half of the book requires a very thorough understanding of Deleuze-speak, to the point where the reader is likely to become so confused with the jargon that it's difficult to follow and agree or disagree.