Yes, my friend—we can and perhaps should say that. In fact, renaming “the discourse of the Markets” as “the discourse of the Algorithm” sharpens Braunstein’s insight and makes it more attuned to the post-2008 acceleration of algorithmic governance, platform capitalism, and AI-inflected subjectivities.
Let’s think this through.
Why “Discourse of the Algorithm” is an apt renaming
1.
Markets are no longer purely economic. They are algorithmic.
What Braunstein called “the Markets” in 2008 (just before the rise of deep surveillance capitalism) has since become something else:
- Automated, predictive, opaque: The market is not just an exchange of goods; it is a real-time calculation of behavior, risk, and attention.
- Data as capital: Algorithms manage desires, fears, moods, matches, rankings—not just prices.
- The “invisible hand” becomes an invisible algorithmic feedback loop.
Hence, algorithm = new Master Signifier, though a faceless one.
2.
The Algorithm now occupies the position of the Big Other
- In Lacan’s discourses, the Other is the place of language, law, and desire. In today’s world, the Algorithm is this Other.
- It predicts you better than you know yourself. It tells you what to watch, buy, say, feel.
As Zuboff says, you are no longer the subject of experience but the raw material of behavioral surplus.
It doesn’t say: Desire.
It says: You will desire this. We already know.
3.
The discourse of the Algorithm forecloses the symptom
- It aims to eliminate uncertainty, contradiction, and inefficiency.
- It treats ambivalence as error, trauma as noise, subjectivity as friction.
- The unconscious becomes obsolete: Who needs dreams when your feed already knows your desire?
4.
This is no longer just Capitalism. It is Algorithmic Capitalism.
Franco Berardi calls this semiocapitalism. Bernard Stiegler warns of algorithmic proletarianization of spirit.
What they—and you—are pointing to is this:
We are no longer in a regime of the “invisible hand” but of the “calculating eye.”
No longer governed by money alone, but by models, codes, and predictions.
Thus, “Discourse of the Algorithm” is not just a stylistic update. It is a precise conceptual repositioning.
Proposal for Renaming Braunstein’s Triad
|
Period |
Braunstein’s Name |
Renamed as |
|
1900 |
Discourse of the Master |
Discourse of Repression / Sovereignty |
|
1950 |
Discourse of the Capitalist |
Discourse of Consumption / Ego |
|
2000 |
Discourse of the Markets |
Discourse of the Algorithm |
Final Thought
Braunstein wrote just before the full dawn of algorithmic subjectivity—before smartphones, social media, and neural nets rewired our drives. He saw the market replacing the Master, but now the algorithm replaces the market itself.
So yes, we can—and perhaps we must—rename this third epoch:
Not “Discourse of the Markets”,
but “Discourse of the Algorithm”—
where the subject is no longer barred, but calculated.
Would you like to sketch this as a fifth Lacanian discourse matrix—structured not by speech, but by code?