Notes on this week’s internet reading centred on Alienation as concept

I came across six recent articles mentioning alienation as a key concept for their analyses. It is interesting how diverse the approaches to alienation differ, and yet they all have certain fundamental similarities, such as a relational distancing from an expected point in either space, time, and structural, cultural, social, and financial environments. Herein, we find top-down alienating influence, either consciously strategized or structurally unaware, and also bottom-up build-ups of identity, either thought-out or unconscious. So I thought I’d exercise my synthesis in the attempt to grasp their differences, after all, we are, indeed, a Research Committee on Alienation, are we not?

Across these six articles, alienation is presented not as a leftover or metaphor, but as a core part of how today’s society is organized. Despite their differences, the articles all show how modern institutions (economic, technological, educational, political, and legal) create people who are officially included but still feel disconnected from meaningful social life. Each article delivers its own view on alienation, but together they support critical theory’s main idea: alienation has not vanished with the decline of industrial capitalism. Instead, it has changed form, become internalized, and spread throughout all areas of social life.

From a Marxist standpoint, Sadia Kasfia relates youth unemployment to alienation, thus the most direct expression of alienation as a structural effect of capitalist relations of production. Here, alienation does not arise merely from joblessness (if it were only that simple), but from the contradiction between socially produced qualifications and the absence of socially meaningful work. Especially if we take into account the mediatization of everyday life, exposure on social media, detachment from self-worth feelings and sensations, and the fragilization of social ties. According to the author, “sociologists describe unemployment as a social cancer that devours merit and paves the way for extremism and anarchy. Economists repeatedly warn that if this vast youth population is not immediately transformed into a productive workforce, the nation’s future will vanish into a blind alley.” [1]

Education delivers integration, recognition, self-acknowledgement, and mobility, but often results in insecurity and exclusion. The article focuses on Bangladesh, though its points could apply to other countries, like Brazil. This contradiction reflects Marx’s idea that capitalism undercuts the abilities it creates. The psychological pain described, such as shame, self-blame, withdrawal, for instance, is not just personal, but serves to make a social problem seem private. Here, alienation is real and material, based on how labor and value are organized, even though it is felt on a personal level.

Critical theory argues that alienation is not exclusively about work or production. The article on exhaustion and the “society of tiredness” shows a shift from outside control to self-imposed discipline, a change discussed by the Frankfurt School and Hartmut Rosa as well. Ferdinand Capicotto translates Byung-Chul Han’s idea into the self-inflicted forms of precarious scarcity of social meaning. As he points out, “burnout no longer affects only high-intensity professions but also affects students, precarious workers, digital workers, and parents. It's a chronic, silent, and often normalized condition. Being tired has become a habitual, almost identifying state.” [2] Now, alienation happens through pressure to always improve, adapt, and perform. People feel alienated not because they are left out, but because they are always busy. The ability to connect genuinely with the world, or resonance, is worn down by speed and competition. What looks like personal burnout is actually a social problem that makes the world feel unwelcoming.

Rahel Jaeggi’s critique supports the idea that alienation is a problem in social relationships, especially around communicative efforts and the transmission of data within the informational economy, not just the inevitable loss of true self. The articles on digital virality and alienation from mathematics [3] show this kind of failure. In both cases, people are deeply involved in social systems, like online networks or schools, but cannot make them their own. People online create content and data, but do not control how meaning is shared. Students learn math, but see it as something distant from real life. Here, alienation means being forced to take part without having real ownership, which is widespread in today’s society. In fact, I came to understand that nowadays people do not own things (like records, movies, TV series, those DVD and CD boxes, and so on), but they subscribe to them, and when you no longer pay for something, you lose it, as if ownership had been replaced by a temporary concession.

The emergence of platforms such as TikTok shows how technology shapes alienation. The author states that “viral spaces operate more through symbols, imagery, and representations that shape collective public perceptions.” [4] Algorithms change how we see, value, and experience time, favoring speed and visibility over thought and continuity. Critical theory sees this as a new phase: social relations are not just turned into commodities, but are run by systems that seem neutral, though actually shape how we think. People become both creators and products, active but powerless, subjective objects or objectified subjects, connected but still alone. Seeman’s ideas about powerlessness and meaninglessness have never served us so much as to explain this, and critical theory places it within larger systems of control.

The article about politically segregated schools shows alienation in how society and democracy work. Using Durkheim’s ideas, this segregation is seen as a modern form of anomie, where shared values and goals break down. John Buttrick explains that as the collective educational process was taken within the bubble of other think-alikes, “each group began to perceive that the other was inhospitable. Each group had accumulated its own experiences, its own rules, and its misunderstanding of the other. There was no room left for anyone from the other group [...] these schools would graduate students comfortable with their experiences of a homogenous environment of thought and practice. Their learning would prepare them to perpetuate the stark political and social divisions in the already wounded country.” [5] 

He speaks of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., but once again, it could be said about any other country that is polarizedly divided. Critical theory adds that this is not solely a moral issue, but a political one. Segregation locks in certain beliefs, blocks real discussion, and turns differences into dangers. Here, alienation means not just being apart from others, but being cut off from the chance to share a common world.

Even the legal debate about ending the idea of alienation of affections, though different in focus, shows a bigger change in how relationships are understood. The legalization of heartbreaks has genuinely caught this author’s attention. [6] The law’s move away from this idea suggests that people no longer see intimacy as something to own, but it also shows the mixed feelings about modern independence. As Durkheim and later critical theorists pointed out, legal support for individual freedom often goes along with more social breakdown. When alienation disappears from legal terms, it does not mean the problem is solved, but that it has moved into less obvious and harder-to-challenge forms.

Kierkegaard’s look at despair helps explain the personal side of these social changes. The tired, always-connected, and constantly adjusting person shows a kind of despair that looks normal on the surface. In this sense, alienation is not about feeling cut off from society, but about losing one’s inner life because of pressure to always be available and productive. Critical theory sees this despair not as a private problem, but as something created by society.

Overall, these articles show that alienation today happens through being included and involved, not by being left out. People are not mainly alienated because they are outside social systems, but because their involvement takes away their independence, sense of meaning, individual unique traits, and shared life. Classic theories of alienation (like Marx on labor, Durkheim on anomie, Kierkegaard concerning despair, and newer ideas about resonance and appropriation) are still important because they show how control continues even when it is not obvious.

Humberto Fernandes, Ph.D.

RC36 Secretary

February 20, 2026

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[1] Eclipse of Youth: The Burn of Unemployment and the New Horizon of Potential. Daily New Nation, February 6, 2026 in [https://dailynewnation.com/news/801896/]

[2]  The Society of Exhaustion: Exhaustion Becomes Normal. Sociologicamente.it, February 5, 2026 in  [https://sociologicamente.it/en/the-society-of-tiredness-exhaustion-that-becomes-normality/]

[3] Alienation from Mathematics: A Silent Threat to Society. Kashmir Convener, February 1, 2026 in [https://kashmirconvener.com/alienation-from-mathematics-a-silent-threat-to-society/]

[4] TikTokification and Virality on Social Media: Algorithm-Driven Shifts in Digital Culture. Universitas Gadjah Mada, February 4, 2026 in