Saved or Colonized? Res Publica Literaria under the Dictate of the "Zero Branch of Power"

Author's Note: This manuscript represents a foundational macro-framework. The key concepts introduced herein (Double Subsumption, Cascading Algorithmic Alienation, Reverse Indulgence, Academic State of Exception, Ontological Fatigue etc.) are currently being expanded and developed by the author into a series of separate specialized articles. Abstract For centuries, the Res publica literaria (Republic of Letters) secured its academic freedom through sovereign control over its material networks of communication. Today, the rapid platformization of higher education, sharply accelerated by the forced digital migration during the war in Ukraine, threatens to reduce this free epistemic community to a colonized user base. This article diagnoses how corporate infrastructures have mutated into a pre-juridical "Educational Material Constitution" that dictates the boundaries of academic truth and governance. Drawing upon critical political economy and neo-republican philosophy, the study argues that the survival of the Res publica literaria is strictly contingent upon reclaiming its digital architecture as a genuine res publica: a protected public good free from the arbitrary domination of technological monopolies. The analysis introduces the concepts of "double subsumption" and "cascading algorithmic alienation" to expose how cognitive extractivism, materially underwritten by geological depletion, feeds on the "ontological fatigue" of the academic precariat. Furthermore, it deconstructs the facade of human oversight in algorithmic systems through the concept of "Reverse Indulgence." To disrupt this delayed digital colonization, the paper constructs a matrix of institutional resistance—featuring preventive constituent audits, the "epistemic strike," and the right to infrastructural exit—modeling a transition toward infrastructural republicanism.