Good to be in your cyber-proximity again.
>Polls are better seen, I would suggest, as one symptom of what is a general
>movement toward the 'market' model of politics. The voter is conceived no
>longer as the active citizen, the political subject, but now as the passive
>consumer in the marketplace of political choices. Polling is a key expression
>-- and a means of penetration -- of that model.
Wonderful 'act', mate. This is *exactly* what polls are about (Habermas used to be very good on this) - as is the drive to get all this 'convergence' we're hearing about to occur through our television sets - the reduction of the Net into e-commerce - the tendency of policy debates to be highly technicalised before they even get allowed out of mahogany hall - the push to express all creatures and matters in purely economic/quantified ways - the Hill & Knowlton strategy to ridicule opposition as uninformed and childish - and, of course - the discursive identity of citizen and consumer. All of that stuff is objectively happening and it's objectively against our interests. And to mention it and oppose it are objective acts. Methinks Zizek's 'modern' should more properly be dubbed 'postmodern'. I'd've thought the 'modern' subject was the one who asserted Truth against doxa - or at least (in the hands of Habermas) had to validate their/his/her claim in the spirit and setting of communicative rationality (public opinion as process of will formation rather than tabulated poll datum).
That's what 'act' means to me, anyway. And I'm terribly 'modern'.
Can't see how the subject Zizek describes as 'modern' can 'act' actually ...
Cheers, Rob.
>
>There is, BTW, a various interesting text by the Cornell political scientist
>on the subject, _The Captive Public: How Mass Opinion Promotes State Power._
>
>Leo Casey
>United Federation of Teachers
>260 Park Avenue South
>New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
>
>Power concedes nothing without a demand.
>It never has, and it never will.
>If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
>Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who
>want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
>lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
>-- Frederick Douglass --