>A few months ago Doug had someone on his show, Jodi Dean I think was her
>name, who is an academic and also writes a blog. She talked about the trouble
>of individualism in the Left, and “archipelago”s of blogs, so on.
The whole thesis is silly, even sillier coming from someone who runs a very popular blog. Blogs don't exist as individual things any more than people. Leftists and critical theorists really need to ditch this lazy way of approaching things. Individualism can't and doesn't exist in a world in which each of is criss-crossed by hundreds or thousands of institutions and strata: cities, states, courts, corporations, districts, commissions, boards, authorities, etc. The problem isn't individualism or not enough organization. As Foucault said, we are governed too much. But even that's not accurate. We are governed poorly (or too well, depending on your perspective, I guess). The problem isn't a lack of institutions, but their general suckiness.