why care?

 

“What interest does the modern individual have in being represented – the individual of the networks and the virtual, the multi-focal individual of the operational sphere? He does his business, and that is that. What does he care for transcendence? He lives very well in immanence and interaction. What does a political will mean to him, a collective will, that glimmer of sovereignty he delegated to the social organization? There is no longer any delegation of the will, or of desire. The screen of communication has smashed the mirror of representation. Now only statistical shadows circulate – on the opinion-poll screens. There is no social contract any longer: on the media screens, only the image-playback functions. The citizen’s only symbolic capital is that of his disaffection and political poverty, that very poverty managed by our official representatives (that is the secret of their corruption).”

Jean Baudrillard, Impossible Exchange, pp. 139-140.

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