Masses’ silence functions as counterstrategy against power
Evidence
But today? This absence of a response can no longer be understood at all as a strategy of power, but as a counterstrategy of the masses themselves when they encounter power. What then? Are the mass media on the side of power in the manipulation of the masses, or are they on the side of the masses in the liquidation of meaning, in the violence perpetrated on meaning, and in fascination? Is it the media that induce fascination in the masses, or is it the masses who direct the media into the spectacle? — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 288
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Deconstruction paradoxically requires political resistance to stay silent and unprogrammatic — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 321; Discoursing on power differs fundamentally from being silenced by it; Compulsory self-expression serves repressive power, and silence is its antidote (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Masses stay silent because speech is taken away, not because of emptiness
#expands(0.88) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 732 - Compulsory self-expression serves repressive power, and silence is its antidote
#corroborates(0.85) - Discoursing on power differs fundamentally from being silenced by it
#responds-to(0.82) - A critique of silencing can itself reproduce the silence it indicts
#complicates(0.78) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 308 - Preserving silence paradoxically requires inviting people into it
#complicates(0.75) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 1704