The insignificance of (hyper-)mediatized politics

 The insignificance of (hyper-)mediatized politics

Marc Jacquinet, March 2023

The recent cases of corruption in the European Parliament and, even closer to home, that of the government and president of the Portuguese republic are raising many questions and dismay, without ignoring the many events in European countries, the Americas and just about everywhere else in the world.
Images follow one another like humming pots, speeches break like a tide of whistling coffee makers. Logos lose their meaning in this cacophony of sounds and logorrhea of images. Listeners are transformed into a bowl based on the addition of ears or auditory systems. Spectators are stunned. It’s not just a question of incredulity, which is certainly very swollen, a kind of tumescence, it’s also a question of insignificance.
The insignificance of which Castoriadis spoke is back, had it ever disappeared.

Cornelius Castoriadis offers us some food for thought when considering the different cases of the present, and in particular the Portuguese case:
What characterizes the contemporary world is, of course, its crises, contradictions, oppositions and fractures, but what strikes me above all is its insignificance. Take the quarrel between left and right. It’s lost all meaning. Everyone says the same thing. Since 1983, the French Socialists have pursued a policy, then Mr Balladur pursued the same policy; the Socialists came back, they pursued the same policy with Pierre Bérégovoy; Mr Balladur came back, he pursued the same policy; Mr Chirac won the 1995 election by saying: “I’m going to do something else” and he pursued the same policy.

Politicians are powerless. The only thing they can do is go with the flow, i.e. apply the ultraliberal policy that’s in vogue. That’s all the Socialists did when they came back to power. They are not politicians, but politicians in the sense of micro-politicians. People who chase votes by any means necessary. They have no program. Their goal is to stay in power or return to power, and to achieve this they are capable of anything.
(Castoriadis 1998: pp. 22-23)
Even if the text is dated, it still provides a critical perspective on our polis and our society of the spectacle, where no one and nothing is spared.
Politics is almost always the same in Portugal, not only because of external constraints (economic and political, such as austerity, the Troika, rating agencies), but also because of mediocrity and discourse and practices that have become inaudible, insignificant.
Micro-politicians have taken power, small-minded, petty, ambitious for themselves, but bathed in a petit-bourgeois inter-soi, resistant to any mea culpa or recognition of the other. It’s as if the micro-politicians, hiding so pompously and circumstantially from their condition as micro-cretins (micro because they are mediocre), don’t make mistakes. They assume neither their errors nor their condition, so long as their egos swell or their little pockets fill up while the strong inner self atrophies.
The question of meaning – as direction and significance – has become central.
Where is the kairós (kairos)? Can this classical Greek notion help us? In a world characterized by chaos and ephemerality, this is no easy task, all the more so as kairos is a demanding concept that cannot be transferred from one place to another or from one era to another.
The challenges are enormous, not only in terms of thought and the effort to understand the world, but also in terms of work and daily effort, in other words, in terms of praxis. The Greek kairós is there, perhaps, let’s not let it escape.
Three questions remain at individual and collective level: reflection (thinking), dialogue (discussing/dialoguing) and action (acting/changing).

Beyond media coverage, it’s the whole of society that’s concerned, not just the elites. It’s all of us.

What sense can we make of all this?

References

Castoriadis, C. (1997). El avance de la insignificancia (1. ed ed.). Eudeba [Buenos Aires].
Castoriadis, C. (1998, 8 1). Stopper la montée de l’insignifiance, by Cornelius Castoriadis. Le Monde diplomatique. Retrieved December 9, 2023, from https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1998/08/CASTORIADIS/3964
Castoriadis, C., & Mermet, D. (2007). Postscript on insignificance: interviews with Daniel Mermet; followed by Dialogue (Nouv. ed.). Éditions de l’Aube La Tour-d’Aigues (Vaucluse).
Castoriadis, C. (2011). Postscript on insignificance: dialogues with Cornelius Castoriadis (English language ed ed.). Continuum London.

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Marc Jacquinet

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1157-060X

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