1 0 See ConnollYi The Ethos of Pluralization.
1 1 For a compelling account of the breast-cancer awareness movement, see King, Pink Ribbons, Inc.
1 2 See his introduction t o Slavoj Ziiek Presents Mao, 17.
13 Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, 167-71.
14 Ibid., 163.
:1 5 Zizek, Organs without Bodies, 184.
:te An even more compelling example appears in the following account of a company called "Spotrunner" on the blog Edge-generation: strategies for a discontinuous future. According to a post titled "Plasticity and Post-Branding Mini Case Study-Spotrunner": "On Spotrunner, you c�oose a generic ad, and rebundle it with minor personalized info-your company's name, contact address, etc. The indivisibility of ads has suddenly been vaporized. It's not just that anyone can buy them-when you buy an ad on Spotrunner, you're really buying several rebundled, microchunked goods-so it's that the ad itself has been redefined. This is a perfect example of the way in which microchunking unlocks distributed scale economies-through the reuse and recombination of microchunks. Spotrunner can be hypereficient not just because it alows access to buying distribution online, but because it microchunks ads, letting them be rebundled-and so reused-making Spotrunner a far more eficient economic solution to buying ads than anything else in its strategic group" (posted January 23, 2006). MUltiplicity and variability, the divisibility of what previously seemed indivisible, characterizes the product as well as th� strategy behind it. Available at http:/ /w.bubblegeneration.com (accessed October 28, 2oo8 ).
17 Frank, One Market under God, 305-6.
1s Zizek in Slavoj Zitek Presents Mao, 24.
:19 Moufe, The Democratic Paradox; Zizek; The Ticklish Subject; Ranciere, Disagreement; and Brown, ·�erican Nightmare:' For a persuasive development of the notion of postdemocracy, see Crouch, Post-Democracy;
20 Bauman, The Individualized Society, 106.
21 Moufe, The Democratic Paradox, 105. See also Moufe, On the Political.
22 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, �1.
23 Ibid., 38; my emphasis.
Ranciere.'s arg-ument is further complicated by his reading of disruption as the essence of politics and of Plato as a seminal step toward depoliticization. If disruption is the essence of politics, then governance is necessarily depoliticizing. This view of governance allows for a kind of permanent contestation without any responsibilty for actual decisions and implementation. The resulting left politics is reduced to a politics of resistance. Additionally, if the problems of depoliticization start with Plato, then how does the term contribute to a diagnosis of the contemporary situation? How is it nothing but the inevitable failure of order?
25 Ranciere, Disagreement, 108.
178
NOTES TO INTRODUCTION