Actuvirtualized Activity and Passivity in the Political Sphere

In this paper I discuss the transformation of political discourse wrought by
the rise of internet-based communicative media. I argue that the conventional
focus on the inter-activity that the internet makes possible (through the
availability of blogging sites, sites to display downloaded videos and
pictures, commenting, virtual worlds, etc.) is misplaced, or at least in need of
modification. I will take a Derridean turn in my analysis of the internet effect
to show that the medium carries a new structure of actuvirtuality, the import
of which is to potentially emancipate the internet user from the serial,
coherent rationality that has dominated the major audio-visual media of
modernity, thus opening a space for the virtual problematisation of political
reality. I demonstrate how this virtual dimension generates new strategies
both for those who seek political change and for those who seek to defend the
status quo. It creates a new field, or game, in which they can engage. The
possibility of neutralization arises from the same condition that makes
actuvirtuality strategically viable: the relative emancipation from rational
coherency and fixation. Any radical strategy for change that would privilege
the internet must, I will argue, be supplemented by more reflectively oriented
approachesinter