Vote for Change

This [labeling a different determination as a 'subsystem' or 'outsystem'] is evident in all the operations, electoral or otherwise, where you are given a choice, but on the condition that your choice conform to the limits of the constant ('you mustn't choose to change society . . .'). But at this point, everything is reversed. For the majority, insofar as it is analytically included in the abstract standard, is never anybody, it is always Nobody . . . whereas the minority is the becoming of everybody, one's potential becoming to the extent that one deviates from the model. There is a majoritarian 'fact,' but it is the analytic fact of Nobody as opposed to the becoming-minoritarian of everybody (105).

I thought that this brief passage from "Posulates of Linguistics" was intriguing, especially in light of the recent election. Majorities and minorities were constantly invoked, constructed, and becoming over the course of the campaign. Political polls function to create statistical majorities of voters' opinions on the candidates & political issues while simultaneously aggregating demographic data about majorities and minorities within the voting population. Yet these statistical facts are Nobody; or, rather, they are an abstraction based upon a "representative sampling" of the population; furthermore, this sampling consists of responses to a question that may be understood in different ways by different people. 

To take the argument a step further, is voting not also the same kind of majoritarian fact? While presidential elections are represented simultaneously as a chance for the Nation to speak as one and for each vote to count, there is also a fundamental reduction of 'political participation' to making a check mark on a ballot. In this way, divergence is reduced to a minimum within the threshold of the electoral machine. There is no "AND...AND...AND;" voting is an either/or operation.

It is also intriguing that both major party campaigns took "change" as a central tenet, a slogan (or mot d'ordre, an 'order-word'). Despite this emphasis on change, both candidates also attempted throughout the election cycle to solidify their public image; any change of opinion was immediately brandished against the opponent as a "flip-flop," an inconsistency. It would seem that the "Change" of the 2008 Election really functioned as an interchangeable marker of two ideally stable positions, both of which claim & disclaim change in a systematic variation. (Change the economy; don't change your politics; change environmental policy; don't change your mind; change the world; don't change yourself). D&G's emphasis on the electoral choice as a choice within limits underscores how a slogan as potentially radical as "change" can also function to restrict variation. I'm not sure if "change" functioned as an order-word in the way that D&G discussed, but I'd like to get some opinions on this hypothesis in class.