Oscillation

Virno functions as resource for the Target of our CATTt.  An immediate connection with this dimension of public policy disaster is his allusion to Hurricane Katrina through the metonym of the "Superdome."  A number of the students missed this allusion in their notes.

A theory of institutions that seeks to abandon the paradigm of sovereignty, without eluding the question of intraspecies aggression, must place at center stage that inviolable weaving together of the three levels on which human praxis is articulated: a) regularity, or "the common behavior of mankind"; b) defined rule; c) application contingent upon the defined rule.  None of these levels (and even less so, the application) constitutes a free zone, immune from so called "evil": all these levels are a theater for the oscillation between the good life and the Superdome of New Orleans (Virno, 36).

 The concern of Routine (in a project to place well-being at the center of electrate thought) must take into account Virno's observation, that virtue and evil emerge from the same capacities and faculties of human potentiality.  The oscillation signals we are in a threshold condition of cultural turbulence.  The Real speaks through the Superdome figure, intimating the catastrophe of winner-take-all values emblematized in this sports arena.  The natural and social disasters manifest at the Superdome allude to a further disaster of hypercompetition, the dangers of Entertainment as the site of emergent electracy.  Meanwhile, this scene is associated with a viral appropriation still in circulation, a photoshop joke, proving that a cliche (Nero and his fiddle) is also an archetype.

Persona as Corporate Mask

Marshall McLuhan's comments on Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp "mask" are relevant to our CATTt, providing a relay for synthesizing Event (as subject position), Conceptual Persona, Appropriation, Cliche.

The character in a mask is "putting on the audience" rather than expressing his personal feelings. Thus Charlie Chaplin did not spend his life expressing his personal feelings. Like any artist, he selected from the environment of his audience the equipment he needed. Chaplin chose only a small group of items: the costume of the middle-class nobody, the hidden gestures of the music-hall entertainer, the romantic outlook of Cyrano, the unlovable lover, and the foot positions of classical ballet. It was this latter inspiration that gave the bizarre highbrow aura to Chaplin's mask. To get into a role as opposed to merely having a job, is to put on the corporate social power of one's culture. In our still very literate society many people continue to seek corporate power by matching appearances. This has exactly the opposite effect from what is desired. It dilutes rather than enriches the experience, just as competition encourages people to resemble one another. The genuine role-player, on the other hand, doesn't have any competition whatever, since the items he selects from the environment from which to create his image are of the utmost inclusiveness. (McLuhan, From Cliche to Archetype).

In our case, however, there is no need to choose between "mask" and "expression," in the context of electrate identity formation, experienced as "extimacy" (the outside is inside).  The construction of our persona works through the middle voice:  We experience our collective subject position of event by means of the appropriated bits selected and combined into routine.