| Popis: |
Critics of globalisation maintain a somewhat ambiguous relationship to the net. Any use of the internet for the purposes of criticising global processes and the institutions of global governance necessarily acknowledges its participation in these very processes. But what is the nature of such participation? To the extent that critics of globalisation espy in the internet a means of making a difference, precisely what kind of difference is this? Seen primarily as a representational and a didactic tool, the internet may be put to the service of an idealist politics, enabling truths, otherwise obscured, to see the light of day. Yet such a strategy, it is argued, is bound to a certain repetition that may deny resistance its fully positive power. The paper contrasts two distinct strategic uses of the net in order to open up to a different understanding of the political potential of the internet. For the superunion, the International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF), the internet represents a means of reaching the broadest possible public audience, so as to lessen the hold of the ideology of global capital. The use of the internet by the loose alliance of culture jammers known as the Yes Men calls for an alternative understanding of what it means to make a difference to the contemporary scene. We argue that their use of the net for the purposes of resistance calls into question the representational model and its associated politics. |
