Seen from a semiotical point of view, politics, of course, is something that has to be told. If politicans or institutions decide or opt, then they are giving arguments in order to justify their decision or option. Therefore not only the pure option or decision is transmitted to the public, also its context. Politics comes into being through communication, through the exchange of signs, as ROSSI LANDI has taught us.

But communication is not a neutral mechanism which transfers information from senders to receivers and vice versa, communication might fullfil strategic purposes, it is regulated and we can identify different sorts of structures. Politics comes into being through communication, and narratives in political propaganda are one interesting form of its becoming.

Narratives provide a special setting of the context of the decisions and options. This chain of genitivs in my sentence (“of the context of the decisions and…”) might suggest that the context determines decisions and options which ‘only’ refer to it. To the contrary we have to read this chain of genitivs backwards and to state that the context is produced by the decision or option itself, context doesn’t stand in the outside or it does NOT represent the outer reality. The decision itself makes it.

Ok, but what is the key feature or definition of a political decision or option, then? A decision is an incision [Kerbe] (or indentation) into semiosis: Decision functions as incision into the string of signs, and around its cuts new contexts will develope. (Reference for this theory: Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, 1934; Ernesto Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony saying that hegemony is the construction of the unthinkable; Jacques Derridas Readings of Walter Benjamin as well).

Narratives in political propaganda are a certain form of incision. They are either introducing political struggle as a linear and highly regulated competition, where the winner is retrospectively presented as a classical hero who has made exactly the right decisions, as in ferry-tales. Or political struggle is a violent and unpredictable outbreak of numerous confrontations where decisions of the activists seem to have no political ground and therefore trigger serious treatment, that is to say decisions of the soverign power. Both ways of presenting political struggles entail different forms of political contexts and subjectivations.

Lets now have a look into some material:

This is the story of Angie, who is the first German woman who made it. She managed to become chancellor.

BBC-News Europe is telling her story as follows:

• “As a Protestant east German woman Angela Merkel, 51, broke the leadership mould in the CDU, traditionally dominated by Catholic west German men.She wants fundamental reforms to pull Germany’s economy out of the doldrums - especially reducing staff costs and red tape for employers and raising sales tax. Observers say she will need all her reputed toughness to push them through while holding a potentially fractious ”grand coalition“ with the Social Democrats together. She first came to prominence five years ago during a CDU party slush fund scandal.She had strongly denied allegations that bribes were paid for the supply of tanks to Saudi Arabia, describing them as ”totally absurd“.But as the crisis deepened and the full scale of former chancellor Helmut Kohl’s role in it became apparent, she was the first former Kohl ally to publicly break with the man who brought her into the cabinet.The move paid dividends and she was chosen to lead the party in April 2000.Yet she was not popular enough to be selected as the party’s candidate for chancellor in 2002, and was beaten by Edmund Stoiber, leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). The Merkel-Stoiber relationship is said to be still difficult - and was not helped by Mr Stoiber’s controversial remarks about east Germans during the campaign.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4572387.stm)

Another example:

• The German tabloid Bild-Zeitung came up with a scheme where chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet was presented as a collection of her friends or her foes; moreover everybody in Germany knows about her origin, being from Eastern Germany, and how she made it to become first female head of government.

The charismatic leader is presented as a single figure, leaving home (Merkel: Ex-GDR), on his or her way solving the riddle, struggling with opponents and having helpers and foes. Such stories refer to the sovereign body of the people, in those mythological narratives the political struggle is presented in the form of a tale (as Propp or Eco have analysed): the hero has adversaries and opponents on his way, leaves his home to make his way (= his or her career), survives examinanations of his/her life (political contests, elections), solves riddles (new politcal reform-initiatives) and at the end reaches the top. But her way has a form of regularity, a pre-established goal which can only be made visible retrospectively.

The mass of the people in those narratives is seperated into believers, non-believers and people where it is not clear which side they are on. They form unique blocks in respect to the charismatic figure; the relation of domination is not stable but fragile; the transfer of fantasmas and desires might be interfered, then all of a sudden the charismatic leader is naked and looses her/his ability to represent the sovereign body.

Now we will enter the scenery of French suburbian revolts in novembre 2005. Here we will investigate designations of multitude.

On one hand we can identify a binary discourse with the purpose to differentiate goodies and badies. The main line of distinction established through that discourse ran between “racaille”, that is scum [Abschaum], and “les vrais jeunes”, the true young people [die aufrechten, wahren Jugendlichen]. The French minister of internal affairs, Sarkozy, has coined that distinction in order to explicitly declare a semantic war, or to subjectivate semantic warriors. So this designation does not only serve as a provocation to trigger the uprising, it incises into the public debate and dis-articulates the political dimension of these events.

• “Ainsi, les émeutiers ont, dès les premiers jours, été rebaptisés du nom de « racaille » par Sarkozy. Ces paroles, qui s’inscrivent dans une logique de provocation calculée, ont joué un rôle majeur dans la contagion des « émeutes » de Clichy-sous-Bois à la région parisienne et à la France entière. Cette « sémantique guerrière », pour reprendre les mots de l’autre Ministre (Azouz Begag), voudrait faire croire que, dans les cités il y a, d’un côté, les « délinquants », les « voyous » et, de l’autre, des « bons » jeunes (des « vrais jeunes » comme l’a dit une fois le Ministre à la télévision). Comme s’il suffisait de séparer ainsi le bon grain de l’ivraie.” (Stéphane Beaud, Michel Pialoux, La ‘racaille’ et les ‘vrais jeunes’, http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=2177)

Multitude here figures as an uncivilised pack or a crowd whose only desire is to destroy. This “context” paved the way for the later announcment of the “state of exepetion” made by the French government, or better: This context was made in order to make this political decision comprehensive. There is a resonance of Schmitt’s dictum that sovereign is the one who is able to declare that state of exeption, but we should not forget that this state of exeption from november 2005 has had more a symbolic value than in Schmitt’s conception. Anyway we can very well see the interrelation between decision and “context” here.

On the other hand we could observe an exlosion of little personal stories reported and triggered by the media. After the revolts in France the talk-shows in tv were crowded with young people dressed in Rap-style and telling stories of their personal life. For example you can find on the website of the French newspaper “Liberation” variuos videos and texts where ordinary people are expalining their thoughts and ideas. Probably this is the first time when “Multitude” has entered public discourse.

This chain of private stories was told in order to justify political action or behaviour. The media-machine is triggering those stories, it refers to the multitude, which consists of singularities, and forces the individuals to tell their story as an example that stands for the millions of other stories supposed to be similiar. You have to explain your dis-satisfaction by refering to your childhood, to bad experiences in your neighbourhood, at work or at home, you are asked to present your individual situation. It is the domiant talk-show and human-touch approach within the media which is, of course, not a new feature. Although it opposes the binary distinction between scum and true people, it imposes a certain mode of subjectivation. With your life you have to stand for your political options and acitities. They ca only be mediated by using those references, your political approach can only become credible WHEN you are constantly exposing yourself.

In this last part of my presentation I would like to return to the problematic of coming to terms with this different political discourses: a) Charismatic leadership and sovereignity, b) binarism that constricts bad and good subjects, c) little stories which trigger multiplicity and injure it at the same time.

I will use the concept of Ideological State Apparatus from Louis Althusser, with its main thesis of mere political domination in post-modern capitalist societies. These appartusses are producing ideological worlds in order to reproduce the capitalist system and its exploitation in new forms. In its latest formulations by Althusser it should be interpreted as a machine running with the energies (ideolocts, fantasmas, desires) of the people.

To put it shortly and bluntly: Ideology produces subjects. The media must be conceived as an Ideological State Apparatus which stages wishes, desires, and political struggle. Staging means to inter-relate elements according to a given setting and thereby re-designating them. An Ideological State Apparatus can be compared to a machine, that converts energy in order to make (to produce) something. By the way, here we have found another author who argues in favour for the analogy of language and work.

Political propaganda in a liberal democracy does not so much determine content, that is this or that political topic, it produces subjects.

Media takes control over semiosis.

Modern capitalist societies: In the Media-apparatus are standards of humanity and moral values generated, in post-modern societies they are generating modes of individualisation and of temporary unification.