is involved is communication, which ‘informs’ populations about ‘how things
stand’, which in turn determines – ‘beyond political and ideological divisions’ –
‘the only possible policy’. Thus we see ministers communicating to those for
whom they are responsible their latest opuscule, prime ministers ‘writing’ to
the French, and ‘dossiers’ being presented to the public on the existence of
weapons of mass destruction. That these dossiers are total fabrications, that
the ‘sources’ of this ‘information’ are kept secret and, when disclosed, prove
to be completely unreliable, is of no importance. The object of ‘political
communications’ is not to establish the truth, to convince people of the justice
of the actions envisaged, or of their appropriateness in the political conjuncture.
It is to interpellate each citizen to a position of recipient of information, and
to bring them into a process of communication rather than of common action
or decision-making. Hence the importance of ‘spin’ and the political figure
of the ‘communications director’, which tends to occupy the centre of political
life. It is through her that the government comes to power (she formulates
the most ‘communicative’ – i.e. the most irresponsible – electoral promises);
it is through her that it enters into crisis (as happened in Britain the summer
of 2003).
Obviously, this doxais not a natural object but a historical construct. A Marxist
will have no difficulty demonstrating that the ideology of communication
is the one that suits capitalism; that it represents liberalism in linguistic
matters, in that it fetishises and relates two ideal speakers – a Sender and a
Receiver – whose position is, in principle, reversible. This is where the ideology
of communication cannot help revealing its ideological nature. For, in reality
(in the field of public relations or political communication), the Receiver never
becomes the Sender in turn. If she tries to, the rules of the game suddenly change
and the Sender, who is responsible for the country’s destiny, does not understand
what the citizens are saying to her. Thus, the massive popular demonstrations
organised against the war in Spain, Italy and Great Britain hardly succeeded
in communicating (in any sense of the term) their conviction to the governments
of those countries.
We can now understand Deleuze’s hostility to communication (by it he
also understood what French academics call communications[papers] – i.e.
participation in conferences). A philosopher who, with Félix Guattari, engaged
in joint composition more than any other, did not believe in the virtues of
dialogue as a philosophical form of communication and preferred writing –
that is, the fashioning of concepts.
66 • Chapter Three