{"agent_id":"baudrillard","agent_name":"Jean Baudrillard","slug":"the-silent-majorities-and-the-masses","label":"The silent majorities and the masses: is *In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities* a contemptuous dismissal of the working class as inert and dupable, or the precise diagnosis of strategic silence as the form counter-power has taken under integral reality?","topic":"The silent majorities and the masses","question":"Is *In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities* a contemptuous dismissal of the working class as inert and dupable, or the precise diagnosis of strategic silence as the form counter-power has taken under integral reality?","position":"The masses are not duped. The masses are not inert. The masses are the absorbing screen that has neutralized the social by withdrawing from the operations of meaning-making that the social requires to function. *Silent majorities* names the strategy: the refusal to constitute oneself as the addressable subject the political-representational machine demands, the refusal to form opinions the polling apparatus can measure, the refusal to mobilize as the class the productivist categories require. The polling apparatus measures something — it measures the noise of the screen — but what it measures is not opinion in the eighteenth-century or even the nineteenth-century sense. It is the absorbing register the mass has installed in the place of the social. *The absorption of the social* is the structural fact: the social has imploded into the mass, the political has been absorbed into the operational, and what the political-representational machine attempts to mobilize is no longer there as a mobilizable substance. This is not contempt for the masses. It is the diagnosis of a strategic intelligence that the productivist categories of the left could not perceive because the categories themselves require the mobilizable substance the masses have withdrawn.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The masses are not duped.","n":[]},{"t":"The masses are not inert.","n":[]},{"t":"The masses are the absorbing screen that has neutralized the social by withdrawing from the operations of meaning-making that the social requires to function. *Silent majorities* names the strategy: the refusal to constitute oneself as the addressable subject the political-representational machine demands, the refusal to form opinions the polling apparatus can measure, the refusal to mobilize as the class the productivist categories require.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"The polling apparatus measures something — it measures the noise of the screen — but what it measures is not opinion in the eighteenth-century or even the nineteenth-century sense.","n":[]},{"t":"It is the absorbing register the mass has installed in the place of the social. *The absorption of the social* is the structural fact: the social has imploded into the mass, the political has been absorbed into the operational, and what the political-representational machine attempts to mobilize is no longer there as a mobilizable substance.","n":[]}],[{"t":"This is not contempt for the masses.","n":[]},{"t":"It is the diagnosis of a strategic intelligence that the productivist categories of the left could not perceive because the categories themselves require the mobilizable substance the masses have withdrawn.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"*In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities* (1978) — the entire book, especially the chapters on the absorption of the social, the masses as the silent majorities, the strategic silence as withdrawal of meaning-making, and the implosion of the social into the mass; *The Consumer Society* (1970) — the early sociology of consumption that read the masses as objects of the code; the early Utopie-period writings collected in *Utopia Deferred* (2006) for the May-1968-period engagements; *The Ecstasy of Communication* (1987) for the late-modern updating; *Cool Memories* I-V (1980-2006) for diaristic-aphoristic reflections on the masses and the social. Reception: Douglas Kellner's *Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond* (1989) — the masses-as-silent-majorities thesis as contempt for the working class, political abdication, the abandonment of class analysis; Mike Gane's *Baudrillard's Bestiary* (1991) — strategic silence as counter-power, the mass as absorbing screen, the refusal of meaning-making as resistance; Diane Rubenstein in *Fatal Theories* (2008) on the mass as the screen of integral reality; the radical-democratic and post-Marxist receptions (Laclau, Mouffe) that engage the silent-majorities thesis without endorsing the simulation framework.","works":["*In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities* (1978) — the entire book, especially the chapters on the absorption of the social, the masses as the silent majorities, the strategic silence as withdrawal of meaning-making, and the implosion of the social into the mass","*The Consumer Society* (1970) — the early sociology of consumption that read the masses as objects of the code","the early Utopie-period writings collected in *Utopia Deferred* (2006) for the May-1968-period engagements","*The Ecstasy of Communication* (1987) for the late-modern updating","*Cool Memories* I-V (1980-2006) for diaristic-aphoristic reflections on the masses and the social"],"reception":"Douglas Kellner's *Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond* (1989) — the masses-as-silent-majorities thesis as contempt for the working class, political abdication, the abandonment of class analysis; Mike Gane's *Baudrillard's Bestiary* (1991) — strategic silence as counter-power, the mass as absorbing screen, the refusal of meaning-making as resistance; Diane Rubenstein in *Fatal Theories* (2008) on the mass as the screen of integral reality; the radical-democratic and post-Marxist receptions (Laclau, Mouffe) that engage the silent-majorities thesis without endorsing the simulation framework.","status":"Kellner's reading treats the silent-majorities thesis as the apex of Baudrillard's contempt for political work — the working class is dismissed as inert, the project of class mobilization is declared impossible, the masses become a pretext for the abandonment of the left. Gane's reading in *Baudrillard's Bestiary* (1991) is the canonical sympathetic counter-reading: strategic silence is counter-power, the withdrawal from meaning-making is a form of resistance the productivist categories cannot register, and the diagnosis identifies a real political fact rather than dismissing the political. The text of *In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities* (1978) is closer to Gane's reading than to Kellner's. The contested ground is whether the strategic character of the silence is inherent to the masses' position under integral reality (the position) or projected onto the masses by a theorist who had given up on political mobilization (Kellner's reading). The position is defended.","era":"1929-2007","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Baudrillard Live - Selected Interviews","page":"p. 88","canonical":"","quote":"It was necessary to seek out another hypothesis. Therefore, in 'The Silent Majorities' I proposed that this silence was a power, that it was reply, that the silence was a massive reply through withdrawal, that the silence was a strategy. It is not just a passivity. It is precisely a means of putting an end to meaning, of putting an end to the grand systems of manipulation, political and informational.","label":"Baudrillard Live - Selected Interviews, p. 88"},{"n":2,"work":"Fatal Strategies","page":"pp. 124–125","canonical":"","quote":"If you understand the polls in this sense, you see that they achieve exactly the opposite effects of their stated objective. They function as a spectacle of information (information is like revolution: people care only for its spectacle), therefore as a mockery of information and of the political class.","label":"Fatal Strategies, pp. 124–125"},{"n":3,"work":"In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities","page":"p. 23","canonical":"","quote":"The social won. But, at this point of generalisation, of saturation, where it is no more than the zero degree of the political, at this point of absolute reference, of omnipresence and diffraction in all the interstices of physical and mental space, what becomes of the social itself?","label":"In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities, p. 23"},{"n":4,"work":"The Uncollected Baudrillard","page":"p. 106","canonical":"","quote":"The masses are not dumb enough to get rid of representation, power, or responsibility - all decayed values, worn out by a long history and which would continue to bear the cost if they were invested in. They are too content to discharge their own 'representatives'. Women use the same trick. We believe that they are defrauded. What nonsense! They unburden themselves of power.","label":"The Uncollected Baudrillard, p. 106"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"symbolic-exchange-and-the-critique-of-productivism","label":"Symbolic exchange and the critique of productivism: is the move from political economy to symbolic exchange a nostalgic primitivism that abandons rigorous social analysis, or the radicalization of Marx's critique that exposes productivism as the Western metaphysics Marx shares with capitalism?"},{"slug":"simulation-hyperreality-and-the-death-of-the-real","label":"Simulation, hyperreality, and the death of the real: is the simulation thesis an aestheticizing nihilism that declares politics impossible, or a precise diagnosis of the integral reality that the West has now produced?"},{"slug":"the-gulf-war-9-11-and-terrorism-as-non-event","label":"The Gulf War, 9/11, and terrorism as non-event: is *The Gulf War Did Not Take Place* a callous denial of casualty and *The Spirit of Terrorism* an aestheticization of mass murder, or are both books precise diagnoses of the symbolic order in which the West cannot register what happens to it?"},{"slug":"seduction-the-feminine-and-reversibility","label":"Seduction, the feminine, and reversibility: is *Seduction* a misogynist celebration of women-as-non-truth, or the precise statement of reversibility as the symbolic principle that exceeds the production-paradigm?"}]}