From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 3148:
the deadlock of representation doesn’t simply foreclose the purchase of shared social representations, it simultaneously frees up the field for the proliferation of imagined narratives and counter- narratives. The result is a kind of bestiary of the imaginary: a familiarly disturbing world in which claims once relegated to the political margins start to mingle with those once considered serious and credible. It is a world populated by death panels, in which providing healthcare and welfare is one step away from the Nazi death camp, in which foes of abortion claim that women’s bodies naturally protect them from being impregnated by rape, in which centrist Democrats are pursuing a covert agenda of euthanasia and eugenics. Once upon a time, the thorough debunking of all dominant narratives would have been taken as a form of liberation – doesn’t it free up the field, after all, for “subjugated” knowledges? The answer is yes, but only at the cost of their efficacy. In a world in which the shifting strands of discourse lose their purchase, the two- way relationship between power and knowledge is, in a sense, severed.
Mark Carrigan 