To my surprise, I discovered last night at a wine bar in St James's, that there are still intelligent people in the world prepared to discuss politics as traditionally understood and practised, despite the fact that we have entered a transpolitical era. They might not have been entirely sober when doing so - but they were almost certainly serious.
For one reason or another, they seemed unprepared to accept - or, in some cases, incapable of accepting - what the radical confusion of formerly fixed and distinct political categories, ideologies, and identities might signify. It was as if the last forty years had changed nothing at all. Or as if Baudrillard had never written a word!
However, like it or not, we are rapidly approaching what the latter describes as the zero point of politics; a stage in which everything that formerly held truth and value in the political sphere has been emptied of all sense. Not that this marks the end of history, or the end of man; rather, it simply results in the interminable illusion of the end and the simulation of phantom events on the world stage broadcast in real time on 24-hour news channels.
Henceforth, attempts to do politics, or discuss politics, are increasingly doomed to failure. And if many people don't bother to vote, it's not because they are apathetic or cynical, but, for the most part, indifferent to a system in which it has become impossible to believe. Parliament, I'm afraid, is beginning to resemble a huge HMV store: a place that holds no great interest and serves no real purpose.
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