Blogs, genes and immigration: Online media and minimal politics

Abstract

This article explores the contribution of the concept of ‘minimal politics’ to understanding contemporary blogging. Politics is often used to refer only to state actions or to very rare ruptures to existing formations; citizens’ and social media are often only considered successful if they influence political leaders or lead to radical social change. The perspective adopted in this article, drawing on theories of agonistic democracy and hegemony, foregrounds the apparently quotidian ways in which current formations are destabilized. To explore the smallest radically democratic practices of contesting what appears to be a current hegemonic formation, the article analyses blog coverage of the publication in Germany of Thilo Sarrazin’s book Deutschland schafft sich ab. The book, celebrated by some sections of the media and population, argued that the genetic transmission of intelligence and the high number of Muslim immigrants in Germany was leading to the demise of the country. Analysis identified three strategies utilized by blogs to contest the Sarrazin case: rebutting, reflecting, re-articulating. The political aspect of blogging, it is argued, should not be reduced to moments of rupture or moments of consensus, but also encompass the practices of tearing apparently tiny fissures in current media/social constellations.