ABSTRACT
This paper traces the history of an abiding anxiety of modern, mass society. From Orwell’s panoptic dystopia (Nineteen Eighty-Four) to Endemol’s multi-mediated spectacle (Big Brother), the image of the deluded, disciplined, and ductile public has haunted the liberal imagination. Democratic power is legitimised through mass participation, but when voluntary engagement takes the form of collusion with manipulative authority, power ceases to be accountable and the autonomous citizen begins to look more like a slavish subject. This is an enduring paradox of political freedom: how does one explain the happy slave, the willing dupe, and the popular tyranny? Why—and how—do people participate in their own disempowerment and degradation as citizens?
