ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which print became a condition of possibility for constituting the 'people', or, it will examine the role of print in enabling an alienated mode of politics and the atomised and politically passive mode of subjectivity described by Marx in On the Jewish Question (OJQ). In effect, Gellner is writing about is the constitution of the 'people', like Hobbesian way by Hardt and Negri. The autonomist concept of 'people' is by way of the works of Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson on the role of print textualisation in constituting membership of the nation-state. During an optimistic post-1945 era, the Schumpeterian theme of popular political passivity was taken up by American political theorists saw the privatised dispositions of liberal democratic voters, that 'civic culture', in the absence of modern democracy would yield chaos rather than order. Anderson's conception of the abstract community intends to show a sense of community with the help of 'print capitalism'.
