Afterword

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to both Mark Hobart and Judith Fox for their comments on an earlier draft of these remarks.

Notes

1. See Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idol_series; accessed 23 July 2006) for details on the ‘Idol’ programs that are currently on the air internationally.

2. The problem dates back at least to the 19th century, with the various economic (e.g. Marx), sociological (e.g. Durkheim) and psychological (e.g. Freud) attempts to grapple with the legacy of Kant.

3. It is worth noting that the terminology associated with this model (e.g. ‘reception’) is hegemonic to the point that it becomes difficult to avoid replicating it in critiques. That is to say, for the sake of intelligibility, one is often forced to adopt the very language that one wishes to subvert.

4. In other words, on this basis, difference is always already reduced to a foundational—and knowable—sameness. One might compare, for instance, the New Order articulation of religious difference in which that ‘difference’ is ultimately subordinate to the deeper unity implied by a notionally universal adherence to one of the five state-sanctioned forms of monotheistic belief. On this account, ‘difference’ says more about similarity than it does about difference.