The Clubcard project (http://www. irational.org/tn/clubcard) raised the possibility of political incursions into the re-
lationship with the supermarket as defined by the loyalty card and accompanying database. The next stage for the
project lies in mobilising the integrated database/internet/postal strategy to synthesise communications about GM
foods.

http/www.irational.org/cta
httpy/www.irational.org/tm
mailto:rache|@irational.org

A SKETCHY AND PERSONAL
MAP OF THE TACTICAL MEDIA
CONTEXT IN FRANCE

For many reasons, the 80's, the time of the Mitterand socialist government, were years in which grass roots move-
ments got institutionalised and traditional activism was “out”, neutralised. The universalism of the Republic (every-
body is abstractly equal) allied with traditional individualism and clan behaviour (“la guerre des chapelles") pro-
hibited the emergence of non-dominant/non-normalised subjectivities in the public debates. Those traditions are
still alive today. The 68 generation didn't feel necessary to pass on their knowledge to younger generations. From
their point of view, they created new ways to go about the world by themselves, so should the following generations.
The notion of alternatives and activism became stigmatised. It wasn't very tactical in those years to position oneself
in terms of an alternative. If the French intellectuals of the 60's and the 70's gave us tools for culture and media
analysis, their work seems to have been confined to academic discussion which never leaked to a larger public, or
to have gotten stuck in a form of theoretical Marxism excluding the uninitiated. As a result, by the early 90's, the
most ble intellectuals and the grassroots movements seemed to have been labotomised. Yet emergencies do
exist.

While there was a strong movement in favour of the liberation of the airwaves for free radios in the early 80's, com-
mercial stations quickly and quite illegally took over those airwaves, and only a few free radios are still alive today.
Yet nowadays their numbers are growing, and radios like “Fréquence Paris Plurielle” play their role. The disgrace-
ful fate of independent radio in the early days is what is remembered, and it set a precedent. To this day, there aren't
accessible means to broadcast television outside the mainstream media. The notion of public access, fairly com-
mon in most industrialised countries, is almost inconceivable in France. Public access isn't a magic solution, yet in
a country where diffusion was so controlled, it seems to be an emergency. Free access meant free of all excess for
the legislators. For the longest time those who regulate the airwaves suggested that the public wasn't mature
enough for such a venture. It was only with the explosion of internet access in 95, and the uncontrollable flux of
information going both ways in that medium, that the government had to find another logic. In June 98, the CSA

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