The Second Life of Institutions: Social Poetics in a Digital State

In the bureaucratic moments that Michael Herzfeld describes, functionaries of the nation-state deny the contingent points of possible connection with their hapless subjects yet draw on a common symbolic language to do so—thus is the institution reproduced. Such ethnographic moments implicitly rely on other moments, those informed by their expressed lack of total order: illicit activities, games, and competitive verbal performance; cultural intimacy is generated in such occasions of private fallibility. This article explores what happens when a different kind of institution, a virtual world maker, attempts to colonize such disorder to govern legitimately.