The cliché represents an insoluble problem for language and art in modernity. Technology, cities and forms of signification all entail a radical increase in the volume and density of discourse. This produces both a standardisation of discourse and a revulsion from this standardisation. A new type of tension develops between the standard and the rare or the original – a different tension from that between the copy and the original. The first term of the lecture course gives attention to the notion of cliché, whether in language or the arts, architecture and design, and its role in politics and administration. The question of the cliché even extends to people’s lives when they are considered to be living clichés, a new type of zombie.