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Arabica Robusta

The time of the nation: negotiating global modernity | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-negotiating-global-modernity

neoliberalism globalization corporate-led foucault postmodernism social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • This depoliticised nature of the contemporary, seen as the conceptual and experiential embodiment of globalised capitalism, consequently poses problems far more significant than the mere survival of the nation-state.
  • Undoubtedly, since the demise of the postmodern epoch in the popular and academic imagination, the acceleration of technological forces in commerce and communication - that have paved the way for increased capital accumulation, exchange and crisis - have only heightened what Foucault and Jameson gesture towards as a lived sensation of pure simultaneity.
  • In opposition to the crisis of the political generated by the false amalgamation of coeval living experiences, we might propose the concept of modernity; a concept that the nation-state might be perfectly situated to help elucidate. On this model, I would argue, modernity can be seen as linked to a increased self-consciousness of a secular conception of one's individual finitude (in the form of mortality but also one's personal and societal limits), and the collective negotiation of this issue via a democratic politics.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Undoubtedly some of the impotence of movements such as Occupy can be attributed to the same false utopianism of a borderless world of cyber-communities and multinational companies, whose liberating effects have been a far cry from lived reality.
  • However, the heterotopian potential of the nation-state is vividly problematised through the realisation that twentieth or twenty-first century globalisation, divorced and independent of the influence of varying nation-states, is in fact a fallacy.
  • The question then becomes: how to conceive of the self-determining impulse of modernity - here encapsulated in nationalism - in the form of a  socio-political body that would be capable of maintaining that impulse through preserving the logic of democracy, and foster the requisite representative power in opposition to the power of transnational capitalism?
  • Borders are no longer simply dotted lines between nation-states, but often manifest themselves as ‘spontaneous’ entities such as security and health check zones all over major social and transit spaces, particularly in Europe and the West.
  • But how to conceive of a democratic entity powerful enough to appropriate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of globalised borders, that would also be able to withstand, what Balibar outlines as "the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centres of power, which monopolise capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms"?
  • If this modern or modernist kernel is latent within the nation-state, then a significant reconfiguration is required since the language of nationhood and nationalism is certainly not one of contingent universality. Rather it is one of mythology: mythologies of ethnicity, of genealogy, of autochthony.
  • If we cannot do away with borders, then they must remain out of necessity. This necessity is discrimination. As Nairn rightly argues, "cultures...depend upon conflicts unsustainable without borders". Contrasts and distinctions are internal to any logic of identity, as Balibar similarly suggests; "the very representation of the border is the precondition for any definition". Once identity is philosophically understood as differential and not self-sufficient, globalisation raises a very modernist dilemma. How to make the very diversity (of choices, cultures, of the new) that modernisation and globalisation make possible, resist the paralysing repetitive logic of what Walter Benjamin terms the 'ever-same' (i.e. the temporality of the contemporary)?
  • The mythological language of nationalism asserts an enduring order, paradoxically so inasmuch as the precise origin or origins of any nationalist discourse remain a shrouded mystery. Myth, as structurally detached from historical or circumstantial origin, becomes a vehicle of interpretation and pathos, splitting into a potentially infinite number of manifestations in each 'national' subject (where each standardised narrative is appropriated as a personal one).
  • By arguing the case for global modernity in the form of the nation-state, however, one faces the immediate problem that modernity is almost unthinkable without capitalism (despite any such attempt to render modernity as a democratising force tied to a conception and experience of time).
  • Although the European tradition has established laws and institutions (including the nation-state) that remain significantly flawed, these still provide a democratic logic that guarantees the possibility of revision, of perfectibility, of the future. If the nation-state can embody a heterotopic space that permits identification through processes of willed negotiation and division, guaranteeing the possibility of the present to always be changed, then it might still serve as a tool for resistance.
tony curzon price

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Thou Shalt Find It Impossible to Live Like the Bible Te... - 0 views

www.alternet.org/68194

shared by tony curzon price on 18 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Thou Shalt Find It Impossible to Live Like the Bible Tells You to By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted November 17, 2007. Author A.J. Jacobs spent a year trying to follow the 600+ laws he found proscribed in the Bible, and concluded he's doomed to live in sin. Tools EMAIL PRINT 84 COMMENTS The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster, 2007) Share and save this post: Also in Rights and Liberties Indicted! Barry Bonds Is a Perfect Distraction from Real Events Dave Zirin Striking Nurses in W. Va are Met With Intimidation, Harassment and Car Fires! Richard Negri Hillary Auditions to Be a Feminist John Wayne Susan Faludi Democracy Belongs in the Workplace, Not Just in the Voting Booth Omar Freilla Gay? U.S. House Says That's Okay Deb Price More stories by Anneli Rufus Rights and Liberties RSS Feed Main AlterNet RSS Feed Get AlterNet in your mailbox!   Advertisement border-style: solid; border-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-width: 0pt 1px 1px; p
  • #1Thou Shalt Find It Impo >
Dripa B

Civil Disobedience | Henry David Thoreau (1849) - 0 views

en.wikisource.org/...Civil_Disobedience

democracy disobedience elections government

shared by Dripa B on 19 Jul 08 - Cached
  • "I am too high-born to be propertied, To be a secondary at control, Or useful serving-man and instrument To any sovereign state throughout the world." [William Shakespeare King John]
  • All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
  • Dripa B on 19 Jul 08
     
    This text is sometimes presented under the title On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Its original title is Resistance to Civil Government.
argh2xxx lala

U.S. Says It Can Kidnap British Citizens - 0 views

www.blogmyway.org/entry.php

british citizens kidnap us

shared by argh2xxx lala on 02 Dec 07 - Cached
  • I'm living in the United States and I'm loving this country, but I'm fearing that this country has going beyond arrogance.  Some US officials say the US has rights to kidnap British citizens.  Is this something sort of like the bounty hunters portraying in doses of action movies?  As long the U.S. acting like it is a master of the world and not a member of the world, it is encouraging other nations to be on guards and viewing the U.S. as their soon to be enemy.  The real story is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk.
tony curzon price

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - The centre-ground's shift to the left - 0 views

www.ft.com/...f7-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac.html

liberalism libertarianism

shared by tony curzon price on 28 Nov 07 - Cached
  • You can hear the change in what prominent would-be centrists are saying. In the 1990s, when neoliberalism was the centre, the line was: we must slash middle-class entitlements in order to be more competitive in the global free market. Now the line is: in order to save free-market globalism from populists preying on middle-class economic anxieties, we must expand the middle-class welfare state.The winners – at least for now – are welfare state liberals such as old-fashioned New Dealers in the US and their equivalents in other countries. The position of the original “third way” of 1932-68 always made sense. Middle-class social insurance programmes, by guaranteeing economic security, reduce the appeal of populism, socialism and other kinds of ­radical statism, and make possible broad political support for open and competitive national and global markets. You will hear much more of this line as politicians rush to occupy the new centre in the years ahead.
tony curzon price

Copyright in a Digital Age (Comm/IS 429, fall 2007) » Blog Archive » What is ... - 0 views

tarletongillespie.org/copyrightinadigitalage07

tcp

shared by tony curzon price on 13 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Wow. Tony, thanks so much for taking the time to comment on my post!! I didn’t say so in the original posy but wanted to comment on the stones it took to pen an article that flies so much in the face of “revolutionary orthodoxy”. I agree with you that the situation of the republished articles is different from a straight up barter in as much as a barter arraignment is usually (always?) entered consciously. What you described in “Scarcity” is more of an “accidental” value transaction and so more difficult to quantify.
tony curzon price

Nicolas Sarkozy's world | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...nicolas_sarkozy_world

climate-change

shared by tony curzon price on 11 Oct 07 - Cached
  • He has publicly fixed his own limits to the French-American alliance - by pushing for stronger measures against global warming
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 11 Oct 07
       
      global warming becomes the winner out of post-iraq diplomacy
  • Nicolas Sarkozy evidently wishes to avoid appearing as subservient to Washington as, for instance, Tony Blair was. #1He has publicly fixed his own limits to the > French-American alliance - by pushing for stronger measures against global warming >
tony curzon price

Multiculturalism's civic future: a response | openDemocracy - 0 views

opendemocracy.net/...multiculturalism_future

multiculturalism

shared by tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Nick Pearce objects to my joining those who deny the possibility of state neutrality in relation to culture and identity. He says that I thereby regrettably place myself outside the liberal egalitarian tradition, but then adds that "in reality few believe that the state can or should embody one version of the good life". So, it is unclear to me what the objection about neutrality is.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07
       
      Pearce want liberal "state neutrality to identity" - in other words, no preferences for this or that group based just on who they happen to be, where they come from historically or geographically or ethnically etc. Modood goes on to point out that Pearce says that "no one really believes that the state can embody one version of the good life", and Modood thinks this lets him off the first objection. I don't get the argument: a state could be set up to make some types of lives easier than others (eg secular consumerist versus religious) and yet not "embody one version"... of the good life. If there are 2 types of lives possible under a state, one slightly harder to pursue, does that mena the state "embodies the easier version?" And is the answer to this a function of the degree of cost?
  • Some critics of multiculturalism worry about "where it will all end", and so deny that multiculturalism is compatible with individual rights, with equality before the law, with civic belonging.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 22 Jun 07
       
      this seems to me to be the sort of argument: imagine a case where multiculturalism allows something _incompatible_ with individual rights - as in the clitoridectomy example. Then individual rights should trump "culural rights". Now imagine the alternative case where multiculturalism allows something that can co-exist with individual rights. Why is there anything now for the state to do? In other words, where does it ever bite? This must go back to the original question about the _neutrality_ of the state. Only if neutrality is impossible, then there is room for multiculturalism as an organising principle.
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