Not new to anyone here i'm sure, but this thread can't help bringing to mind Wendy Brown's ever more prescient work on this subject- especially chapter IV
http://www.tepotech.com/chiapas2015/Brown_Walled_States.pdf On 6 November 2017 at 15:44, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 11/06/2017 05:13 AM, David Garcia wrote: > > The success of the slogan ‘Take Back Control” is cruscial to understand it >> speaks to the profound loss of agency that so many of us feel and how for >> many the capacity to disrupt politics as usual gave Brexit voters a sense >> of power. >> > > This is spot on for the United States as well. Alas, in our country the > wording for a very similar sentiment was very different: "Build That Wall." > The many degrees of hatred condensed in such a statement have made it > almost impossible to have any conversations with core Trump voters, who > definitely want to hang on to their sense of empowerment. However, you can > have conversations with centrist people who simply never would have spoken > to strangers about politics before. Not just the Republicans, but also the > plutocracy, the corrupt Democratic establishment and sometimes even the > police and the military are critiqued in ways that were formerly taboo. > Universal health care and climate change mitigation are increasingly seen > by the Center Left as urgent needs. But it's tough to get to the three key > questions: How do we restore democratic equality? Who is the 'we'? And is > 'restore' the right word? > > The Right has presented us with the demand for system change. So doing, > they have responded to a deep and fully justified anxiety which the > Democrats - and to some extent, even the post-68 Left - could not voice. > But it's clear that Trump cannot produce the change, only its media-driven, > hate-drenched simulacrum. The real thing is so much harder to achieve. It > requires a political, economic, philosophical and even spiritual shift in > each of the people who would be its agents. You cannot get that from a > single leader or a single doctrine, much less a slogan. I can only speak > from my own narrow position in society, among academics, artists and > activists in a Midwestern city. Before we could successfully argue with > Republicans on a train, we would have to have much deeper conversations > among ourselves, while at the same time becoming much more sensitive to > worlds beyond our enclosing spheres. > > Brian > > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: > -- Ivan Knapp knapp.i...@gmail.com 07984620700
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