Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Beep Beep - Egypt!


Great article on the way the idea of revolution has become mythologized as a peculiarly Eurocentric piece of rhetoric. Facebook, social media and the like have danced at the corners of this event - waving their victory flags (and all the more in the RELATIVE non-violence of this uprising). It worries me that revolution might already be just another commodified entity in an ever cheapening rhetorical sociological frame work.
"If the mythology of revolution indicates a pure state of popular will, the mysticism of the state—its modern political theology—reposes on a redundancy: a mysterious ritual of self-establishment that literally allows it to float in the air without the need to look down; it does not need awareness since it is itself, in Hegelian parlance, the peak of consciousness, spirit incarnate. Every state, by definition, walks on the edge of—and indeed across—a precipice: not just by demanding that millions of citizens comply with the law by imposing just a modicum of violence in routine times but also, as more people in the world are now becoming aware, by piling up hundreds of billions of “sovereign” debt for decades without anybody really worrying about it."


See entire article here:The elusive subject of revolution « The Immanent Frame

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