re: Hegemonies

Response to: http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/hegemonies

I'm really glad you posted this post because, having been a reader for a few weeks now, I think it really clarifies where I would agree and disagree with your position – and as luck would have it, it is precisely the sort of disagreement I have with just about everyone at the moment (on both/all sides of the argument), philosophically I mean.

Basically, as I understand it, you are arguing against the position (let us, for argument's sake call it 'postie-ism') that, allegedly, reduces everything to 'textuality' – that is, says that language is the be all and end all; language is the ‘really real’; all that materiality is just a product of discourse, of ideas. This is the typical critique of postie positions and it is one a great deal of their writings reinforce by, I would wholeheartedly agree, emanating from cultural studies and literature departments that would dearly love to see the whole world as one giant intertext and adopt the ‘sacred texts’ (/’sacred cows’) of postie-ism as writ (that is to say, unreflexively and uncritically). However, I believe that it is an over-simplistic and, if not 'incorrect', then certainly disagreeable characterisation.

I think a good place to explain what I mean is Derrida's most (mis)quoted phrase "il n'y a pas de hors-texte", usually translated into English as "there is nothing outside the text". From this sentence alone one would surely draw the conclusion that you have – that everything is to be reduced to textuality; that textuality is 'the really real'. However, my Francophone friends inform me that this is a bad translation that loses much of the sense of the original. The phrase is often translated, conversely, as "there is no outside-the-text". At first glance this may appear to say basically the same thing. I believe that this is a big mistake.

The clearest way I can articulate this point (in my own mind at least) is through William James. In his epic work 'Psychology' James describes a hypothetical baby's perception of the world as "one great blooming, buzzing confusion" – in other words, at that stage in a baby's physical and cultural development it cannot perceive anything of what is around it as we would understand it. It must be just flashes of colours and sounds and textures and abstract patterns with no way of assembling the stimuli into any kind of coherent 'reality'. Of course, we can never know how a baby 'sees' the world; it is pure speculation – but this is allowed in these parts, isn't it?...

Taking this as a thought experiment let us suppose (with every sci-fi series ever – see 'Dollhouse' for a good recent example) that one were to take a fully formed adult and wipe away all trace of enculturation and make them a tabula rasa (of course this is an impossible Cartesian manoeuvre, epigenetics alone shows biology and culture to be irreversibly interwoven, but lets just pretend). Would this person then not be like James's baby? Would ‘reality’ then not be "one great blooming, buzzing confusion"? Just textures and colours with no way of understanding it -- effectively no way of establishing a 'self' or a 'reality' at all? It is not that the external world no longer exists – I can still see this poor brain-washed person; I can still make out his form, his limbs, the colour of his hair, etc. – it is that, from this particular, ‘brain-washed’ subject position no knowledge of the world can ever be said to properly exist; ‘reality’ is thus only my ‘property’, not his. This is an extreme thought experiment but it, I believe, holds for less extreme examples too. To put it simply, language is always already ‘there’ (and, by consequence, ‘there’ is always already ‘here’).

All of which is a longwinded way of saying that we can know nothing of anything without enculturation. Of course this was probably never in doubt – who could deny this?

Further, then, it is my contention that the postie attitude towards language follows much this same formula – it is not that language is the totality; language simply cannot be dispensed with. My favourite way of putting this is that it is ‘necessary but insufficient’ (as is so much in life).

Of course this brings to the foreground the most important issue. The above discussion to which I am responding fails to say what 'language' is. Of course this seems like common sense. This is language. And so is this. And this. Yet where do we stop? Is body language language? Is emotion language? Is volition (in the psychological sense)?

It would be an extraordinarily 'thick' definition of language to include all of the above. And this is perhaps where I can pull the rabbit out of the hat and (finally) make my point: the 'text' in Derrida's aphorism is not meant to be taken literally, or at least not as literally as it almost universally has been (by both those faithful and hostile). To say that "there is no outside-the-text" does not mean, therefore, that there is nothing besides language (language defined in any sensible way). It means, I believe, something akin to James's baby: that we can never, ever subtract language from our experiences; that without language ‘reality’ is nothing and therefore language must always have an effect on our perceptions of, well, everything. That language is ‘necessary but insufficient’. Of course we need bodies and those bodies need food and water – this is a given; why would anyone doubt this? The question is whether any of this means anything – indeed, whether any of this can even be comprehended on even the most basic level -- without langauge (or, as it should be clear by now, I would prefer to say 'enculturation' as the 'thick' definition encompassing affect, volition, etc.) Therefore, whether or not objects possess ‘transigent’ and ‘intransigent’ qualities, language can never be legitimately bracketed or set to one side.

From this position, with language being an ever present necessity – the only means by which we can think and certainly the only means by which we can communicate our thoughts, however imperfectly – one must have recourse to transcendental reason to ascertain the ‘really real’. One must somehow pierce this shield of language to get to what is outside of it and then represent this in some clear manner. One must entertain the transcendent; that is, provide a spectacle to cite it, to bring it forth, to make present, in some form, this sublime experience.

In other words, language must possess some quality of Reason by which utterances may be objectively distinguished in terms of truth or [insert your value distinction here]. That’s a whole other story. I’m not going to bore anyone with that now, least of all myself.

A far more coherent and profound description of what I’m trying to say here is offered by Ernesto Laclau in conversation with Roy Bhaskar here:

http://politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/JCR/article/viewFile/3611/2272

Here Laclau shows why what I am calling postie-ism (he calls it discourse theory) is not idealist – it is explicitly opposed to idealism. I don’t think Bhaskar really ‘gets it’ but its an interesting exchange.

While I would agree that a great deal of the writings on this postie-ism betray a certain idealism implicitly, if not explicitly, this is because, those that do…well…aren’t very good.

If this is the version of postie-ism that you have left behind recently, Levi, I can see why you did so; its fairly empty of merit as a philosophy goes. Unfortunately I really don’t recognise it; at least not in the major texts. In the multitude of followers, yes, sadly, but this is not an indictment of the whole philosophy.

For what (little) its worth, I see Derrida, despite his status as the archetypical postie-ist poster-boy, as a thinker who does not deny things. He is best read in his deeply ethical, wholly political sense of maintaining the total contingency of discourse and everything else. Everything is ‘to come’. Everything is promised, nothing is wholly delivered and this is fine. All it means is that we can’t take anything for granted and we shouldn’t ever accept being told ‘that’s the way it is’ (Isn’t this the Socratic ideal? Isn’t this why those who teach philosophy teach philosophy?).

The world was no less ‘real’ the day after he published Of Grammatology. The sun was as warm, food tasted the same. He just demonstrated that it needn’t mean the same things all the time. I don’t even see him as that much of a skeptic. If one is to read his interviews he would say much the same (of course its impossible to know if at any moment he is being honest or contrary, but still, its there as a plausible interpretation).

Having said all of that (and golly-gosh, this comment has reached, dare I say it, Levi-esque proportions) I am completely dissatisfied with the prevailing postie-ist positions too. My own personal intellectual project(/hell) is to produce an historical methodology that is consistent theoretically, ethically and politically with deconstruction but notes that it is, in itself, insufficient (there is that phrase again ‘necessary but insufficient’). This is not new. Gayatri Spivak, for one, says that ‘deconstruction cannot found any political project’ (I’m paraphrasing) – deconstruction is therefore, on its own, politically insufficient. Judith Butler (paraphrasing again) says that ‘deconstruction is not a necessary part of any political project’ – it may, therefore, be excluded. It is insufficient and non-necessary; if it is part of a project it cannot exist alone and it need not be a part at all. What ‘idealist’ could maintain this position? Read Butler’s lectures on Spinoza (‘Giving an Account of Oneself’) to see why the idealist label simply doesn’t fit in any way towards (the more brilliantly argued) postie-ist writings; she argues against the opacity of self-knowledge, this refuting any charge of ‘idealism’ (an idealist must presume autonomy and authority over one’s self-perceptions, something which is alleged in Levi’s post above).

Anyhoo, I’ll stop writing now, for the main reason that in the post this morning, I received a fresh, new copy of Meillassoux’s ‘After Finitude’. Also there’s a good chance this will all seem regrettably ignorant to me one day. I hope, soon, to be able to comment on these issues from a position of only partial ignorance rather than total.

Until that halcyon day, a caveat must be added, for my own self-protection:

Of course, I could be wrong.

Untitled #02

There is a needle - a mile high needle.

Sharp and silver tipped - it rests upon a fine point and rises to a head upon which one may stand but not sit.

Symmetry balances precarity - it hangs upon the stillness of the slightest breeze. It stands in frozen time - awaiting history's touch.

Stand now atop your needle. And draw in a cold breath from your feet to your lungs.

Look down. And stay still.

Untitled #01

apple bloom pitch,
black water,
under crystal,
tree imported oak,
brass latched,
in the morning;
there is comfort now in
this corner.

'Rethinking Terms?' re: Drezner/Applebaum

Reply to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/24/the_costs_of_being_the_default_superpower

Of course this is all premised on the argument, with a logic so twisted it is surely only possible in IR theory, that the leader by leading is, all things considered, somehow disadvantaged and 'put upon'. The leader is the leader because of an overwhelming advantage, not the inverse. This is especially true in what (despite the pessimism displayed here) is still a resolutely unipolar state system (albeit fraying around the edges in the form of increasing regionalism, perhaps). The U.S. remains spectacularly advantaged in more or less every respect, despite its undoubtedly spectacular recent fall. In fact, isn't it indicative of the U.S.'s extreme advantage that it has fallen as far as it has and still remains so overwhelmingly dominant? The vaguely multilateral moves made by the current administration would hardly be considered multilateralist if conducted by any other country - only by the U.S.'s existing standards could they be judged so.

That the U.S. (seemingly) feels so put upon is interesting in itself - is it not logical that an actor that makes the world in its own image (such as the U.S. has undoubtedly done to a large extent), after a time, will become blind to the extent to which that world has become similar to it (because, like one's own accent, one always takes for granted what is most familiar) and see only the differences, which in this context happens to be the disadvantages of its empowered leadership. Not every aspect of the world-made-in-it's-image will benefit the U.S. - perhaps, for instance, if the global financial system had been a little less to the U.S.'s liking previously then the financial crisis would not have been so severe - but a world-made-in-it's-image is surely preferable to the alternative - try asking people from any other country.

Of course, another way of looking at this would be to say 'leadership? what leadership?' - it can only be in a very narrow, realpolitik sense that one can say that the U.S. has provided international leadership in any positive sense recently. Witness the failures in Copenhagen, how little the U.S. position vis-à-vis climate change has actually moved - in fact, how little the U.S. position has actually changed on a whole swathe of issues.

Now, this should not suggest that I am dismissing the negatives of leadership out of hand. Clearly free-riding and such are problems for the actor concerned; however, I would strongly suggest that the negatives are vastly over-represented in public discourse and indeed in American IR theory generally.

The practical consequence of this thought would be that to move 'back' to unilateralism, as has been suggested, grossly underestimates the extent to which the U.S. remains the predominant power and, consequently, grossly overestimates the extent to which the U.S. has moved towards multilateralism at all. The choice, therefore, is not so much between uni- and multi-lateral politics as between (a:) a productive unilateral hegemony that is willing to - in part and with limitations - negotiate with lesser powers and make limited compromises for the common good and (b:) an unproductive unilateral hegemony that rules by diktat and consequently fails to reach agreements on the important issues of the day. Perhaps I am taking the distinction between uni- and multi-lateral a little too far, but I think the point stands. Multilateralism certainly implies an actor existing on at least a similar plane of existence other actors with regard to negotiating power.

The U.S., judged by the standards of any other state, remains overwhelmingly powerful. Personally, as a non-U.S. citizen, I welcome this and look forward to more of it. The usual reaction to such an attitude ('oh p**s off and live in China then') aside, I would welcome any further moves to multilateralism. I simply doubt whether the U.S.'s decline is such that this will become a possibility any time soon.

re: Trends in the civilian costs of war

Response to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/18/trends_in_the_civilian_costs_of_war

Regardless of the accuracy of the data, is this argument surprising? I'm surprised that you find it surprising! Okay, so we were told that all those 'smart bombs' would only kill 'bad guys' and news shows became trade shows for cross-haired destruction from above. Hands up all those who swallowed all that craptastic propaganda...

The most important question is also neglected: what separates collateral damage and war crimes? Eye of the beholder? Dresden: war crime or collateral damage? How about the bombing of Baghdad? At what point do unintended deaths caused by negligence or simply not caring about civilian life become a war crime?

re: Is the world ending more often now?

Response to: http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/13/is_the_world_ending_more_often_now

I think it was Slavoj Žižek in one of his films about films who asked: 'why is it so much easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism?' (or words to that effect). It is our narcissism that leads us to always believe that we are at the center of history and hence the that ultimate, unbeatable world changing event - the apocalypse - is happening in our time. There is a certain 'jouissance' (as Žižek would put it) in this, I suspect - a kind of perverse pleasure we take in imagining our own destruction because at least it provides a narrative to what is otherwise incomprehensible (the future). We always feel like we're on the verge of something epochal - it gives meaning to our lives; it attaches us to something larger than ourselves to something 'oceanic' (something incomprehensibly, awe inspiringly vast) to use another word from psychoanalysis. Of course we might be on the verge of this. Europe was in this position in 1989 but didn't know it yet. Although capitalism looks to have survived its shock, for the most part, we still remain incapable of imagining its end. Could the proliferation of disaster movies (and okay, yes, they're always a popular genre) correlate to this? In times of uncertainty when, despite every possible indication and opportunity, we remain incapable of thinking beyond the present and the immediate past in terms of the logic that governs every aspect of our lives we might find in the spectacular (in every sense of that word), cataclysmic yet reassuringly fictional destruction of all that is somehow a comfort. It provides a glimpse of change when such seems implausible.

Response to Nick Srnicek and Paul John Ennis

Response to: http://anotherheideggerblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/politics-and-ontology.html

and: http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-neutering-of-politics-a-response-to-some-friendly-critics/

Ontology can only be evacuated of politics if one takes a rather cripplingly 'thin' idea of what politics is. My common sensical reaction to Nick's claim is precisely the opposite and I can't understand how people don't see this as being obvious: politics and ontology are subject to what I call 'insufficient necessity' - i.e. each are inseparable from the other but do not dominate each other; neither can be reduced to either one nor to some large whole.

Simply put: politics cannot be removed from ontology because ontology (especially under the guise of realism, however 'speculative') restricts political possibility. Ontology does not determine politics - Heidegger's ontology can be appropriated by left or right, same for OOO - but that does not mean it escapes politics because indeterminacy does not mean non-interference. That an ontology does not determine whatever politics may be affixed to it does not mean that it does not preclude many (or even most) political possibilities, nor that it doesn't preference some political possibilities over others. Could the politics of medieval feudalism be integrated with a modern ontology that conceives of the world as an indentifiable whole (i.e. Heidegger's "world picture") rather than a diffusive continuum at the centre of which lies whatever inchoate European nation one prefers and extending out from which the world becomes ever more strange, alien and backward. Indeed, in these times, time and space were directly linked in that to move away from the centre of civilization was nothing less than to move back in time (just like in Apocalypse Now, when they go further back in time the further they travel up the river). The advanced nations resided at the centre of the universe and at the centre of the advance of time. Could this ontology integrate any kind of politics? Of course not. Neither can OOO or any of its siblings.

If one speaks of ontology as a theory, therefore, it cannot possibly exclude politics absolutely.

If one speaks of ontology as what really and actually exists independent of observation and regardless of subjectivity then, quite simply, time will prove you wrong. This is as certain as death and taxes. One day this sort of philosophy will seem as quaint and antiquated as those feudalists believing that there existed in Russia men with the heads of dogs.

To me THIS is common sense.

In response to Nick's amendments to his argument: yes, by definition 'realism' assumes a reality existing independently of human observation. What then does the 'speculative' part mean? If one must 'speculate' rather than simply speak the real then the problem of subjectivity is acknowledged and even embraced. I suggest speculative realists who take issue with this drop the 'speculative' fig-leaf and just say whats on their mind: that they believe it is possible (if not actual in their arguments hitherto) to capture reality in theory in such a way that is devoid of all subjective influence. If they were to do this their position would be exposed as unrepentant modernism.

Actually, when you put it this way, isn't 'speculative realism' an oxymoron?

U.S. Public Diplomacy & Barack Obama: Change or Continuity?

I've decided to publish some of my essays from the past year on this blog. Out of eight I've written, there are four that aren't too crap to share with whoever mistakenly stumbles across them. This post contains my dissertation. It may be of interest to students of public diplomacy, or international relations theory.

You can view the documents on Scribd by clicking in the top right hand corner to load the file in full-screen mode, or the files are available to download as PDFs.

U.S. Public Diplomacy & Barack Obama: Change or Continuity?

How and to what extent do representations of differentiated aesthetic experiences problematise and decentre ‘reality’ in Battlestar Galactica?

How and to what extent do representations of differentiated aesthetic experiences problematise and decentre...

rity for successful peacebuilding? What role should security sector reform play in this context?

How important is the provision of security for successful peacebuilding? What role should security sector ...

Can pragmatism provide a way forward in understanding social knowledge today?

Can pragmatism provide a way forward in understanding social knowledge today?

From democracy to development.

http://www.e-ir.info/?p=2000

The U.S. has historically promoted democracy with a missionary’s zeal (hardly coincidentally), but this has never once been divorced from the promotion of American business, ‘free’ markets and, from the twentieth-century onwards at least, capitalism and globalisation. Obama is 100% committed to all these agendas. He is just toning down the fanaticism - he’s already the messiah, he doesn’t need to be a very naughty boy.

Can ‘one man’ change the world? No. Don’t buy the Republican’s rhetoric. He’s not a socialist. By international standards he’s barely a liberal. He is wholly and completely in the employ of American exceptionalism and its capitalist entourage - not in a conspiratorial way … but not in a good way.

'The dangers of identity diplomacy...'

http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/04/the_dangers_of_identity_diplomacy

How many 'out' atheists are there in public office in the US? Last time I checked there weren't any whatsoever in Congress.

The notion of any separation of church and state in a country as devoutly religious and intolerant to non-belief as the US is absurd, I'm afraid.

Obama's rhetoric is just as religion-infused as Bush's was. I can't remember a speech by a US President that didn't end with 'God Bless America', or words to that effect, can you?

Like it or not (and I tend not to like it) religion is a way of life, not a lifestyle choice that can be packed away into the background, separated from public life. This is a liberal fantasy peculiar to the US. It certainly has little purchase in the Middle East and falls apart under inspection in the US case too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as un-believingly secular as they come but I'm afraid the 'secular state' is a fantasy. There has never been such a thing, so why are we surprised that this is how politics is framed above and beyond the state level?

Framing the whole east-west 'clash' in religious terms also facilitates the illusion that these are simply two alienated sides of one united humanistic coin that must be mediated and reconciled. This trope of 'misunderstanding' deliberately ignores the sorts of issues that speeches can't so easily gloss over like massive socio-economic inequality and decades of imperial-style interference at every level of political life.

'Questioning the Difference between Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy'

http://mountainrunner.us/2009/06/pa_pd.html

Most fundamentally, I think, including the word 'diplomacy' implies a certain semblance of legitimacy.

The EU and NATO use the term 'public diplomacy' to refer to their communications with publics of member states and (in NATO's case) publics in whose countries they are engaged in operations. This is because talking of 'diplomacy' rather than 'affairs' implies that they are legitimate international actors, on a similar level to states.

Within the United States' political discourse 'diplomacy' is usually referred to as being in opposition to militarism thus it is generally seen as the peaceful, liberal option. Talking of public 'diplomacy' then also invokes this implication. Any historian of diplomacy will tell you how weird this interpretation is (one neat aphorism among many on diplomacy is that it is the art of 'saying good doggie until you can find a rock') but that's how its generally talked about nevertheless.

In short, public diplomacy is a phrase used when people want to legitimise and give a liberal sheen to their practices - public affairs is when they don't feel the need to do that so much.

Ultimately PD is whatever anyone says it is. Its most widely held definition is that spoken by the loudest voice - simple as that.

Or as Nietzsche said, "only that which has no history is definable"

G20 protest police brutality - the ongoing fallout

Where did this idea of a 'protester' come from? Perhaps it should now be written as 'Protester'. When did a person protesting become this definite category with separate legal identity and restricted rights? A person communicating with other people in a public place - it all seemed so innocent.

When the death of a man is defended on the basis that it is difficult to tell who is a Protestor and who isn't we know that a separate category of person has taken shape, a category that is 'kettled' not just within the streets of (the City of) London but in the eyes, fists and truncheons of power. The message is that you are welcome to become a Protestor as long as you don't become a protestor. Be quiet, well behaved and content with standing in a confined space for an indefinite amount of time and say thankyou for the privilege. Shout too much and you'll be slapped with the back of an armoured hand, swatted as if you were a fly. Dead eyed politicians and sweat beaded police chiefs will spout platitudes and promise to 'get to the bottom of things' but the bottom is never in sight - their rhetoric is in so many ways bottomless. They are seeking to discover how one of their children could have swatted the wrong sort of fly - they want to know how their all seeing eyes could have mistaken one face amongst the masses for evil when it was never a Protestor at all. Their investigation may ask why this particular gnarled lump of fluorescence, kevlar and hostility did what they did, why they beat a guy in the wrong way (a failure of technique, surely). They will wonder how a passer-by could be mistaken for a Protestor and think up ways for such a thing to not happen again.

For all the media's mediation no significant heads will fall; the heads aren't even where this beast lives - it lives in The Law.

Protest cannot be in contradiction to the law. Protest is an act which forms the very basis upon which the rule (in both senses of that word - as in edict and as in government) of law can exist. The rule of law in a democracy is not the police, the parliament or the judiciary. It is the will of the people to accept that which is done in their name (and by the names that they are given). The people cannot be outside the law; sometimes The Law is outside the law. Only once the right is given up can the institutions that lay claim to the law truly own it.

Now, it is a mistake to equate mass protests with 'the people' yet protesters are only individuated by police surveillance. In their capacity as protester they are faceless (sometimes literally) and their treatment reflects this. A protestor is The People in the singular and should be treated as such. The police take this facelessness as a threat to be normalised, be it through force or the threat of force (and as we have seen there is very little differential, spatial or temporal gap between these two things in the milieu of contemporary protests - one can turn to the other and back again in a moment).

The facelessness of a protester is taken to be an admission of their threat, their danger when it should be recognised to be the opposite; their facelessness makes them The People, only in the singular.

Ha.

Pretentious? I prefer 'grandiloquent'.

Jonathan Jones' unintelligent art.

Jonathan Jones' unintelligent art.

There is no such thing as a purely aesthetic anything. If a work of art is apparently a-political that is political in and of itself. A space apparently 'outside' politics only serves to reinforce the 'inside' of politics. You can't have right without wrong, or left without right or hot without cold; you can't have one without the other and as such nothing ever escapes it - not even art.

All art is political because attributing artistry to a thing (be it a pile of bricks, a shed that used to be a boat or a piece of stencil graffiti) suggests that this thing is worth the time, effort and (perhaps most importantly) money that it takes to constitute that thing - these are political considerations.

To place the artwork in a timeless, spaceless space outside such base, coarse things as society and politics is to exempt art from the same moral and practical ties as everything else. It is to exempt the exclusivist, elitist pastime of high art from social critique, thereby erasing its exclusivity and elitism and fixing the artwork as a thing important beyond the social meaning that people attribute it.

The debate over what 'is' art and what 'isn't' is therefore a statement of political power. It is an attempt to prefer one form of human expression above others not only in terms of quality but of type, of kind.

The relatively simplistic pleasures of a Banksy piece are then excluded from the art club. Such obviousness has no place within the frankly stultifying orthodoxies of high art society.

I suggest, therefore, that we should celebrate Banksy's ineligibility for the Turner prize. It is not a reflection upon Banksy's artistic credibility or indeed his quality. It merely suggests the roles his work performs and the roles it doesn't.

Banksy lightens up otherwise dull parts of urbanity. He brings a smile to passing city dwellers and tourists. He makes otherwise empty social spaces meaningful. He creates space for humour and social commentary where there was before only pollution and concrete.

The kind of 'intelligent' art celebrated by the Turner prize however attempts to situate itself far outside of space, far outside of politics and far outside of humour, pollution and urban decay. It therefore creates a space wherein middle class urbanites can experience a highly restricted, sanitised aesthetic that erases dirt, politics, social meaning, class, etc. This is rather like the desire for such people to live in walled communities ('because you can't put a price on security'), to never take public transport ('because its just so dirty, yuck, and the people!'), to send their kids to public schools ('because those inner city youths just would just ruin poor little Tarquin'), etc.

Jonathan, in not nominating Banksy you have paid him the highest possible compliment. I will take dirty, obvious and political over sanitised, meaningless and vacuous any day. Frankly, the lack of intelligence shown in high art and your defence of it just goes to show that if you've got nothing to say, say it's art.

Saying is nothing without listening

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/03/24/the_dumbing_down_of_americas_economic_and_foreign_policy_elites#comment-68985

John, if 'reputable', mainstream folks had been shouting from the rooftops vis-à-vis the imminent economic crisis and the disaster of Iraq/Afghanistan who would have listened?

On Iraq/Afghanistan MOST people with half an ounce of sense realised that it would be an utter disaster. The question is why the foreign policy elites were so completely removed from the overwhelming civil society, academic and public opinion.

On the economic crisis, who would have listened when things were still going well? Who would it have benefited to hear that sort of thing? They would have been written off as naysayers, pessimists. And there is nothing American political culture detests more than a pessimist. Its all about hard work, 'can do attitude', motherhood and apple pie ain't it?

The fundamental misunderstanding here seems to be that democratic political culture is attuned to intelligent, rational, objective and longsighted thought. Politicians (and the advisers that say yes to them were in no position to think, say or do anything contrary to the pathological positivity that accompanies a democracy when things are going alright.

On Iraq/Afghanistan i'd say the problem was ultimately a corrupt and out of touch elite that believed its own hype about American hyper-supremacy.

On the economic crisis i'd say the problem was ultimately a corrupt and out of touch elite that couldn't possibly do anything about it anyway. Anyone who spoke up would've been shot down by the logic of the short-termist political culture.

Driverless locomotive metaphors abound.

Its shocking to realise that the most powerful individuals and organisations in the world were by no means even remotely in control of the economy but until something went severely wrong (i.e. for rich/middle class rather than poor people who've been getting screwed for years) nobody COULD do anything about it.

A well worn cliché

http://mountainrunner.us/2009/02/guest_post_public_diplomacy_from_a_surprising_quarter.html

One man's 'well worn cliché' is another man's 'much ignored truism'. Clearly the invocation to "stop lecturing the world on what to do" is one sided and ideological (although what isn't?...) but it isn't far removed from the criticism of the blunt-edged 'marketing approach' of PD often made by large parts of the American PD community. The same community, incidentally, that mentions often the need to 'talk less and listen more' (or words to that effect). Well, what happens when you listen to something you don't like? One calls it tired and passé (a well worn cliché), of course, so as not to take it seriously.

That is the difference between 'listening' and 'hearing'. That is what the contemporary PD discourse is missing, from my point of view.

The PD Discourse Gap

The PD Discourse Gap

Are policy makers capable of overcoming the cognitive dissonance they would experience if they learned Arabic, read some newspapers and spoke to some ordinary Arab people and realised that they're actually intelligent, rational people who mostly dislike US policies rather than US people?

That has got to be quite a shock to the system.

The whole strategic communication system (and more importantly the whole US foreign policy system) is set up on the assumption that they 'just don't get us'. This to-know-us-is-to-love-us thesis allows for the continued belief in both the universality of western ideals and the importance of those ideals to the east/west conflict.

(For the most part) they don't hate our 'freedom', they hate our policies.

Isn't that just the answer nobody wants to hear from a practitioner's perspective? How can you go to your boss and say 'hey, actually we need to stop screwing people around, go and tell Hillary'. It just won't fly very far.

How can anyone genuinely 'listen' (i.e. listen, hear and act) without 'going native'?