Saturday, December 01, 2007
(7:09 PM) | Amish Lovelock:
Pragmatic Retreat
Something kind of shocks me and has happened on a number of occasions during the last few years or so. It usually involves people subscribing to the most radical intellectual resources of the last century only in order to come to the most conservative of conclusions. Like people talking about the politics translating Benjamin's "Zur Kritik der Gewalt," in order to make an argument in favor of redeeming parliamentary democracy (Ishinokawa Yasutaka). Or, someone creating a solid theory of the contemporary state drawing heavily from Deleuze, only to then argue for the strategic use of national belonging and/or citizenship as a principle for ensuring cross-the-board, "universal" welfare provisions at the same time as knowing full well that such a principle is heavily bound to the particular - especially in an age in which the number of migrant laborers is on the rise again here (Kayano Toshihito). Or, the case of a historian who has produced a series of three massive volumes on subjects that range from the postwar creation of the myth of national homogeneity, the colonial genealogy of "the Japanese," and the interplay between postwar patriotism and democracy - only to reject anticolonial critiques of the postwar intellectual establishment because these critiques simply "didn't enter the range of vision" of those who were on the brunt of them (Oguma Eiji).It's almost as if the best minds of the generation just before mine feel an instinctive urge not to take the radical position. To step back in pragmatic retreat in conclusion.
