<nettime> The Californian Reality (from: New Geography)

[allan siegel <allan@allansiegel.info>]

Hello,

Two points here from Brian worth extending a bit further in this discussion because they seem to me critical if we are ever going to move beyond the social, governmental and corporate paradigms assembled by what he calls the "full-fledged transnational capitalist class.” And it is a class with all the apparatuses to insure a constantly ascendent self-interested position within the various forms of political turbulence an social unrest circling the globe. In the U.S. this class has mastered the art of what Marcuse called “repressive sublimation.” What this boils down to an internalising the kind of false consciousness thats says ‘we can’t enable REAL change because hope is just around the corner; a better day is coming. Vote for Obama’ Which is why a change is never gonna come, ain’t gonna happen until "certain realities are squarely faced, not just by fringe figures like ourselves but by much broader swathes of society."

Amazingly, 50 years after the political movements of the 60s, in the U.S., little has changed in terms of the structural dynamics that shape political discourse. So much of what was said back then, prescient and profound, has not been transferred organizationally. It’s taught in universities but is invariably diluted as it makes it way of the institutional media ladder. So we find ourselves in the position where, unfortunately, there is very solid line of ideological continuity from the days of McCarthyism to the right-wing rants of the Tea Party; the Koch Bros. et al fund right-wing-structures and organisations that do more than just snipe from the side lines. 

America’s great public intellectuals (and there are many) are marginalised and left to preach to the choir and so it is difficult to connect the discursive dots with a praxis that powerfully challenges the dominant political hierarchies. Such a connection would foster a diversity of public spheres in which, as Brian posits, "Societies are articulated by the relation between knowledge and practice.”

good night
allan


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