<nettime> Our revels now are ended

[David Garcia <d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk>]

Our Revels Now are Ended.. Or at least they bloody should be!
(Or I blame Shakespeare)

Yesterday I heard four journos on the radio discussing the unfolding 
Brexit nightmare (I nearly said ‘drama') in the wake of the 
resignation of a junior minister whose departure would have caused no 
more than a ripple were it not for the fact that his brother is the Killer 
Clown of Brexit Boris Johnson.

Towards the end of the discussion the radio host invited the commentators 
to throw some light of the big debate on the ‘final deal’ that May
might (or might not) bring back to Parliament in the coming weeks. 
It was framed as the moment of great "parliamentary theatre”. And
you could practically feel the journos salivating at the ("marvelous darling")
drama of it all. As though the curtain will come down and the provincial
troop of poor character actors (oh we English love a ‘character’) come
on for their final bow. The audience will applaud their favorites, the lights
will come up. And we (the audience/public/citizens) will troop out
into the gathering gloom of a chilly winter evening and a long journey home
(oh yes the trains will have been cancelled again). 

After a two year long performance we will wake up to a reality that unlike 
actual theatre we will have irrevocably changed the world outside..Unless 
that is someone (who people listen to) rushes in and shouts “fire”..This
is not an exercise!

Brexit negotiator Sabine Weyan described the English negotiators as indulging
in ”magical thinking” and yes that is our national talent and our burden. In the last
speech of Shapspear’s last play the magician Prospero has the good sense renounce 
magic. He declares that “These our actors as I foretold you, were all spirits And are melted 
into thin air:” (like Cameron among others) 
He then talks of the great globe itself also dissolving “like this insubstantial
pageant”.. And many believe that he was eliding the Globe Theatre with 
the globe of the world. But Shakepear had the sense to recognise that he/Prospero had to 
set magic aside.. And if we don’t we to will learn the hard lesson that politics may have an 
aspect of theatre but it is NOT theatre .And that politicians may enjoy the brief applause of 
the ‘audience’ but be left to face the longer term anger of the “citizens” they sacrificed to 
their vanity and delusion.

David Garcia   

#  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: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: