After Identity, Politics: The Return of Universalism
2000; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/nlh.2000.0047
ISSN1080-661X
Autores Tópico(s)Latin American and Latino Studies
ResumoThe Five Days That Shook the World in Seattle not only made mainstream media outlets for once withdraw their obituaries for the left but produced reflections in such places as The New Yorker on the return of anarchism to American politics. I write with the din of the August 2000 Democratic National Convention in my ears, where TV commentators now pin the appellation "anarchist" on protesters who don't fit the crafty profiles they normally reserve for people apparently unhappy with the teeth-gritting harmony of North American life. Obviously the latest way to traduce a left seemingly exhausted by its own identitarian navel-gazing and now (re-)awakening to the possibilities of wrecking shit, "anarchism," though shorn of its noble history in such usage, serves a rather terrific role in the present conjuncture. First, media people have to say the word, let it charge around their mouths; plus, since they use it as pretty much a synonym for anarchy as Matthew Arnold meant it, they and their audiences are thus required to imagine the unimaginable, that is, that the natural, the necessary smooth operations of daily life could conceivably just go all to hell; and finally, for those (even Democrats) who fancy they wouldn't mind seeing a thing or two shaken up a little, "anarchism" is a reminder to all that once the ball gets rolling you can never tell what might happen. 2
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