Ray and I (Shashi) wanted to collaborate on a project so that we could continue thinking though some of the issues raised during Bruce Robbins' seminar at SCT.
I posted these thoughts, asked Ray to respond and our brief email dialogue are the substance of the above posts. Now, however, we want to invite our friends and colleagues to join this conversation and direct it accordingly.
1 comment:
Just a couple of quick thoughts about these very rich and difficult issues.
First, when I pointed out how people are being paid to be a sort of dissenter, I didn't actually mean at the time (though the point is worth making) that we shouldn't be complacent about the value of our dissent. What I meant was--and this is maybe a more uncomfortable thought for a lot of folks-- that the dissent may be real, and if so then we may have to modify our somewhat monochromatic view of the institutions that pay for it. The idea of institutions paying for dissent that whatever its content, would have to be described as genuine-- to me that's a necessary idea for anyone considering the limited but actual conflictuality that governs the relationships between different sites and sorts of power: the government, Wall Street, the university, the welfare bureaucracy, official multiculturalism, and so on. These are not identical or even, sometimes, compatible with each other.
Second, on fair trade, etc. I wouldn't want to see us all internalize our resistance to the global capitalist economy such that it got reduced to matters of private ethical (consumer) choice. There's a real threat of backlash if we do encourage people to feel personally responsible for matters (poverty, inequality, ecological damage) that have to be addressed collectively. Ok, I guess this is pretty obvious, but I had to say it.
I heard a CNN report the other day on what the US response should be to "unfair trade practices" in China. It was horrifying to me that there was absolutely no hesitation before the meaning of the term "unfair," no wondering about whose standards of fairness were meant, or whether China was doing anything the US hadn't already done (and might be continuing to do, perhaps by different means, to further its national interests). The new populism is likely to have lots of appeal on the left as well as the right, maybe even more so. So people on the left in the US are going to have to be both very vigilant and very creative.
"Buy foreign": now that's creative! It certainly gets my attention. What kind of response it's likely to get in general is an interesting question.
Bruce Robbins
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