[Reader-list] Post- ISF questions

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Dear All,

Walked around ISF (9th - 13th Nov, Delhi) for some time and it was  
amazing how deep the "Rights" based language has seeped into the  
social body and imagination. If you take away that word, there will  
be nothing left to hold on to. The "masters" thunder facts of  
displacement and terrors by "LPG" (liberalization, privatization,  
globalization), rhetorically induce powerlessness and guilt and then  
move towards a carving of a "rights" based petitioning. The ghost in  
the ISF machine was the State, its social welfare mystique and its  
robin hood mythologies!!

 From the conceptual debris of the last century, this one word has  
gathered many adherents. There was no "issue" that was not under this  
"rights" scanner. Am totally foxed - how this pervasive spread of  
this discourse? Why is it such a popular discourse? The abstraction  
that a "rights" based discourse would produce will land up erasing so  
much of the diversity that all these groups are claiming to be  
representing. Or is this the only form by which "leaders" can talk to  
each other? Or is this the beginning of new govermentality, that  
incorporates everyone as a "implementor" of emerging state policies  
and designs over space, labour, and resource...

Maybe it is just that the present production of speed and terror of  
capitalist accumulation has everyone bewildered and only a naive  
recourse to State seems a way to hold on to some ground. Rest all  
looks lost, long and evaporating.

So comrades the task of critical and creative thinking is going to be  
fun!!

best
jeebesh