[Reader-list] Post- ISF questions

[Amit Basu]

jeebesh,
  thanks for raising such crucial questions to ponder on. such kind of cultural hegemony of rights discourse would emerge in the golbalised model of the state was hinted by some. your refection from the isf is indeed timely and pushes me to think critically.
  amit

Jeebesh Bagchi <jeebesh at sarai.net> wrote:
  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
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