[Reader-list] Radical politics and the knowledge question -invitation for dialogue

[Avinash Jha]

Invitation 

This is to invite you to a discussion on what constitutes emancipatory resistance to the New Empire. Is   radically opposing American wars in Afganistan and Iraq central to it? Will fundamental opposition to the policies of the WTO, and in the process standing with the peasants and workers of the world, open a radical path? Opposition to Empire at this juncture is being interpreted as opposition to America (of course not the people of America). The two world wide focuses of such opposition today are: one, Islamic militancy and two, the World Social Forum (WSF). Where as the Islamic opposition is centered in West Asia and mobilises Muslims all over the world, the WSF is polycentric and derives its leadership (and main strength) from the emerging left in many countries of Latin America. The gathering of people in hundreds of thousands in many cities across the world in solidarity against war in Iraq and opposition to WTO in Seattle, Cancun, Prague etc have found enough media coverage. These are largely guided by liberal and welfare thought. Add to these the innumerable local resistances all over the world against expansion of the multinational corporations and for control over natural resources by the local population. Many of these have a large place for Gandhi in their way of thinking. This perhaps broadly sums up the scene of resistances.
The resistances have all steered clear of both the reality and the language of Information and Communication technologies. There is no doubt that the American wars, the international trade under WTO and multinational corporation's grab of the natural resources constitute very real issues threatening life and subsistence on a world wide scale. But should radical politics not pay attention to the reality and discourse around 'knowledge' which is fast changing the themes, criteria and paradigm of all kinds of concerns and discourses, political, social, philosophical, scientific, all. Is it also not true that the key instrument which is making such exploitation of men , women and nature possible is the new Information and Communication Technology and the world of Internet? Is this instrument socially and politically neutral (in the ultimate analysis) or is it also a carrier of a new ideology of reorganisation of the world in which the majority shall again remain deprived, marginalised and oppressed? Is the radical politics taken in by the speed , manner and extent of the organisation of  knowledge? Is it left far too behind by the speed of the new Communication? Does it have no ideological wherewithal to confront the 'charm' of the new connectivity and  the virtual world? Is the sacrifice of countless numbers in the struggle for social justice and genuine rights destined ones again to produce a variant of the capitalist world? 
This call  for a dialogue in the Nairobi WSF is a call to address questions regarding radical politics in a world increasingly dominated by the Computer, the Mobile and the Internet. If we want to stand consistently against the trade practices of WTO, against the American wars and against the tightening claws of multinational corporations and if we wish to produce an image of a new and different world , then should we not be discussing the relation between knowledge and politics in this New Age, as it is shaping and as it ought to be in the human interest.
Join us in this dialogue for emancipatory search. 


Vidya Ashram, Sarnath, Varanasi
The Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi
Indigen Research Foundation, Pune

A longer document prepared for the workshop, which attempts to outline the background against which the question of radical politics and knowledge can possibly be discussed, can be found here

http://www.vidyaashram.org/kd2_nairobi.html

Please read and respond.



from:

Avinash Jha



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