Dialogue and its Discontents
“The very notion of ‘dialogue’ is culturally specific and historically bound, and while one speaker may feel secure that a conversation is happening, another may be sure it is not. The power relations that condition and limit dialogic possibilities need first to be interrogated. Otherwise, the model of dialogue risks relapsing into a liberal model that assumes that speaking agents occupy equal positions of power and speak with the same presuppositions about what constitutes ‘agreement’ and ‘unity’ and indeed that those are the goals to be sought.”
-Judith Butler, 1990. (Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. Pg. 20)
Wherefore art thou, politics?
“The second set of problems is global: it appears as a systematic use of various forms of extreme violence and mass insecurity to prevent collective movements of emancipation that aim at transforming the structures of domination…I do not hesitate to speak of a politics of global preventive counterrevolution or counterinsurrection. But from another angle this ‘politics’ is really anti-political, because in a nihilistic way it leads to the suppression of the very conditions necessary to build a polity…the fields of politics and violence – a violence that seems to lack rational organization, not excepting self-destruction – are no longer separated. They have progressively permeated one another.”
-Etienne Balibar, 2004. (We, the People of Europe. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Pg 116-7 & 125)
Feel-good
“The technology presents itself as a feel-good solution for politicians who’d rather not face the more profound, persistent and difficult questions of politics and distribution…[T]he danger of such crops…is not merely that they are ineffective publicity stunts. They actively prevent the serious discussion of ways to tackle systematic poverty…
…The structural problems facing rural communities can only be addressed by concerted public action. The intervention of genetically modified seed, however, postpones the need for this action, delaying the imagination and creation of more robust alternatives”
-Raj Patel, on GM crops, 2007 (Stuffed & Starved. Brooklyn NY: Melville House. 2007. pg 137…157)
