Dear all,

For anyone who hasn't visited Paul Treanor's website, here's the nub of the
moral thinking on offer:

The gist of Paul's argument is that as geographers and world citizens, we
are asked by the powers that be to make a stark choice: 
1) We accept the Ethnic absolutism of countries at present not entirely
tamed by the West, or: 
2) We support their conquest by the West and the (associated)
implementation of the neo-liberal Third Way rammed down our throats by the
US, Blair, other Western powers and the corporations that seem to be ever
more succeeding in world dominance.  In essence, their is no 'third way' -
it's Nazism or Nike, take your pick.  

Paul's resistance to the second 'choice' on offer is rigid, to the point
where:

"...
     I would not accept a free market economy in Europe, in order to save
                   thousands of prisoners from starvation in Dachau. 
     I would not accept a free market economy in Europe, in order to
prevent                                                          mass
murders in Kosovo. 
     I would oppose the implementation of the neo-liberal Hombach/
          Blair/Schröder manifesto Europe: The Third Way/Die Neue
                            Mitte, even if that meant certain death for
Albanians in                    Kosovo.

     After all, I put no-one in a concentration camp. I shot no Albanians.
I      have fulfilled my moral responsibility to the victims, by not
joining the SS or Serbian paramilitary groups. I have no extra moral
obligation to vote for Tony Blair or Joschka Fischer, or support their
policies, or support the presence of US troops in Europe. If this planet
can only be neo-liberal or Nazi, then a morality of cynicism and
indifference is the best. When you see another mass grave on television,
ask yourself "By what logic does this oblige me to support the society in
which I live?

...."


I have to admit, it makes my brand of pragmatic idealism look.....well,
words fail me.  What I'm interested to know, and what I'd be interested in
hearing through comments on the list, is: 

1) Do geographers/social theorists/whatever consider (as Paul obviously
does) believe that a 'critical' project is fatally flawed if it cannot live
up to its idealist expectations?
2) If they do, are they no longer 'critical theorists' (as Paul argues)?
3) Is it 'okay' to be a pragmatic idealist, and hope to at least moderate
the conditions of the marginalised groups of societies while having to
accept that there won't be a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' (Marx) or
anything like?
4) Or should we be fighting all out, no compromise, for whatever deeply
seated beliefs we have (if we have them)?
5) Does anyone feel as disturbed by the comments in "" as I was - or is
this simply a signal of my 'fatal' western bourgeios identity?


And again: Paul, what is your alternative?


Just some thoughts.

Best wishes,

Graham
 






At 02:44 PM 1/24/00 +0100, you wrote:
>Graham Gardner wrote:
>
>> a diversity of epistemological, ontological and moral
>> viewpoints 
>
>For the ICGG list I recommended this comment by Nancy Fraser from Dissent
>magazine, Fall 1999 issue...
> 
>http://www.dissentmagazine.org/
>
>...to indicate what some people understand by 'radical' or 'critical' or
>'alternative' or 'left'.
>
>
>  "What remains far less comprehensible, however, and
>  therefore still bitterly disappointing, is the collapse of
>  the socialist project in the West. To be sure, that project
>  needed a thorough reformulation. It had long been clear
>  that socialism could only be conceived as a
>  radicalization, not a repudiation, of liberal democracy,
>  grounded on the priority of civil liberties, toleration,
>  and democratic forms of public culture. In addition,
>  socialism would have had to jettison longstanding habits
>  of class essentialism and economism so as to encompass
>  the breadth of postindustrial political life,
>  accommodating the full panoply of collective subjects
>  (not just "workers" but also women, gays and lesbians,
>  indigenous peoples, and ethnic, linguistic, and religious
>  minorities) and the rich plurality of political arenas (not
>  just labor but also ecology, sexuality, media, violence,
>  reproduction, multiculturalism). Finally, it would have
>  been necessary to overcome socialism's historic fixation
>  on the state, looking instead to non-state forms of
>  collective ownership and to the associative capacities of
>  civil society, while also responding to transnational
>  processes that are currently destabilizing the framework
>  of the nation-state."
>
>This is, in effect, the mainstream 'critical geography'. (The mail was in
>reply to comments by Donald Mitchell)
>
>The important points are...
>
>1. the 'radical / progressive / left' goal is seen as the perfection of
>liberal democracy, not opposition to it.
>

>
>3. the specification of the political concerns [...ecology, sexuality, media,
>violence, reproduction, multiculturalism]
>
>4. the preference for civil society as the political arena.
>
>
>If there is "a diversity of epistemological, ontological and moral
viewpoints"
>it is generally within these limits. 
>
>
>-- 
>Paul Treanor
>
>
>And here are the death camps...
>http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/inhalt/co/2997/1.html
>http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/post-kfor.html
>
>



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