Paul,
Thanks for your last posting - some heart-felt but constructively put
comments.
To engage with one of them:
>As a *minimum* a critical geography should reject democracy, human rights,
>political rights, free speech, political freedom, and academic freedom. These
>are not sacred truths, they all come straight from the NATO Press Office.
This
>is how Madeleine Albright thinks. If you can't even break with that, give it
>up. Or call yourself a liberal-democrat, like you are, and stop using labels
>like Left or Critical.
Quite right - not sacred truths - but discourses. A potentially dangerous
admission for anyone who wishes to facilitate the voices/struggles of the
underprivileged. Some might take a strategic essentialist position and say
that such "universal doctrines" can be tactically utilized for good in a
world where many still believe (or publicly state that they still believe -
see Albright above) in such foundational principles.
Second, the NATO Press Office may indeed use terms like democracy, human
rights,
free speech etc - but it doesn't own them. These discourses are polyvalent
and can be attached to variety of actions eg bombing Serbia, justifying the
publication of opposition newspapers in Zimbabwe, opposing state murder in
Communist China and perhaps might even appear in some guise to prevent an
Anarchist utopia from descending into a Hobesian state of nature .
Thus - given the unstable nature of these discourses - but their stability
as currency on the international stage - there is presumably much strategic
work that critical geographers and others can do to reproduce and redefine
these discourses in new ways that produce recognizable benefits in practice?
Keep the constructive critique coming Paul.
Cheers - Mike
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