The "seed phrase" here is from a report on the AUT's rejection (for
the time being) of a boycott of Israeli universities, which claimed
that "all possible forces of reaction" had been mobilized against the
boycott (I wondered where those tanks were going).
There is no particular relationship between the poem and that event; I
was just amused by the hyperbole.
One can imagine Slavoj Zizek writing about the exorbitance of Bob
Geldof's exhortations to the general public to rally in their millions
in Edinburgh, bunking off school and work and sailing dinghies across
the channel to gather up their gallant Gallic brethren, to put
pressure on the members of G8 to live up to their promises for Africa.
Geldof himself has said that he wants to "tilt the world on its axis"
in favour of the poor. This looks like the kind of thing Zizek might
acclaim as an encouraging instance of real politics, which shows that
Geldof understands the exorbitant nature of political choice (the very
thing, according to Zizek, that the administrative systems of the
present dispensation depend on our not realizing we can exercise). Or
he might say that it looks like the real thing but isn't really, for
some reason to do with the superego and/or Alfred Hitchcock. You never
can tell with Lacanians.
The sub-title ("Press button...") is a well-known graffito of the
1980s, which could be found written on hot-air hand-dryers in public
lavatories.
Dominic
|