Dear Fred, Ian and all others anonymous
Is this a forum for 'ordinary people who want to think through the
politics of globalisation'or one for a war of the words? What may have
started off as the former has certainly deteriorated into the latter
and ("curiously" enough) is one reason why I had not participated
sofar,and not because I am female and a more appealing object to
'click-on',as Fred would have it (is this your male gaze raising its
ugly head? Please forgive me if I have misunderstood you, but you
mention it in the same breath/sentence:
"Surely we need an updated list of subscribers with
photographs attached so that even if we cannot see
faces of our conversant as we type our piece we can
conjure up an image of an 'Ian', a 'Fred' et al -
curiously as yet we have had no female contributors.")
These remarks are not intended to pick a fight (the gendered
nature of language and ideas is just one more obstacle to be
overcome).
May I instead make a few comments in the hope of re-kindling the
discussion. I'd particularly like to pick up on one of Fred's points,
where you say that "we have lost control - if ever we fully had
it - of ideas that shape our social world".
Could you elaborate on this? Who do you mean by 'we'? Who/or what
is in control and doing the shaping in stead? Where does this leave
the possibility of agency? Are you implying the 'juggernautean'
vision which Giddens relates to globalisation?
Ian, I like the notion of 'historical blindness'and think that in some
sense it is only posterity that has the privilege of glancing back in
time and revealing the blind spots. However, I also think
there is a certain danger of universalisation in this idea and a
separation of theory and practice (forgive me if I am misreading
you). Again I ask the question of agency: are 'we' all suffering from
this blindness? Are we all incabable of a reflexive understanding of
the present? Are we all being duped by the rhetoric surrounding
globalisation? If so, who/what is doing the duping? If this does not
entail a separation of object/subject or theory/practice, does this
mean that theory and theorising is also suspended?
Just some thoughts...
Yours,
Lucy
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