by
multiple authors
View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
IPPR Progressive Review 25(2)
IPPR Progressive Review 25(2)
by
multiple authors
by
multiple authors
IPPR Progressive Review 25(2)
by
multiple authors
by
multiple authors
There is a difference between authority in the structure of political movements, and authority in the wider society. Symbolic prefiguring does have its place, but left movements' internal eschewal of hierarchy, the transferal of attention away from social inequality and onto organisational forms themselves, removes their ability both to critique the predicament we are in as a society and strategically to organise to do anything about it. I believe that we need to assess what it is about those traditional qualities of structure and hierarchy - both in the movement, and in politics and society - that is valuable and that we'd like to retain.
We need to separate authority from privilege, and work out ways to ensure that authority is constituted by experience, knowledge and expertise, and underpinned by democratic validation. [...] recognise the need to value everyone equally, while also recognising that people differ in their skills and levels of experience and also their time and inclination to participate.
hmmm this is interesting
The requirement for most of us to sell our labour and be ever more productive is compensated for by enabling us to increase our consumption. Given this dynamic, it makes little sense to forgo environmentally damaging behaviour when we know we have to work harder in the future regardless of our choices. Consumption is the payback for being ever-more productive at work. We often tell ourselves that we deserve the that lunch of foodstuffs sourced from hundreds of miles away, the highest high-tech gizmo, or long-haul holiday. We say: I'm working hard, I've earned it.
unbidden, that one Zizek quote springs to mind - about how you can recognise ideology but still not be impervious to its effects
A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. She writes radio plays and edits a magazine on the same subject. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the mailbox on its post, but higher up the sky is blue, clear, the sun has come back. She has written in her diary that she is waiting for the heartbreak that will turn her into her true self. She has an impending sense of doom or possibly her own death.
i like how surprising this feels. a sense of the unknown
You can be aware of your capacity for love before you meet your beloved. Sense your potential for passion before you experience passion itself. You can know it as a child, as a latent possibility: I am able to love deeply. Even if you never meet him, you still comprehend something about love. The spirit sleeps in stones, it slumbers in plants. It awakens in animals, she is about to become an animal.
His letter arrives three days after her thank-you note. Four handwritten pages on German drama, about his work as a translator, about this and that, about the sun that sets in the fjord while he sits on the terrace with a glass of wine as he writes. His wife is away. Kjersti is away, he writes. She replies, not as lengthy a reply as his. He is older than her, a well-established academic. He critiques contemporary drama. She writes it, she has only just begun. She is a little intimidated by him. She writes that. She mentions the age gap. She doesn’t enter into a discussion about Goethe and Schopenhauer.
He saved her. It is true though he doesn’t know it and she is grateful for that. He led her into the world, into the daylight. Coffee in the morning and a child who needs looking after. Grounded her. So she survived. She said yes to him in order to survive. Because he smiles, is easy-going, doesn’t ask questions. Because he doesn’t grow, he is nailed too solidly together for that. He chews and the inside of her brain creaks. His voice on the phone makes her brain ache: Oh, that’s nice! Long time no see. Great. Absolutely. Excellent!
He writes in a measured letter to Ida that he doesn’t have to explain himself to her. Yes, I went to a party and no, I didn’t go home alone, he writes so she can really imagine it for herself. Besides, my student is a grown-up, he writes, she is thirty-four years old. It is not what Ida thinks. Ida has been invited to a seminar on alternative theatre in Trondheim. It must have been advertised in Adresseavisen, the Trondheim newspaper, or he might have seen the leaflet, which says that she will be on the panel, because he concludes his letter with: I see you’re coming to Trondheim. I will be in Bergen and Kjersti in Stavanger. Fuck you, Arnold. As if she would contact him against his will. Intrude on him. Or his wife. Track down his wife and tell her about his infidelity. Break up the happy family. Take revenge, be the homewrecker. As if she would be that stupid. As if she thinks she can win that way. As if she has no self-respect, as if she doesn’t think she can be loved without begging and threatening.
She runs to her own room and she never sees him again, besides, he is married as most of them are. Ida, that’s enough! Ida, you have to stop now! Where is your self-respect, Ida? You have to do something, take action. Who am I, we ask ourselves, if you respond timidly, you will have a different life to the person who responds to that question with courage. Who are you, Ida? It is time to choose.
‘You’ve taken everything from me,’ her husband says to her.
The aftermath, the shame and the fear, it is degrading.
Choose him again, Ida. It’s the only option. Or go.
Say yes to him again and stay with him. Or go.
She doesn’t love him, and now she knows what love is.
So she has to go.
husbands do love to say that
He is being honest, she realises, and she can handle his fear of the deep, she can work with it. But in the same letter he writes something else, an issue she has suspected in him, but hoped wasn’t there, something she might not be able to live with. Uptown girl meets underdog, he writes. Uptown girl, that’s her, Ida. The underdog, that’s him, Arnold Bush, a senior university lecturer. He doesn’t know enough about her yet, that is the problem. He is guessing. He is speculating. He can sense her strength, the one she is slowly discovering. The fearlessness, the independence she doesn’t yet have, but is in the process of developing, he can sense it and he may not be able to handle it, if he can’t be the teacher, what is he?
‘Why do you need me?’ he asks her, much later.
‘I don’t need you,’ she says. ‘I love you.’