Saturday 6 December 2008

Instability now.

In his comment to my last post, Infra writes:

Any idea that has a chance of substantially modifying a system must come from a reevaluation or reworking of the fundamental principles of that system (otherwise it would simply be a reshuffling of already existing ideas, as pointed out by Foucault) and, as a result, would contain some element of destabilization. This being something likely to provoke some form of resistance.


Precisely. But this resistance is already with us in the form of religious fundamentalisms. At the moment, the focus is on the Islamic varieties but Christian, Jewish, Hindu and maybe other forms of fundamentalism are also to a very large extent a reaction to the liberation of women. It is not without significance that the Bali bombers targeted a night club - it was a place of immorality where women consorted openly with men. I seem to recall that British suicide bombers had also considered attacking similar immoral places. The fall of Saddam Hussein - who, although a murderous monster was more of an equal opportunities murderous monster - has meant, contrary to what we were told at the beginning, a serious decline in the status and safety of women. The election of Obama may herald a turn of the tide in the rise of christian fundamentalism in the US. I certainly, but we do not know what the effect of a prolonged recession will be. Particularly if the new president finds it impossible to extricate himself from the criminal acts of his predecessor and Iraq continues to generate deaths for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We already know that he intends to escalate the war in Afghanistan -which may well simply strengthen the Taleban.

The destabilisation that Infra warns about is already here and has been for several years.

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