We Will Not Cave

Jacques Rancière insists that “internationalist and anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s addressed their own states as ones engaged in colonial or neocolonial wars. Today, this scene is fractured. The responsibility of order is divided in an indecisive manner between nation-states, international institutions, and a faceless world-order: a center that is both everywhere and nowhere” There are three real concerns here. One is the matter of where the concern for colonial rules’ effects and iterations. Next is the nature of the “fracture” and what has been fractured.  Lastly, what the nature of the faceless “world-order” is today.  In other words, what and who is today’s hegemony, quite simply answered.  When Rancière wrote this, the mess of 2018 – 2022 was on the heels of history. The 2018 protests showed how the Left could cause politics to hit the streets, particularly in the US. (again see jd ripper’s Words on the Street listed on amazon.com to clarify this phenomeno...

  Gurminder K Bhambra and John Holmwood state that “Many recent accounts of the welfare state in Europe (and, elsewhere) suggest that changing patterns of immigration have undermined the solidarity necessary to recognise the claims of fellow citizens to social rights” AND although “there is a failure of solidarity, we argue that it is one that has its origins in colonialism which organised access to politics and social rights on a hierarchical and racialised basis” Since the social rights of citizens and non-citizens has altered the face of social aid in the US it seems likely that such aid will expand and include migrants that are not citizens. An interesting use of the term “social rights” here suggests that individuals have rights to access to aid.   As far as rights are concerned, conservatives would argue that the only rights individuals have should be designated for legal citizens. It seems almost a guarantee at tis point that not mtter how one enters the US that those p...

  Jacques Rancière states, in reference to the subjects of his study, that “In principle, my workers belonged to ‘social history’ In other words, their texts were read as documents expressing the condition of workers, popular culture, etc. I decided to read them in a different way--as literary and philosophical texts” Ranciẻre, here, understands the power of literature and personal narrative in knowing and appreciating individuals and their demographics. This is a trend in working with people that is very much in sync with postcolonial philosophy.   In accordance with this philosophy, life-writing is important and effective.   One need only look to world leaders from different cultures and how they have used life-writing (autobiographical writing) to express their views on life and power. There is in fact a lot of power in the writing itself as it effects and has great impression on the reader or the other from another culture.        

  Gani and Marshall insist that “In many cases universities and intellectuals were responsible for upholding the legitimacy of racist hierarchies and the necessity of colonialism in the West against the grain of anti-colonial and anti-racist social movements and intellectuals in the colonies”   I would have to differ at this point.   Since the late 1950’s radical Leftists have taken over the guard at universities.   Now, it is even more one-sided.   I could list thousands in the universities who are pushing an agenda that is very Marxist and even postcolonial, anticolonial, and antiracist (which I see the point of), but these same people are piggybacking other agendas, like defund-the-police a philosophy that is nothing but destructive to our cities (just look at Chicago) and our country. It is time to roll-back these agendas that destroy our families and children and preserve our constitutional rights.   

  Gani and Marshall explain the theories and ideas that include colonialism, imperialism, and racism, and “how these ideas and patterns of racism, colonialism and erasure go on to shape, and become operationalized through, policy” So obviously, as has been shown by them, there is a relationship between postcolonial philosophy and public policy (the very point jd ripper is getting at in “Words on the street . . . “).   Keeping in mind the way that public policy develops, the academy definitely has its hands in the mix.   This must not be overlooked, because young minds are being trained in the exploitation of postcolonial thought.   There are those like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who have transformed the message or others who have divorced it to join the Marxist socialist agenda.   The imperialism and racism are definitely of concern to this writer, but we does not need Marxism to resolve such problems.

Gani and Marshall express that there is the “notion that academic expertise might temper imprudence and propensity for war in policy-making is refuted by their respective willingness to approve of foreign occupations, military intervention, coups, drone attacks or authoritarian allies abroad, and of racial securitization, border regimes and incarceration at home” The propensity to do harm to the Global South and Global East has been under the watch of various periods of history in the American led world, particularly with interests invested in Western successes.   This has been going on for many decades, relentlessly.   The US and other Western powers have had academics who have acted as “advisers to governments, obliquely upholding the principles of imperialism under the guise of ‘grand strategy’ or the ‘liberal international order’”    It must be noted that, according to Gani and Marshall, “racist and imperialist ideologies have also been carried forth by critical,...

  Marshall and Gani speak of universities and state that they “call for greater problematizing of the now ubiquitous expectation and pressure within departments and universities for academics to pursue and showcase the ‘impact value’ of their research.”   The key here is to understand that problematizing generally refers to a practice whereby a text or piece of research is deconstructed, decentered, discredited, or found to be inconsistent, or perhaps racist, and in the case of these scholars, Gani and Marshall, imperial and racialized knowledge. Gani and Marshall go on ti understand that something needs to “provide scrutiny on how we as scholars and practitioners decide which matters of world politics merit our attention—and, equally important, how imperial and racialized knowledge orders(,) condition and at times constrain the ways in which we are able to define what the problems of world politics are”   I want to remind you that these two individuals or scholars (...