Zygmunt Bauman om interregnum

"Interregnum är tillståndet när en gammal ordning upphört att fungera – men ingen ny finns i sikte. Den gamla, som varat i över hundra år, tog slut samtidigt med Sovjetunionen och kal­la kriget, sade Bauman. Fram till dess kuggade ännu Politiken och Makten – ”Power”, i meningen förmågan att uträtta saker – i varandra. Men sedan lösgjorde sig ekonomin från politiken och nästan alla styrmedel upphörde att fungera. Politiken har blivit impotent, eftersom den har förblivit nationell – medan det mesta som påverkar våra liv har blivit globalt."

"För sjuttio år sedan handlade människans fruktan om en samhällsmakt som skulle förslava eller förgöra henne. Det är vad Orwells och Huxleys dystopier handlade om. I dag är det Michel Houellebecq som ger uttryck åt tidens fasa. I ”La Possibilité d’une île” har människor inga band till varandra längre och de förstår inte vad som menas i de få böcker som finns kvar som berättar om kärlek."

Zygmunt Bauman intervjuas av Maciej Zaremba i dagens DN.

Lästips!

- Zizek skriver om kravallerna i England under rubriken Shoplifters of the World Unite.

- Givet "puffarna" på baksidan (säger man blurbs på svenska?) så verkar Robert Bellahs kommande verk Religion in Human Evolution att bli en klassiker.

- Via The Immanent Frame hittar jag i ett utdrag ur den kommande Milton and the post-secular present : ethics, politics, terrorism:

There is more than a little merit to Creston Davis's claim that "the portal to theology was opened precisely because capitalism is ultimately a self-enclosed structure, and so theology gives us a way to transcend capital," a way that is "premised on relationality and not on Ego.

Se där en intressant förklaring till orsaken till "religionens nya synlighet" ...

Intellektuella ghetton

[T]he most ghettoized people of all, I’ve come to learn, are those who don’t know they grew up in a particular time and place and culture, and who think they can get to universal truths outside of particular realities and commitments. There are ghettos and then there are ghettos. The real question is not whether you grow up in a ghetto, but whether the ideas and customs and rhythms of your particular ghetto prepare you to engage other ideas and customs and life experiences without losing touch with your roots.

s. 9, Letters to a young Catholic, George Weigel.

via Iakttagelser

Agamben goes Schmitt

Carl Schmitts berömda tes om att alla centrala begrepp för att beskriva staten ursprungligen är teologiska begrepp som sedan sekulariserats, tycks ges ny näring genom den italienska filosofen Giorgio Agambens kommande bok: The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government.

"If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it?"(...) "Agamben shows that, when combined with the idea of providence, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies at the origin of many of the most important categories of modern politics, from the democratic theory of the division of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral damage, from the invisible hand of Smith's liberalism to ideas of order and security.

But the greatest novelty to emerge from The Kingdom and the Glory is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. Through a fascinating analysis of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power—the throne, the crown, purple cloth, the Fasces, and more—Agamben develops an original genealogy that illuminates the startling function of consent and of the media in modern democracies."

... eller med Paul W. Kahns ord: "the state is not the secular arrangement that it purports to be"!

Milbank om kravallerna i England

John Milbank skriver intressant om både orsaken till, och politikens sätt att bemöta, kravallerna:

While if they suppose that the there is no moral, as opposed to pragmatic, reason for keeping the law - given the fundamental value of self-interest - then this is surely a conclusion that they share in contemporary England with many wealthy financiers, journalists, senior policeman and holders of government office, as the News International scandal exposed.

(...)

Here one might venture the remark that while religious people tend to see that malefactors and sinners are most of all to be pitied, secular political positions are bifurcated between a rightist and neo-pagan pure condemnation, and a leftist scientistic patronising of the wrong-doer as a sub-personal ineffective cog in a wonky machine.

När språket tar semester ...

En hemlös man misshandlades nyligen till döds av fem poliser i Orange County, Kalifornien. Enligt NY Times har FBI nu inlett en undersökning för att utreda om mannens medborgerliga rättigheter har kränkts. Denna absurda detalj fick mig att tänka på en fantastisk föreläsning om språk med Stanley Hauerwas jag nyligen lyssnade på:

I have no difficulty with rights claims that express social and legal duties. But claims of human rights as human rights involves philosophical difficulties that can not be resolved. In particular questions about what kind of human beings we need to be to have rights is very troubling in relationship to the mentally handicapped. Moreover once rights language is legitimized in the abstract, rights seems to multiply faster than rabbits . My deepest worry about rights however is how the language of rights can eviscerate more determinative moral descriptions. (...)

If you think rights are more basic than the description murder, you have an indication that the language has gone on holiday.

Inspirerad av Wittgenstein sätter Hauerwas som så ofta fingret på frågan om vilken berättelse och vilket språk som formar vår verklighet. Är det berättelsen om ett föreställt socialt kontrakt som ger individer vissa rättigheter? Eller är det berättelsen om hur Guds kärlek och nåd omfattar alla människor?

Hauerwas drar det till sin spets: "You can only act in a world you can see, and the only way you learn to see is by learning to say".