I am LOVING this book, Shoveling Smoke, assigned as the last text in class. A whole new conversation is coming into view for me, a cognitive leap as it were. Love figuring out how dumb I've looked! :-) That's learning for ya; you can only be where you are and know what you know. Onward and upward! (Who says that?)
I'm psyched about the upcoming discussion - Gu Li and....two others (?) will present. And I'm eager to learn what holes Danny can poke in it. He's one of the best at that. :-)
Balibar again. :-) He's both totally depressing and marvelously inspirational:
"But when, by a structural necessity, the criteria of distinction and triage become violently discriminatoryÖÖ[devastating description of injustice]Ö..We must set the idea of a ëcommunity of citizensí back into motion, in such a way that it should be the result of the contribution of all those who are present and active in the social spaceî (emphasis mine, 2004:50).
Balibar: "a wider framework of rights of representation and participation in public life acquired by birth or by naturalization: that of a ëcommunity of fateí whose limits cannot be determined in advance but are elaborated pragmatically in confrontations between different historically constituted groups whose interests and modes of thought do not converge spontaneously but that are indeed obliged by history to live together and invent the rules of their coexistenceî (2004: 43-44).
(Switching back and forth between Balibar and mullets has complicated my intellectual experience this afternoon.)
Labeled one of the "extremes," Balibar marks the boundaries of possible identity- construction:
Welcome to democracy 101! I finally get it. Ok, yes, I feel a little bit like, duh. How many times has Stephen gone over this? :-) Balibar, however, makes it plain enough even for me, or perhaps its simply a matter of receptivity and timing. Maybe this time it will stick:
"two notions of the people: that which the Greek language and following it all political philosophy calls ethnos, the ëpeopleí as an imagined community of membership and filiation, and demos, the ëpeopleí as the collective subject of representation, decision making, and rights. It is absolutely crucial to understand the power of this double-faced construction ñ its historical necessity, to some degree ñ and to understand its contingency, its existence relative to certain conditionsî (2004:8).
