thought of the day

i think 'the problem' of political apathy can be explained at least in part by understanding the experience of absurdity (in the existentialist sense, a world perceived with a lack of meaning or purpose). for example, you are familiar with polling data im sure that shows the political process and its personas, (in part because of media representations) are viewed with an overwhelming sense of distrust and ambivalence. when obama launched his campaign he wisely used the slogan, 'change we can believe in'. this election was unequivocal in terms of voter participation over recent decades....anyhow without taking too long to explain my thought id like to engage your philosophical mind on the possibility that a rhetoric often denounced as manipulative and dishonest could be the life and salience of contemporary politics and a certain type of 'identity politics' is necessary to engage actual human beings. i dont think its necessarily dishonest, simple questions like 'who are we, and what do we want' fall into this category. a deepening of democracy can be framed in a historical context, or historical mission easily. of course by deepening i mean, the intervention of politics in society, or democratizing our economy (the fact that the process is so removed from ordinary life is a relic from early democracies and uncompromised oligarchies etc). and historical mission and class warfare can easily be revived by creating a symbolic 'outsider' and an 'outsiders grievance' has been shown by the tea party movement. coming back to absurdity, i dont think the analysis is exhausted by a philosophy of political activism, leading us to consume our work with functional categories and confuse theory with rhetoric. the 'out of joint-ness' or the absurdity is a proper object of theoretical investigation. but when derrida explained through hamlet, that 'the time is (always) out of joint' he did not lead us to the soft politics and post-modernisms of rorty where democratic struggles are validated by a sense of irony (rorty is first of all confusing the concept of irony, and the ironic observer with cultural relativism). derrida's metaphor is surprisingly insightful to my problem here because absurdity is always a matter of 'to live or not to live' and then 'how to live in an absurd world'. in this case, political participation, or non participation and so on. it is obvious that an astute activism is founded on the righting of wrongs (killing hamlets step father), and a question of 'who are we';  a wide range of rhetorical metonymizing and symbolic hegemony, and not merely upon a soft politics of acceptance and loving kindness.


if the civil rights struggles were waiting for an ironic observer or pan-universalism, i doubt it would have ever left birmingham.