some sort of extinction anxiety seems to grip the glib-lib. a need to america, but whither?
the cynics smirk, their arms falling like zombies' after dawn. the sensitive retreat into cocoa-fuelled smooching. others (the earnest) write paeans to an enraged gaia, rapture literature for the no-longer-new left, gloating righteously in their newly fashionable we-told-you-so smorgasbord.
a theory of extinction, anyone?
it may be worthwhile coming up with one. thinking is difficult. philosophy tells us it only happens when the body is encountered with the threat of failure. the bee's issue (and this is elizabeth grosz speaking) is to find the flower, failure to conceptualize how to get there and back to the beehive implies its death.
amazingly, or maybe not so, we (who?) seem to have forgotten the value of rage and a whole array of other emotions, when discussing the res publica. the result is ever more interesting: either a complete evacuation of emotion from policy debate, or a deployment of emotion that flattens out or paralyzes rather than enables a more complex articulation of social problems. all in the name of so-called democratic dialogue and consensus, what in this country reactionaries call "being non-partisan."
we should be angry about what happened in vatech, rightly so. we should be angry at the way that any proposal of gun control will be bogged down and confused by the murder lobby-- they now circulate the fabulous idea of giving college students handguns so they can "defend" themselves -- but anger needs to be directed, channelled through a movement, or else it is worthless.
maybe facing the threat of extinction will finally make us all think.
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3 comments:
V. - I agree that a lack of movement and language is a problem. What theory might you begin to propose to fill these voids?
an un-theory i guess! at the time i wrote this i was still trying to understand what terrified me the most-- the fact that emotion will get evacuated, that we will be pacified through discourses of passive grief and mourning, whereas we should be revolting right as we speak in order to get proper gun control legislation. and that this incident will become an isolated event, that "loners" and the "disturbed" will become criminalized even further, and that the burden of surveillance will fall on us, those who teach.
the rea;l issue is guns.....but all the saccharine vigils don't ever adress the real issue-
easier to get a gun than to get treatment/antidepressants
we will be lulled by the anodyne statements - W. should have been embarrassed to go to the service- under his rule, a Republican Congress voided DC's strict gun control laws- they infringed on the right to bear arms
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