What We Need Is A Political And

When I Was Twelve, I Was Interviewed By A Doctoral Candidate In Education And Asked What I Wanted To Be When I Grew Up. I Said That I Either Wanted To Be A Philosopher Or A Clown, And I Understood Then, I Think, That Much Depended On Whether Or Not I Found The World Worth Philosophizing About, And What The Price Of Seriousness Might Be.

What Does It Mean Then To Live With One Another? It Can Be Unhappy, It Can Be Wretched, It Can Be Ambivalent, It Can Even Be Full Of Antagonism, But All Of That Can Play Out In The Political Sphere Without Recourse To Expulsion Or Genocide. And That Is Our Obligation, To Stay In The Sphere With Whatever Murderous Rage We Have, Without Acting On It.

I'm No Great Fan Of The Phallus, And Have Made My Own Views Known On This Subject Before, So I Do Not Propose A Return To A Notion Of The Phallus As The Third Term In Any And All Relations Of Desire.

One Of The Things That Neoliberalism Does Is, It Relies On Flexible Workforces Who Are Hired And Fired At Will And Who Are Basically Disposable Labor. You Can Use Them. You Can Get Rid Of Them. They Have No Rights; They Have No Security. Their Lives And Well-being Are Made And Unmade At The Whim Of Those Who Are Exercising The Calculus. So, Instead Of Looking At The Institution And Objecting To That Kind Of Organization, People Just Go, "i'm A Failure;"; "i'm Not Working Hard Enough"; Or, "i'm Not As Smart As The Next Person."

If We Are Looking For Signs Of Democratization, Then Surely We Are Looking As Well For Forms Of Living On Equal Terms In And Among Cultural Differences.