This most recent post is...?

Sunday, April 3, 2011

What's the Libyan game? The domination of time

'Permanent war for permanent peace,' Gore Vidal. No, nothing so purely contradictory; simply permanent war (Derrida gaps here; he imagined permanent revolution in his Spectres of M).

War is turning out to be too valuable a commodity (Marx gasps here!) to ignore for politicians, for the military to justify its largesse, for contractors, and perhaps even for Western society. It's perhaps not only war but the comfort of knowing that your leaders are rooting out the bad guys, pre-emptively, before they can harm 'freedom, babies, and justice.' A great show of power in which Nato governments show their domination of the entire temporal dimension, past (Lockerbie), present (Benghazi) and future (vengeful Tripoli).

Every avenue for escape is now apparently blocked: no history, no critique, and no futures studies can help now. Only if time itself is wiped out can the West keep from repeating itself over and over. Bring on the event!   

No comments:

Post a Comment