Naomi Klein: Reading Edward Said in a warming world.

[Ghost Dog]

London Review of Books:

... He was, of course, a giant in the study of ‘othering’ – what is described in Orientalism as ‘disregarding, essentialising, denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region’. And once the other has been firmly established, the ground is softened for any transgression: violent expulsion, land theft, occupation, invasion. Because the whole point of othering is that the other doesn’t have the same rights, the same humanity, as those making the distinction. What does this have to do with climate change? Perhaps everything.

We have dangerously warmed our world already, and our governments still refuse to take the actions necessary to halt the trend. There was a time when many had the right to claim ignorance. But for the past three decades, since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created and climate negotiations began, this refusal to lower emissions has been accompanied with full awareness of the dangers. And this kind of recklessness would have been functionally impossible without institutional racism, even if only latent. It would have been impossible without Orientalism, without all the potent tools on offer that allow the powerful to discount the lives of the less powerful. These tools – of ranking the relative value of humans – are what allow the writing off of entire nations and ancient cultures. And they are what allowed for the digging up of all that carbon to begin with...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown

Thought-provoking long essay from Ms. Klein.

I thought, btw, apart from the anti-Trump barrage, that in the meat of Ms. Clinton's San Diego FP speech there were clear examples of 'othering'...

See also: DU Environment and Energy

[pangaia]

1. Naomi Klein is one of the most perceptive thinkers/writers I have come across.

As for Clinton's speech.... othering, of course.

In fact Bernie Sander's campaign has been 'othered' from behind.

[Ghost Dog]

5. Yes...

Thank you all for reading, understanding, appreciating, and, if at all possible, acting accordingly...

Let's build creative coalitions, please.

[bemildred]

2. K & R. nt

[malthaussen]

3. I think the central issue of any culture...

... is defining who is human and who is not. We can see the progress of this in the U.S. Constitution, other summations of the ongoing process have to be dug for through a multitude of signifiers. Those who are defined as human have very different rights from those who are excluded from the definition. I think we may be in a period in which class isolation and privilege are hardening the boundaries of this definition, and the immunity of those at the top of the food chain from most negative consequences of even the most egregious acts would tend to reinforce an expectation that, whatever disasters might happen to the "small people" (to quote a BP exec), they and those who fit their definition of "human" will not be injured. And as for those masses of "others" who will be, well, screw them.

-- Mal

[bemildred]

4. I have been fond of Mr. Said for a long time.

He understood and described the "meta" aspects of political language and its pervasive influence on how we see the world and ourselves.

Albert Camus, who came up through the French academic system, reflects in his works the dogmatic, encyclopedic, and rationalist traditions of that system, and that is very "meta" and political as all get out. But what he talked of was very deep, and had nothing to do with that framing really, the meaning of life and whether it was worthwhile.

Said came up through English Lit, and his works are similarly framed by his history, the "critical theory" stuff (which is not all bad, Said was a very smart guy); but his fundamental insight, that the language you use changes what you think, what impression you make, can be used to manipulate you, that insight is vanilla to any working creative writer, or in marketing, but to apply it to the world of academic discourse, that was a grenade, and I will always give him credit for making that connection and laying it out so plainly.

[suffragette]

6. This is so powerful.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown

The most important lesson to take from all this is that there is no way to confront the climate crisis as a technocratic problem, in isolation. It must be seen in the context of austerity and privatisation, of colonialism and militarism, and of the various systems of othering needed to sustain them all. The connections and intersections between them are glaring, and yet so often resistance to them is highly compartmentalised. The anti-austerity people rarely talk about climate change, the climate change people rarely talk about war or occupation. We rarely make the connection between the guns that take black lives on the streets of US cities and in police custody and the much larger forces that annihilate so many black lives on arid land and in precarious boats around the world.

Overcoming these disconnections – strengthening the threads tying together our various issues and movements – is, I would argue, the most pressing task of anyone concerned with social and economic justice. It is the only way to build a counterpower sufficiently robust to win against the forces protecting the highly profitable but increasingly untenable status quo. Climate change acts as an accelerant to many of our social ills – inequality, wars, racism – but it can also be an accelerant for the opposite, for the forces working for economic and social justice and against militarism. Indeed the climate crisis – by presenting our species with an existential threat and putting us on a firm and unyielding science-based deadline – might just be the catalyst we need to knit together a great many powerful movements, bound together by a belief in the inherent worth and value of all people and united by a rejection of the sacrifice zone mentality, whether it applies to peoples or places. We face so many overlapping and intersecting crises that we can’t afford to fix them one at a time. We need integrated solutions, solutions that radically bring down emissions, while creating huge numbers of good, unionised jobs and delivering meaningful justice to those who have been most abused and excluded under the current extractive economy.