Part 2a in an Occasional Series
Feb. 25th, 2017 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tetsabAhahaha. It's taken this long to get to 2. Wow. Here's the frame of two:
"Fossil fuels, and the deeper extractivist mind-set that they represent, built the modern world. If we are part of industrial or postindustrial societies, we are still living inside the story written by coal. Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes." (184)
(And here's 1 and 1a and 1b).
Oh, crap, reviewing this quote I can already see this is going to end up as a 2a / 2b already! 2a for ""Fossil fuels, and the deeper extractivist mind-set that they represent, built the modern world. If we are part of industrial or postindustrial societies, we are still living inside the story written by coal" and 2b for "Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes."
Why? Because in 2a I'd want to focus on this framing of story and also (mercifully!) jump ahead to another piece from the quote skeleton:
"The strongest challenges to this worldview have always come from outside its logic, in those historical junctures when the extractivist project clashes directly with a different, older way of relating to the earth--and that older way fights back. This has been true from the earliest days of industrialization, when English and Irish peasants, for instance, revolted against the first attempts to enclose communal lands, and it has continued in clashes between colonizers and Indigenous peoples throughout the centuries, right up to--as we will see--the Indigenous led resistance to extreme fossil fuel extraction gaining power today. But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may well see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out." (185)
Critically: "But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may well see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out."
This is actually the central problem with the experience of reading This Changes Everything: Klein herself clearly does really see the way out. She skirts around and points at things (in the quote above 'models' that are framed as alternate historical ['that older way'] or alternate cultural ['Indigenous'] or fuzzily political [the conservatives v. leftists of Part 1].It is, of course, not just Klein's problem. No one ever said future-visioning was easy! And yet, in a book which notes: "If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve these goals." (18-9) the absence of where to really even begin building that 'comprehensive vision' is extremely frustrating.
No vision on offer here of course, maybe a little more when we get to 2b but in the meantime a related thought I like just to get this wrapped:
"Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech
"Fossil fuels, and the deeper extractivist mind-set that they represent, built the modern world. If we are part of industrial or postindustrial societies, we are still living inside the story written by coal. Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes." (184)
(And here's 1 and 1a and 1b).
Oh, crap, reviewing this quote I can already see this is going to end up as a 2a / 2b already! 2a for ""Fossil fuels, and the deeper extractivist mind-set that they represent, built the modern world. If we are part of industrial or postindustrial societies, we are still living inside the story written by coal" and 2b for "Ever since the French Revolution, there have been pitched ideological battles within the confines of this story: communists, socialists, and trade unions have fought for more equal distribution of the spoils of extraction, winning major victories for the poor and working classes."
Why? Because in 2a I'd want to focus on this framing of story and also (mercifully!) jump ahead to another piece from the quote skeleton:
"The strongest challenges to this worldview have always come from outside its logic, in those historical junctures when the extractivist project clashes directly with a different, older way of relating to the earth--and that older way fights back. This has been true from the earliest days of industrialization, when English and Irish peasants, for instance, revolted against the first attempts to enclose communal lands, and it has continued in clashes between colonizers and Indigenous peoples throughout the centuries, right up to--as we will see--the Indigenous led resistance to extreme fossil fuel extraction gaining power today. But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may well see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out." (185)
Critically: "But for those of us born and raised inside this system, though we may well see the dead-end flaw of its central logic, it can remain intensely difficult to see a way out."
This is actually the central problem with the experience of reading This Changes Everything: Klein herself clearly does really see the way out. She skirts around and points at things (in the quote above 'models' that are framed as alternate historical ['that older way'] or alternate cultural ['Indigenous'] or fuzzily political [the conservatives v. leftists of Part 1].It is, of course, not just Klein's problem. No one ever said future-visioning was easy! And yet, in a book which notes: "If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve these goals." (18-9) the absence of where to really even begin building that 'comprehensive vision' is extremely frustrating.
No vision on offer here of course, maybe a little more when we get to 2b but in the meantime a related thought I like just to get this wrapped:
"Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech
no subject
Date: 2017-02-27 12:33 am (UTC)I haven't seen an LJ post from you in ages so I would encourage ranting away!