I have just finished reading "Power Politics" by Arundhati Roy.It is a a collection of her excellent political essays and is definitely worth reading. She is obviously very passionate about advocating for the disadvantaged and taken-advantaged-of masses, not just of India but of the world. I have included links to some of the essays in case you want to read the whole thing - they are not too long and are easy reading.
"Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin" is a thought provoking critique of the insatiable beast of globalization.
"The Algebra of Infinite Injustice" is a biting but fair attack on the foreign policy of that other insatiable beast, the USA. While Roy clearly puts the blame on the rich and powerful puppet masters, she does not completely exonerate the "average American" and drops a few of her poetic bombs their way. My favorite example:
"Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know (because they don't appear much on TV)."
To make sure you get her point, she prefaces it perfectly with a very telling quote from a newscaster on Fox News, September 17th 2001:
"Good and Evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don't know, massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee." Apparently the newscaster then broke down and cried.
And in "War is Peace"*, referring to the government rhetoric/spin doled out via the mainstream media as medication she has this to say:
"Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been -- a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government."
While I would love to fully enjoy a virtuous and contemptuous snicker at the expense of these "curiously insular people", I am also acutely aware that I too am curiously insular and that just occasionally reading about injustice is not the same as opposing it.
* Interestingly "War is Peace" apparently had a different, and delightfully more provocative title originally: "Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter. Why America Must Stop the War Now."
2 comments:
Sounds interesting and honest Mandy. Can you relate it much to our culture here in New Zealand??
Alice
Hi Alice, not sure if you mean relating to NZ re: injustice happening here, or to the way that people can live "curiously" insulated from this kind of stuff.
If the former: certainly there is injustice in NZ, although no where near on the kind of scale that Roy talks about occurring in India peoples lives are stripped away from them with a stoke of a pen that allows a "Big Dam" to go ahead that will flood there land, thereby robbing them of their home, livelihood, and in some cases entire cultural heritage. Here we have a more open, democratic system, and although bribes certainly pass hands between big business and corrupt politicians I don't think it is on anywhere near the same scale. Also we have an extremely comprehensive welfare system, and in most areas, free access to education and (at least emergency) health care. I do feel however that there are many many children who live daily with injustice, and perhaps also our elderly, mentally ill etc who don't access help because of their limitations.
If you meant in regards to affluent, people living a lifestyle of western surfeit and indulgence, who blithely turn a blind eye to the injustice in our world. Then yes, I think we can make a direct comparison between the America Roy criticizes and our culture here in New Zealand. Of course our foreign policy is not quite so rampantly evil as Americas but we are similarly guilty on many other counts.
Hmm, I'm ranting again aren't I?
But as I indicated in the blog, I am really no different. I want to be but am yet to really make a difference. Watch this space :)
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