Thursday, August 14, 2008

Wherefore?

(as an aside, or parallel continuation of the 1st paragraph of the last post...)

But is that correct? Can that be? NO advocacy? Nothing that furthered the cultural causes afflicting our city?

I remember when I abandoned radical political organizing within Vancouver for a period of time. I was unable to say that "I didn't practice politics" in the meantime. I was painfully aware of the politics of everyday life (I was a Situationist at that point, afterall!). I realized that almost every action I could engage in, from where and how I worked, how I spent my free time, who I associated with, how I consumed and purchased, they all had political implications. What is it to say that one is not practicing advocacy, especially when one has been an advocate, will continue to be one, when one's political life has become largely defined by it? 

Is the question, then, one of what is advocacy, and how is it discernible within the broader milieu of politics? (a Liberal, Social Democrat tactic? An appeal to the Rule of Law? Of a Rousseuaian Social Contract? A Hegemony then? A mere tactical exercise?) Further, can the question be asked - and answered - as to why I have left it? Or why it has left me? Is it an abandonment, a hibernation, or just a lull in the action? 

We should also ask whether the social appetite for it has truly vanished, or if we were basing the trajectory of that upon the attentions of an all-too fickle and somnambulistic media. (We had a good run of coverage, and maybe didn't leverage those enough to keep the ball rolling?) 

Dialectically, we should properly triage the social situation before we make any new conjectures (unfortunately, not within the scope of this Blog).  Who persists? What still exists? 

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