What Cannot Be Done
ABSTRACT This essay argues that recent catastrophizings over freedom of speech are symptoms of a conjunctural crisis in the North Atlantic world. They index, in the main, a crisis of profitability and deindustrialization in the Global North, as seen for instance in the lumpenproletariatization of th...
| Published in: | Philosophy & Rhetoric |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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The Pennsylvania State University Press
2022
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.55.1.0053 https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/p-n-r/article-pdf/55/1/53/1513919/philrhet_55_1_53.pdf |
| Summary: | ABSTRACT This essay argues that recent catastrophizings over freedom of speech are symptoms of a conjunctural crisis in the North Atlantic world. They index, in the main, a crisis of profitability and deindustrialization in the Global North, as seen for instance in the lumpenproletariatization of the working and professional classes; increasing domestic resistance by racially minoritized groups to police violence and murder; sustained insurgencies to imperialism abroad; the militarization of borders; and widespread crises occasioned by climate change. The writings of Hannah Arendt, I argue, offer an acute angle into how a celebrated thinker in the Global North advanced influential analytical categories for policing this conjunctural crisis. Ultimately, I argue, apocalyptic discourses about the unsayable (“cancel culture,” “wokeness,” “de-platforming”) seek to make unthinkable ongoing and emergent radical uprisings, insurgencies, and revolution. |
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