in some ways domestic class politics parallels first-world/third-world international politics, in my mind. feel free to correct me. although "in some ways" is really vague on my part...
this also reminds me of something Bourdieu said about politics (of course, haha), about the sense provincial French people have that no one in Paris is on their side, no matter what party...oh, here it is:
"Now we must take on the question of televised debates. First of all, there are debates that are entirely bogus, and immediately recognizable as such. A television talk show with Alain Minc and Jacques Attali, or Alain Minc and Guy Sorman, or Luc Ferry and Alain Finkielkraut, or Jacques Julliard and Claude Imbert is a clear example, where you know the commentors are birds of a feather. (In the U.S., some people earn their living just going from campus to campus in duets like these ...) These people know each other, lunch together, have dinner together. Guillaume Durand once did a program about elites. They were all on hand: Attali, Sarkozy, Minc ... At one point, Attali was talking to Sarkozy and said, "Nicolas ... Sarkozy," with a pause between the first and last name. If he'd stopped after the first name, it would've been obvious to the French viewer that they were cronies, whereas they are called on to represent opposite sides of the political fence. It was a tiny signal of complicity that could easily have gone unnoticed. In fact, the milieu of television regulars is a closed world that functions according to a model of permanent self-reinforcement. Here are people who are at odds but in an utterly conventional way; Julliard and Imbert, for example, are supposed to represent the Left and the Right. Referring to someone who twists words, the Kabyles say, "he put my east in the west." Well, these people put the Right on the Left. Is the public aware of this collusion? It's not certain. It can be seen in the wholesale rejection of Paris by people who live in the provinces (which the fascist criticism of Parisianism tries to appropriate). It came out a lot during the strikes last November: "All that is just Paris blowing off steam." People sense that something's going on, but they don't see how closed in on itself this milieu is, closed to their problems and, for that matter, to them.
There are also debates that seem genuine, but are falsely so. [. . ."
no subject
this also reminds me of something Bourdieu said about politics (of course, haha), about the sense provincial French people have that no one in Paris is on their side, no matter what party...oh, here it is:
"Now we must take on the question of televised debates. First of all, there are debates that are entirely bogus, and immediately recognizable as such. A television talk show with Alain Minc and Jacques Attali, or Alain Minc and Guy Sorman, or Luc Ferry and Alain Finkielkraut, or Jacques Julliard and Claude Imbert is a clear example, where you know the commentors are birds of a feather. (In the U.S., some people earn their living just going from campus to campus in duets like these ...) These people know each other, lunch together, have dinner together. Guillaume Durand once did a program about elites. They were all on hand: Attali, Sarkozy, Minc ... At one point, Attali was talking to Sarkozy and said, "Nicolas ... Sarkozy," with a pause between the first and last name. If he'd stopped after the first name, it would've been obvious to the French viewer that they were cronies, whereas they are called on to represent opposite sides of the political fence. It was a tiny signal of complicity that could easily have gone unnoticed. In fact, the milieu of television regulars is a closed world that functions according to a model of permanent self-reinforcement. Here are people who are at odds but in an utterly conventional way; Julliard and Imbert, for example, are supposed to represent the Left and the Right. Referring to someone who twists words, the Kabyles say, "he put my east in the west." Well, these people put the Right on the Left. Is the public aware of this collusion? It's not certain. It can be seen in the wholesale rejection of Paris by people who live in the provinces (which the fascist criticism of Parisianism tries to appropriate). It came out a lot during the strikes last November: "All that is just Paris blowing off steam." People sense that something's going on, but they don't see how closed in on itself this milieu is, closed to their problems and, for that matter, to them.
There are also debates that seem genuine, but are falsely so. [. . ."