"For most people under twenty in
Europe and North America, the lack of alternatives to capitalism is no longer
even an issue. Capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable.
Jameson used to report in horror about the ways that capitalism had seeped into
the very unconscious; now, the fact that capitalism has colonized the dreaming
life of the population is so taken for granted that it is It would be
dangerous and misleading to imagine that the near past was some prelapsarian
state rife with political potentials, so it's as well to remember the role that
commodification played in the production of culture throughout the twentieth
century. Yet the old struggle between detournement and
recuperation, between subversion and incorporation, seems to have been played
out. What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that
previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation: the
pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist
culture. Witness, for instance, the establishment of settled 'alternative' or
'independent' cultural zones, which endlessly repeat older gestures of
rebellion and contestation as if for the first time. 'Alternative' and
'independent' don't designate something outside mainstream culture; rather,
they are styles, in fact the dominant styles, within
the mainstream." -- Mark Fisher, Capitalism Realism
By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...
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