And well, perhaps any organic intellectual pedagogicalness that I may put out can just stop here at this blog. If people want to know about things that I can pass some comment on, what’s to stop them from coming here - Matilda readers have both you and google at their fingertips!

And come now, there’s no such thing as too much Crit Theory, surely ;-)

Secondly, I think the organic intellectual moment undercuts a lot of what Habermasarians call the ‘complexity’ of modernity, which they use to justify the use of Strategic Instumental Reason in certain areas (inc. say the economy; also international relations etc). The way I read ‘O-I’, and its been a while since I’ve read the Gramsci, says: ‘non-legitimate knowledges across different areas of specialty can develop and talk to each other’. i read the long sunday article and i will continue to read this blog. but i don’t have time to research this area. and i do want to be informed (or evaluate a claim adequately, if not rationally, if we are to be quasi-Habermasarian for a minute), before I speak about something.

Urgh, too much Crit Theory.

I am really glad you liked the post and thanks for the feedback! I’m about to put up another one about Brazilian goings-on as it happens…

*On that note, you might like the analysis of the referendum in Venezuela on Long Sunday if you haven’t seen it?

BUT
1/ national journalism sites do reproduce an us them thing. ultimately, though, i’m neutral about medium if you have an important message which you think can be framed in a certain way so as to both make your point and motivate an audience. maybe that’s the machievellian in me ;)

no i think the observer position is important here. also because i think that your own insertion into the story really makes it interesting. how do we understand others struggles? is bolivia plebicitory populism– as some allege– or social struggle.

i think your article gets across dilemmas of the anti-authoritarian left well, in approaching this issue. i often feel torn when talking to orthodox socialist chavistas, on the one hand, and formal liberal democrats on the other. how do i encapsulate what i feel about this region? your take is really nuanced; i appreciated it.

i think in this case, the language barrier to most people reading about the story. you could even represent translate testimonios in the form of a broader narrative. your knowledge is better than most msm parachutist journalists. obviously not as good as bolivia watchers, but most australians won’t go to their sites, because they don’t even know about the story at all.

hence: if we can, we have to educate our nation-state/ language enclosed publics. that’s the organic intellectual moment.

3/ sure, which is one of the implicit subtexts of alecia’s article in nm today. on the iconography of the site, i agree completely. radical nationalism aka russell ward/ mungo mccallum. urgh. doesn’t stop me writing for them, because i write what i want (plus the whole essay thing is fun, and a diversion from academic writing).

4/ yes i agree. ‘the new york times is just a fancy blog’ as gawker says. now if your blog had the readership of gawker (or, i dunno, z-net) i’d go, hooray!

urgh, back to hegel!

Which is that this blog is not a training ground for more officially sanctioned forms of publication ;-)

But I have 3 issues.

(1) is that I am wary of being yet another foreign writer/activist who accrues cultural capital from ‘eyewitness’ stories of conflict and poverty ‘In The Third World’

(2) I might not be so wary of this if I could write with some detailed knowledge of the situation in Bolivia (such as Luiz Gonzalez or Nick Buxton, referenced above), and,

(3) I like the stuff that New Matilda publishes (like yours and Alecia’s of course) but I’m not sure I agree with their mission … the idea of coming up with a ‘different tune’ about, er, ‘Matilda’ is so tied up in the settler mythology of the Australian nation, and I’m not sure that talk of a different/better *nation* is going to address the things that need to be different/better in Australia - in this ere land it seems to me that ‘the nation’ has always, only, been a way of destroying indigenous sovereignties and indigenous peoples for a start.

Or maybe I should write something about that ;-)