Empire (hacktivismo)

[filipe ceppas]

Dear Matt, thanks for your comments.

> I can adequately discuss ethical issues to do with the supposed moral
> imperative within democracy to democratize the world at the risk of enduring
> Ralph's charges of bourgeois academicism :-). I think you want something
> meatier than this. Presently I think about the deep social psychology of the
U.S and the setting up of such a damaging dichotomy between U.S and them.

Your message invites me to talk about America, and it would be no false
modest to say that I'm the less prepared to do it. But I guess nobody here
would mind the foolish things I could say, specialy if I can relate it to
Frankfurt School ideas, which I think I can do not...  I think that the
concern about moral issues you describe on your message is an important one,
but I don't know if I understand it in the same way you do. Yesterday I was
tv-zapping and saw Collin Powell speech at C-Span on a meeting with Israeli
community (I had the impression it was in NY, but I'm not shure). I would
say that it was an interesting antrophological event. Today, zapping again,
I saw on C-Span again senators discussing about Sexual Misconduct at U.S.
Air Force Academy, and it was another interesting antrophological event
also. These two events and the Them or Us problem you mention, plus the
finger pointing/name calling "academic" routine, and a lot of things related
to Iraq war (like the yellow dust of the Grand Wazoo desert storm) sent me
directly to the obnoxious universe of the musician american amateur
antrophologist Frank Zappa... It occurs to me that, like Ralph, he would
probably see your discourse (specially your List Protocol message from
saturday) as a waste of time academicism, but it seems to me that you are
pointing to an important issue that goes WITHIN american society, the Them
or Us conflict, a point that the "politicaly ingenous" Zappa himself took
"seriously": the old battle of religious against secular values.

Althought all the riches and the liberating energies of american culture,
the surface of all that is officialy related to America seems to be a mix of
sexual transgression with power desire transvested with a puritan aura, as
if the new Madona clip was a necessary complement of the images of the
soldiers on the front... All in the name of the Free (which recalls me
another musician, Josh White, singing "Jim Crow": free to suffer till his
death...) But it is probably a well known cliché or something worse. My
question is that this cliché seems to deny crude distinction of
"theological" and "atheist" dimensions of culture and values, doesn't it?
Anyway, I ask myself how can we relate this topic with the praxis question,
specially from Critical Theory perspective... Maybe we can ask first if
there is any praxis perspective that we can extract from the Critical Theory
philosophical ideas...  ???

flp. 

ps. may it would be nice to tell something about me and my work. I'm a
professor of philosophy and education; I'm working with teaching philosophy
at secondary level schools here at Rio de Janeiro, and I'm interesting
particularly on Adorno ideas about philosophy and education.