Power Shift by Richard Falk

Author:Richard Falk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2016-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

It is my overall argument that the gaps between HF and HN are unsustainable, although assessments of the specific timing and forms of collapse remain speculative, contested, and hidden from view, and are essentially indeterminate. It is my view that these gaps can only be closed via HD, which by means of a conceptual maneuver is situated outside of the domain of normal politics. For reasons of convenience, I label this domain as extraordinary politics, that is, politics as the art of the impossible. Further, reverting to history, the extraordinary happens in relation to many unanticipated jumps in the domain of political behavior (e.g. the end of the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union; the generally peaceful transformation of apartheid South Africa into a constitutional democracy; the Arab Awakening). Such a pattern, theorized by Charles Jenks as “the jumping universe” and Talib as “the black swan” phenomenon, suggests that what seems impossible happens consistently throughout history.2 It also should be understood that as a result of intrusions of the unanticipated, drastic regressions also occur, including catastrophic developments (e.g. the rise of Naziism, followed by the Holocaust; the successful harnessing of the atom and the evolution of nuclear weapons; the linkage between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming).

From this perspective, in the face of such perceived gaps between feasibility and necessity on matters of collective survival, it is also likely that extremist movements with bizarre solutions to global challenges will attract significant followings. Such “solutions” include divine intervention or apocalyptic design, paranoid politics that blames the danger on some fraction of humanity such as a rival religion or ethnicity. This tendency for society to be attracted to such pathological extremes seems to be what Gramsci had in mind when he warned of the appearance of “morbid symptoms” during periods of fundamental societal transition. The embrace of technogeopolitics during a period when the limits of planetary carrying capacity are being tested makes ours a time of unprecedented danger. The rise of fundamentalist religion and politics is to be expected under such conditions, making it particularly important for those dedicated to HD as conceived within broad humanist and cosmopolitan traditions of rationality to articulate and promote their understanding of how best to close the gaps between HF and HN. Such articulations must liberate reason from its Enlightenment moorings by enlargements of two kinds: incorporating the wisdom and ethics of the East and by encouraging what Upendra Baxi refers to as “insurgent reason.”3

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