Re: <nettime> Ocular facts

[David Garcia via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Don’t Let the Devil Have all the Best Tunes

Why do centrists Fail? Because centrists are usually 'technocrats' who 
see politics as a process of piece meal problem solving based on focus 
groups. They often have poor story telling skills. The very word 
‘progressive’ invests hope in the future whereas the right is more 
inclined to deploy nostalgia. Take BACK control or Make America great 
AGAIN.

Can the left deploy nostalgia? I was recently inspired by an article by 
novelist Zadie Smith who wrote of how she used to “have fun with her 
American audiences… Telling quirky tales of functional healthcare and 
education systems free at the point of use … But then came the moment 
when those stories came to feel not just outdated, but like ancient 
history. Or, more specifically, like a fairytale about a lost world, the 
postwar world, “A world that – though very far from ever being perfected 
– remains the closest my country has ever come to anything resembling 
social equity.”

“But as the years passed”, she concluded that “the whole matter of the 
past was becoming unmentionable, particularly in front of the young. It 
sounded like the kind of generational taunting… Who wants to hear this 
stuff? Who wants to hear about decent social housing, free education and 
world-class medical care when you can’t pay the rent, the neighbourhood 
school is failing” So she kept her fond memories of a functioning 
country to herself” .
“But these days” she argues “that historical nostalgia should not be the 
sole preserve of the right. The left can also make use of it. We can 
remind ourselves that a more just society is possible, if only because a 
few of the necessary conditions have at various moments actually existed 
upon this Earth, and in the not-so-distant past.
With this in mind, she began thinking of the circumstances of her youth 
not as a fairytale or as an impossible fantasy, but as a real-life thing 
that did happen and might happen again.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/zadie-smith-on-hope-trepidation-and-rebirth-after-14-years-of-the-tories
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