In all my Lacanian readings... power is always the real issue. The moral point of view, of which many here have expressed distaste, is an attempt to purity power to a singularity, deemed right [from the mouth of God]. The events in Toronto, at least for me, has illustrated the... I don't have a good word here... the teleological realization?... of mindless protocol in political struggle. I think I also received a shot in the arm regarding the cunning of reason. In an asymetrical ideological and political struggle, it is important to change the ideological field - simply accepting the terms of the hegemonic force and coming up with counterarguments isn't as effective as opening the entire horizon to different and apparently unrelated ideas (many of the people I talked to were not persuaded by our demand for tuition relief and higher wages... but were intrigued when I tied it to public education and academic freedom). My experiences in all of this were limited though... and likely idiosyncratic.
ken -----------------
Ken,
First off, I hope you realized my rant on morality is power, ethics is money, was supposed to cheer you up. You know a kind of locker room pep talk--indirectly.
For some reason, I've never understood, people's eyes glaze over, that absolute moment when the detail of an issue is concrete, specific, and has the most consequences. Why? It is a mystery.
But I have a theory, naturally. It has to do with their emotional registers. People need to feel something about an issue to be interested, so you have to find a way to present them with that hook, that something that they can feel, so that they can then follow the implications embedded in the concrete detail. But the fair thing to do, is find what is at the 'bottom' of an issue---those features that have the most fidelity to the substance. The media (and establishment power structure) is very good at this, but of course they go straight to a manipulation of emotive forms, while fidelity goes out the window.
Anyway off to work. Cheer up. You didn't lose, and that is something.
Chuck