Changing the thread from Flouncing chuckie huff, to owning Empire.
Peter K quoting an interview with Hitchens:
``..Interviewer:...Ugrei moves from criticizing the self-conceived innocence of the collective to her own acceptance of universal guilt, which is, in her case, a dissident stance. But do you think that that stance is possibly quiescence masquerading as bravery, or too much to take on?...''
``...Hitchens:...The line, "we are all guilty," or "we are all responsible," used to be taken a lot by intellectuals of the left. There was something sickly about that, I found. I think I could decently repudiate my responsibility: I wouldn't ever have desired such a thing, and I don't think that anything I've said or done contributed to it...''
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The point I was trying to make is that whatever your personal views or actions, if you're from the US, then in the eyes of the rest of the world, you represent the US for better or worse. It isn't a question of quilt, but apprehension of your own identity and state---whether you identify with the state and its actions or not. So, then as part of your condition, you have to confront that identification and deal with it. There is no such thing as innocence. The intended implication is not quiescence, but active apprehension. There is a big difference between a sense of personal guilt, an ideological guilt arising from dogma, and the active grasp of the conditionality of being alive.
In other words, I have to live somewhere, and it happens to be here and now, and that is my historical condition. I own it.
What I think that amounts to is first of all, being aware that conditions attach to you whether you accept them or not. This is part of the impossibility and possibility of the social or collective. That is they are formed out of that same stuff.
Denial isn't the same as reputation, and really the point isn't to repudiate anything, simply because that can't be done. I can't say I am not an american, I am not white---or in the current context, I am not a part of Empire. And as I have learned over many years, it seems I can't get rid of some working class stigma either. Of course I am all of those. But I am also their enemy. So in a sense, I think you have to appropriate your condition in order to revolt against it. This entire line (Hegel, Sartre), is a precondition to improving conditions, and if not that, then at least an articulation and an active confrontation with them.
Chuck Grimes