>This was in response to Carrol's argument that we need more people
>in the streets to get universal health care. I do not think this
>alone would do the trick.
I'm not sure that's what Carrol was saying. I'm more inclined to think he meant something more radical.
I chimed in here because even when I don't agree with Carrol, he often reminds me of other things I've been reading or hearing.
In this case, this thread made me think of a dvd I watched a couple times in the last few weeks. It's an hour and a half lecture from Zizek called The Reality of the Virtual. It's probably on youtube by now. .
I took some notes and this morning I saw I had scribbled something about imagining the impossible. Zizek links this idea to real (most of his talk is about what real really is) class struggle, which would be antagonistic.
I posted a bit from lacan.com about this idea. As far as Carrol goes, I think it might be the care and subtlety part that people find lacking in his approach:
http://www.lacan.com/zizek-daly.htm
[....]
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today's global capitalism and its obscene naturalization/anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against the standardized positions of postmodern culture - with all its pieties concerning "multiculturalist" <http://www.lacan.com/zizek-daly.htm#6>6 etiquette - Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be called "radically incorrect" in the sense that it breaks with these types of positions <http://www.lacan.com/zizek-daly.htm#7>7 and focuses instead on the very organizing principles of today's social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety.
[....]