Withdrawing consent
For the last month, we have been witnessing, in Tunisia and Egypt, the first revolution of the twenty-first century. We are indeed fortunate to live in the presence of such a world-making event, even if we are not in the streets together with those who are making it a reality in daily life. Hastening to provide analyses of ongoing social and political alterations of such magnitude is always ill-advised, because world-historical events also alter the known modes and means of analysis, especially those crafted by pundits and academics.
Nonetheless, in an attempt to respond to the sublime sentiment of watching an entire people erupt in a collective desire for self-determination, which is, moreover, actualized in the very means of conducting and realizing this desire, I feel a personal exigency to articulate certain elementary observations on what I perceive to be the worldwide consequences of these alterations. I do so in the spirit, not of analysis, but of speculation, and with the self-conscious risk of being an amateur observer.
Read the rest of Withdrawing consent.
