Saturday, January 07, 2006
Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, 118pp., 2004
Review by DW
3 Jan 2005
This book of six recent essays and speeches by author Arundhati Roy is not in fact a guide to empire, though the essays do discuss today’s imperialism. Though such a guide would be welcome, the title is only secondly self-referential; in the text, the phrase is used to say that by favoring direct war and occupation over proxy war and neocolonialism, Bush has made the US Empire clear to all for what it is. (p. 39) In fact, contrary to being a guide to empire, Roy combines her insights and provocative turns of phrase with some fallacies that may serve to misguide the neophyte student of empire.
Strong Points
Roy is a people’s author. She supports the world’s peoples’ basic demands for food, water, shelter, and dignity. (p. 16)
Roy has her finger on the pulse of major world trends, and masterfully illuminates the links between globalization, war, class, race, poverty, and the charge of “terrorism.” For example, Roy writes, “According to the state, when victims refuse to be victims, they become terrorists and are dealt with as such…Poverty is a crime and protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism.” (p. 12 (and again on p. 86 and p. 111))
Though a pacifist, Roy echoes Lenin on key points. When she says “peace is war,” for instance, her point is essentially the same as Lenin’s when he said “imperialism means war.” (p. 15) When she says, “Democracy has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism,” one imagines she understands why Lenin, before the days of neo-liberalism, spoke of “bourgeois democracy.” (p. 56) She asks “What is to Be Done?” and notes that Lenin posed the same question. (Though it should be noted that Lenin’s answers were more thorough and concrete than Roy’s). (p. 65)
Roy is better at exposing the problems than at illuminating solutions, but she gets points for trying to get beyond mere exposure, writing, “We need to urgently discuss strategies of resistance…and inflict real damage.” (p. 117)
Roy recognizes the limitations of some popular strategies for change. The book’s first essay, “Peace is War,” addresses the role of the media. (pp. 1-21) Using the analogy of “the buffalo and the bees,” she paints a picture of a lumbering old media persistently shadowed by a dynamic and critical new media. With this analogy, she shows the limitation of alternative media work as a primary strategy for change, since the alternative media is forever consigned to follow the lead of the mainstream media, even while the former pokes and prods at the latter. Breaking with social democratic dogma, she likewise acknowledges the limitations of the World Social Forum, Brazil’s Lula and PT, and South Africa’s Mandela and ANC. (pp. 90-91) And to her great credit, she recognizes NGOism as a recipe for depoliticization and dependency.
She is right in calling for people to build counter-power, but wrong if she thinks that that will suffice as a strategy. (pp. 117-118)
Shortcomings
Roy promotes the notion of a “new imperialism,” “neo-imperialism,” or “new age of empire.” (e.g., pp. 82, 84) She fails to recognize (or at least to acknowledge) imperialism’s continuity from the 1890s to the present. For her, as with many bourgeois history textbooks, Old Imperialism seems to refer to the 1890s, implying a century-long absence of imperialism in the century between the Scramble for Africa and Gulf War II.
While she correctly criticizes a number of strategies for change as insufficient, the criticism also applies to many of her own proposals. For instance, she recommends a strategy of boycotting war profiteers without particularizing or interrogating her proposal. While some war profiteers like General Electric have consumer product lines that can be targeted, many do not. Contrary to capitalism’s democratic mythology, consumers do not rule. You can’t boycott Bechtel.
Restricted in her strategic vision by pacifist wishful thinking, she correctly recognizes that “we are at war,” (p. 94) but she dismisses armed struggle as an option. (p. 112) Instead of counterpoising change against the status quo, she sees the alternatives as “bloody change” or “beautiful change.” (p. 118)
In the end, the critical reader will sympathize but not completely agree with Roy when she says, “Hopefully, things will change. A little.” (p. 109)
Review by DW
3 Jan 2005
This book of six recent essays and speeches by author Arundhati Roy is not in fact a guide to empire, though the essays do discuss today’s imperialism. Though such a guide would be welcome, the title is only secondly self-referential; in the text, the phrase is used to say that by favoring direct war and occupation over proxy war and neocolonialism, Bush has made the US Empire clear to all for what it is. (p. 39) In fact, contrary to being a guide to empire, Roy combines her insights and provocative turns of phrase with some fallacies that may serve to misguide the neophyte student of empire.
Strong Points
Roy is a people’s author. She supports the world’s peoples’ basic demands for food, water, shelter, and dignity. (p. 16)
Roy has her finger on the pulse of major world trends, and masterfully illuminates the links between globalization, war, class, race, poverty, and the charge of “terrorism.” For example, Roy writes, “According to the state, when victims refuse to be victims, they become terrorists and are dealt with as such…Poverty is a crime and protesting against further impoverishment is terrorism.” (p. 12 (and again on p. 86 and p. 111))
Though a pacifist, Roy echoes Lenin on key points. When she says “peace is war,” for instance, her point is essentially the same as Lenin’s when he said “imperialism means war.” (p. 15) When she says, “Democracy has become Empire’s euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism,” one imagines she understands why Lenin, before the days of neo-liberalism, spoke of “bourgeois democracy.” (p. 56) She asks “What is to Be Done?” and notes that Lenin posed the same question. (Though it should be noted that Lenin’s answers were more thorough and concrete than Roy’s). (p. 65)
Roy is better at exposing the problems than at illuminating solutions, but she gets points for trying to get beyond mere exposure, writing, “We need to urgently discuss strategies of resistance…and inflict real damage.” (p. 117)
Roy recognizes the limitations of some popular strategies for change. The book’s first essay, “Peace is War,” addresses the role of the media. (pp. 1-21) Using the analogy of “the buffalo and the bees,” she paints a picture of a lumbering old media persistently shadowed by a dynamic and critical new media. With this analogy, she shows the limitation of alternative media work as a primary strategy for change, since the alternative media is forever consigned to follow the lead of the mainstream media, even while the former pokes and prods at the latter. Breaking with social democratic dogma, she likewise acknowledges the limitations of the World Social Forum, Brazil’s Lula and PT, and South Africa’s Mandela and ANC. (pp. 90-91) And to her great credit, she recognizes NGOism as a recipe for depoliticization and dependency.
She is right in calling for people to build counter-power, but wrong if she thinks that that will suffice as a strategy. (pp. 117-118)
Shortcomings
Roy promotes the notion of a “new imperialism,” “neo-imperialism,” or “new age of empire.” (e.g., pp. 82, 84) She fails to recognize (or at least to acknowledge) imperialism’s continuity from the 1890s to the present. For her, as with many bourgeois history textbooks, Old Imperialism seems to refer to the 1890s, implying a century-long absence of imperialism in the century between the Scramble for Africa and Gulf War II.
While she correctly criticizes a number of strategies for change as insufficient, the criticism also applies to many of her own proposals. For instance, she recommends a strategy of boycotting war profiteers without particularizing or interrogating her proposal. While some war profiteers like General Electric have consumer product lines that can be targeted, many do not. Contrary to capitalism’s democratic mythology, consumers do not rule. You can’t boycott Bechtel.
Restricted in her strategic vision by pacifist wishful thinking, she correctly recognizes that “we are at war,” (p. 94) but she dismisses armed struggle as an option. (p. 112) Instead of counterpoising change against the status quo, she sees the alternatives as “bloody change” or “beautiful change.” (p. 118)
In the end, the critical reader will sympathize but not completely agree with Roy when she says, “Hopefully, things will change. A little.” (p. 109)
