More on The ConDemned

People are quibbling with and grumbling about my proposal that we identify ourselves as “The ConDemned”. The charges are that it is pessimistic, defeatist, negative.

 

But condemned is what we are. We have been condemned. The condemned is someone with nothing to lose and everything to fight for. The condemned must prove their innocence, demand justice, fight for right(s). Is anyone more alive than the ConDemned when fighting for their life?

 

We have been ConDemned, but by a very fragile ConDemNation. This government can be brought down by this. By the ConDemned.

 

So, no, I don’t think it’s defeatist. I feel energised by the protests, by the use of new media, by the turning political tides in the press.

 

And, please forgive me, but I don’t think we should structure our public discourse with talk about “workers”, nor through the term “proletarian”. “Managers” are condemned too. As are “bosses”. The point is that vast swathes of society, quangos, departments, institutions, services, have been condemned to death by The ConDemNation. They are not dead yet – although building projects have, as we know, been stopped, rejected; departments disbanded, futures cancelled, here and there. And, yes, this is about proletarianization – the proletarianization of academic labour, in particular; the turning into a factory production line of the university. And so on. But, that does not mean we should start shouting about “the workers” and “the proletariat” all over again. The readings of these terms are overdetermined. They mean “the person using this term is a doctrinaire dinosaur, one of history’s losers, an old relic, devoid of new ideas”. And the last thing we want to happen is to have this written off as old hat.