everything remains as it never was

Old habits die hard, but here I am attempting to break the old habit of "never writing anything, ever".

Anyways, it's basically summer. My coursework for my graduate degree are all currently finished (although I am hoping to sit in on some courses the fall, but that's neither here nor there), so I'm left with a little over a year to churn out a thesis. I have a general idea for a topic but I should probably nail something down - originally I wanted to go with something to do with the rights of transgendered people in Canada, but now it's drifting more towards something like multiculturalism (a topic I'm feeling surprisingly comfortable approaching)... both of which increasingly seem to hinge on more abstract questions, like the nature of the political subject, and the political implications of adopting different stances towards conceptualising the human subject. Really exciting, I know, and sure to thrill people who were vaguely interested in my honours thesis on Newfoundland politics.

But I am interested in pursuing obtuse theoretical debates! I just don't want to detach myself completely from real life. I'm hoping that with the upcoming provincial election in 2011 I will be able to immerse myself in some actual concrete matters (I guess this could have applied during the recent federal election, but I honestly don't care that much about federal politics aside from a purely analytical perspective... as a Newfoundlander I have accepted that federal politics is generally more something that happens to me than something I effect, haha). Danny Williams has since retired from provincial politics so our hilariously inept government no longer seems invincible - it's nice. The Muskrat Falls thing seems like a fiasco in the making, so it might be worth keeping on top of. At any rate, I feel like the provincial scene is lacking a good 'critical' voice - not just in the sense of opposition to the sitting government, but to the systemic totality of it all. Haha, I'm such a douchebag.

Meanwhile, though, it is all about the intellectual labour (and finding a paying job so I can eat in the meantime). I've got a small selection of books I want to work my way through in the next month or so - specifically, Alain Badiou's Ethics - An Essay on the Understanding of Evil and Iris Marion Young's Justice and the Politics of Difference. I feel reading these two books together will be a good exercise, because Young seems to set the stage for contemporary debates in political theory around questions of justice related to subjectivity from a post-modern/critical perspective, while Badiou apparently sets out to obliterate both Young's (not explicitly, of course) position and the Anglo-American liberal mainstream she sets herself up against. Naturally, I'm much more interested in Badiou, but reading both should give me enough material to form a really wicked research question that might get me into a good PhD program. This would probably also be easier if my supervisor wasn't in Ontario for the summer, but it's all good.

But other than thesis work, I don't have much planned for the summer. Taking in a couple concerts/festivals (Supertramp in June, Salmon Fest and Osheaga in July) should be deadly, doing some writing with Sondi, helping out the provincial Liberals (I am, after all, a committed Smallwoodist), and generally trying to improve my cooking skills/get outside more. I'm literally anticipating the highlight of my summer being a visit to the Maoist bookstore in Montreal. Yes, I will be paying for everything in cash, thanks.

The Parable of the Failed State

The thing that has been - it is what will be again, and that which has been done is that which will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it may be said, See, this is new? It has already been, in the vast ages of time which were before us. - Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

At this time [the year 1908 – D.], Canadian financial interests joined forces with the Reid Newfoundland Company in an effort to manipulate Newfoundland into confederation. Their instrument was E.P. Morris, Bond’s minister of justice, who left the Liberals and formed his own party in 1907. The new People’s party was drawn from a growing middle class of small businessmen, lawyers, journalists, and newly prosperous outport merchants, not all of whom were aware of Morris’ secret corporate backing. The party was marked by a reversion to the late nineteenth-century policy of adventurism. Morris capitalised on recent industrial development and prospering fisheries to announce a programme of extensive national development encompassing agriculture, mining, local manufacturing, and the fisheries; its keystone the construction of several costly branch railways. Succumbing to Morris’ promises of “something for everyone,” Newfoundlanders ignored the lessons of 1894 [a bank crash/depression that devastated the country – D.], becoming caught up in a euphoria that the revenue was ultimately incapable of supporting. They ousted the cautious Bond from power.

In the process, political life underwent a substantial change. During the Whiteway era, parties had been organised on the basis of rival views of Newfoundland’s destiny. After 1900, only Bond’s party maintained a coherent vision of the future, but his Liberalism was as much identified with his hostility to the Reid interests as it was with his nationalistic fisheries policy. Morris’ party was no more than a fraud, a vehicle to be used by its leaders to buy their way into office and further their ambitions. It represented cooperation with the Reids, and for the rank-and-file it became an efficient channel for patronage and profit. Confederation was shelved. Uninspired by a national vision, politicians contented themselves with extracting a living from the system, and reduced politics to the supervision of an unwieldy and inadequate administrative structure. Parties evaded fundamental economic and social issues and as a result became the expression not of ideas, but of violent personality conflicts. [Emphasis added – D.]

_{From Ian D.H. McDonald’s “To Each His Own”: William Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union in Newfoundland Politics, 1908-1925, pg. 3}