Thursday, August 03, 2006

A bird attacked me today. Repeatedly. And then at work Col Sanders kicked me in the shins. Ok, I made that part up, but the bird story is true. It grazed my head! Jerks.
Today in Anthropology class we watched a film about the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. That's right, I'm 7 years behind in current events. Why do I never know what's going on? Anyways, I've always been very pro-protests, but the issue we discussed in class was the extent to which protests and demonstrations have the effect of just reinforcing the existing system. In the film, the demonstrators claimed victory at the end. That was 7 years ago, and they thought they had changed the way WTO meetings would be conducted from then on. But there's demonstrations at every WTO meeting. Being involved in demonstrations sustains the illusion of freedom of speech and all that... maybe that's all it does; the powers that be still ignore the people. But as long as we can do these demonstrations and claim victory, we feel like we've made a difference. It's all HEGEMONY (see the Lapsipedia of Literary Theory [woefully incomplete still] for all my biased definitions—hegemony is under Marxism).

No comments: