Re: <nettime> Stormy weather?

[d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk]

Brian's original Stormy Weather post semed designed to wake up the many 
of us who feel we are all sleep walking towards the precipice. I 
couldn't help remembering the book “Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War 
in 1914” (Christopher Clark. 2012).

The title alone seems an apt way to describe our own political elites. 
But the book might also offer something useful in Clarke’s particular 
way of engaging differently with the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ in his complex 
geopolitical analysis of the road to the “Great War”. In the 
introduction he points out that although *how* and *why* are logically 
inseparable they lead in two directions. The *how* invites us to look 
closely at the sequences of interactions that produced certain outcomes 
[….] whilst the *why* invites us to go in search of remote categorical 
causes; imperialism, nationalism, armaments, alliances, high 
finance…ideas of national honour…  [we might substitute colonialism, 
neo-liberalism, capitalism etc] “The why brings about a certain 
analytical clarity, but it also has a distorting effect, because it 
creates the illusion of a steadily building causal pressure [….] 
political actors become mere executors of forces long established and 
beyond their control.”

In contrast Clark asserts that his story “is saturated, with agency” … 
decision makers at all levels from emperors to lesser officials (or even 
assassins) walked towards danger in watchful calculated steps.” […] His 
aim is to let the why answers grow out of the how answers rather than 
the other way around… Once we pose the question why responsibility or 
even guilt becomes the overriding focal point.

It may not offer us much, but it just seemed that Clark’s approach might 
help us guard against us so over-regarding the explanatory power of 
large-scale historical forces that we underestimate the importance of 
amplifying our own collective and individual agency in confronting the 
power wielded by key (or elite) political actors. It might mitigate 
against the overwhelming feeling of impotence that sometimes seems to 
turn the least and the best us all into sleepwalkers.


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