Ivo Mosley (Exeter, imprint academic at the Political Studies Association Conference): Spending two days in academe has stimulated me to some reflections. There is no doubt that, with funding now dependent upon government, academia has been suborned as an intellectual regiment in the army of Western hegemony. This can seem puzzling. Specifically, how does the dominant culture in academia, political correctness, serve Western domination?
Political correctness is among other things the doctrine that we are all born genetically equal in the struggle for resources. It bears the same functional relation to globalised kleptocracy as the missionary movement did to colonialism; it acts as a cover and an excuse. The cover is that no one will notice the West's grand larceny, because in theory all are equally empowered to join in too. The excuse is that we all want the same thing, and with Western help, the 'underdeveloped' nations will get some too. In addition, there is the liberal justification of interference and military assault in countries who do not value ‘democracy' and ‘freedom' as we do. The reality beyond the fiction is: wealth flows to the West, while chaos, serfdom and eco-destruction go the other way.
Having invented the tools by which world domination has been achieved - technology, the business corporation and electoral representation (misnamed democracy) - we find ourselves outperformed now in the use of these tools by other groups, particularly the Chinese. I wonder how political correctness will fare in these changed circumstances.
The project of the West was revealed brazenly in one of the talks, where we were shown on a screen two pictures: one, of brand shiny-new Peugeot people-carrier, the other of a man on a donkey by a ramshackle shed and some trees, smoking a cigarette. The message was explicit: it is desperately unfair that the man on the donkey cannot afford the shiny new car and all the lifestyle trappings that go with it. My own reaction to this - sitting in a room made entirely of plastic with the roar of modern life pouring in through the windows - was an intense desire to be the man on the donkey. A vision of peace glimpsed from strife; of a simple Eden, glimpsed from quite a different place.
Ivo Mosley has been blogging the Political Studies Association’s Swansea conference: Democracy, Governance and Conflict: Dilemmas of Theory and Practice. You can read his series in full here.
