Dialectical Confusions

Politics (or philosophy and intellectual inquiry in general) have taken on a deep importance for me (perhaps as a substitute, or at least I hope a substitute, for metaphysical shite). For this reason I frequently feel the need to go back to first principles and justify myself, remind myself what's it all about, explain the decision to engage - in a time, a place and a milieu where such engagement is unusual. (I think I independently came up with the phrase "you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you" before discovering that Trotsky had said effectively the same thing about, funnily enough, the dialectic.) I was, thus, rather impressed by that Foucault quote when I came across it a couple of years ago.

Incidentally, I think that the fact that so many people are in fact "weighed down" by such "blindnes", "deafness" and "density of ideology" as to take little or no interest in politics amounts to perhaps the most interesting question today facing political theory and analysis.

Of course, it could just be that Foucault and I are no better than religious fundamentalists - the truth of our creed (i.e. politics) so obvious as to be inexplicable. Thus when asked why bother with politics we simply retort that those who aren't interested are the victims of the ideology of depoliticisation. On the other hand we could be right.

If the latter were true there would be consequences for the way most people see the world.