Thoughts on Charles Clarke's speech.

[chickenfeet2003]

Charles Clarke's contribution to today's Guardian is very interesting. On the one hand it's an uncommonly open presentation of the the "New Authoritarianism", on the other it's a series of very obvious and clumsy rhetorical devices

Comments

[violetsaunders]

This article by Charles Clarke is a half-baked and lazy piece of writing at best. Your careful response overestimates the intellectual coherence or depth it contains, I think. The first part - about the media's use of simpilistic and exagerrated language - I have some sympathy with. A lot of popular media rhetoric IS simiplistic, exaggerated and lacking in subtlety. This has very little to do with the second part where Clarke claims that we need a new 'modern' understanding of human rights which embraces comparatively trivial nuisances (such as noisy neighbours). I think this tendency in modern government to legislate for and police everyday aspects of living has long roots. (1)The perceptible tendency over long historical periods for central governments to use new technology to control everyday domestic life in ever greater detail (in place of the family - book sized thesis there!). (2) The development and influence of symbolic interactionism in social theory which argues essentially that society is infinitely dynamic and composed and controlled through mutable behaviours and not just through the distribution of static commodities such as wealth. In the latter case Giddens' adaptation of s-i to a neo-socialist framework has been a critical influence on New Labour, although Thatcher's declamation that there is 'no such thing as society' was ultimately influenced by similar (pre-Giddens) ideas.

Sorry if this doesn't make sense - constantly distracted by good documentary on Vivaldi and Venice on BBC4 (which actually is relevant - orphans 'rehabilitated' through active engagement in music).

[chickenfeet2003]

It makes sense. See also my reply to a_d_medievalist which suggests that there is a sort of technocratic hijacking of Habermas going on here.