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(re)Appropriation , Neo Liberalism and Critical Modernism

By Anonymous


After reading Harvey’s, Vivian’s and Dutta & Pal’s readings, I cant help feeling awestruck at the capacity of Neo-liberalism to mould its facades to appropriate events/ entities that in their essence are antithetical to it. I am referring to a recurrent phenomenon where neoliberal projects re-brand events/ entities which in some way engender themes that are contrary to the hegemonic universalism of neoliberalism. The phenomenon is fittingly outlined in Vivian’s analysis of the 9/11/2002 epideictic. Contemporary popular culture is also replete with such rebranding of icons. For instance the popular versions (and thereby versions that belong to the civic memory) of the story of Indian freedom struggle rebrand one of the key figures Bhagat Singh to render futile his politics. Singh in being revered as shaheed-e-azam (the most glorious of martyrs) by the state apparatus is divorced, as an icon, from the fact that he was one of the first Marxists in India and his visions of revolution, politics and freedom were those of the Left. In using the trope of shaheed-e-azam and singing paeans to the glory of Singh, popular versions carefully excite responses of reverence and inspiration and at the same time sever from his iconic status, the radical nature of his politics. In being called a shaheed(martyr) Singh is put in the ilk of venerated founding figures of Indian Independence and by extension shown to be a part of the non-left homogeneous pantheon. Most interestingly, Singh is credited for coining the single slogan that characterizes Indian independence: “Inqelab Zindabad” (Long live revolution!), however the next clause of the slogan is mysteriously excluded—no surprises that this clause is to be translated as: “Down with Imperialism!” As I read it, Critical Modernism can provide us a useful lens to look at phenomena like this.

When “power and structure are located within the constitutive spaces of discourse” (Pal and Dutta, p.174) one can profitably capture the dynamics of neoliberal (re)appropriation by recognizing the constitutive nature of the discursive space while at the same time subjecting its particular constellations to interrogations of power, control and hegemony. In so doing Critical Modernism potentially stands as a mode of inquiry that can be applied to areas in addition to Public Relations practice.

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