Abstract
Two major events have led to the devilish exposure of Uncle Sam’s dishonesty in recent years, and, in turn led to Powell’s speech falling on deaf ears: one is September 11 which like an earthquake cracked the thinly spread coating holding world order and the great power system together, the other has been the slow, steady rise of social movements that oppose—in public—the very same order that September 11 cracked wide open. While the United States used to get away with this strategy of undoing, it is clear that now it will have to back down or explain history. Backing down seems the best option for a state that prides itself on not having a history (Baudrillard). Mavericks don’t like to be “branded” because it leaves a trace.
I’m very pleased to be here as the secretary of state of a relatively new country on the face of the earth. But I think I can take some credit sitting here as being the representative of the oldest democracy that is assembled here around this table.
—Colin Powell, address to the Security Council, February 14, 2003
Undoing (what has been done): Psychological mechanism whereby the subject makes an attempt to cause past thoughts, words, gestures or actions not to have occurred; to this end he makes use of thought or behavior having the opposite meaning.
—Laplanche and Pontalis 1967, 477
The future can always be imported.
—Pico Iyer, “Abandoning the Past, Mired in the Moment”
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© 2005 Janie Leatherman and Julie Webber
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Webber, J.A. (2005). Outline of a Generic Will: Global Arrogance, Social Movements, and the Net. In: Leatherman, J., Webber, J. (eds) Charting Transnational Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981080_2
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