Precious Subversion

That's right. Subversion is a precious thing and essential to Western culture. Yet today we seem to be embarked on a campaign to stamp it out. Jean-Claude Guillebaud argues the point in today's Le Monde:

Western modernity tends to malign those who resist it and to ignore those who question it....The late philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis was right to ask the question in these terms: Why have affluent, liberal societies become incapable of exerting an emancipating influence on the rest of the world? Why is modernity, of which we are all the messengers, rejected or violently resisted almost everywhere on the planet? In other words, what doesn't work?

Each one of us, in our heart of hearts, knows the answer. If the West is in crisis, it is because it has ceased to exercise self-criticism --one of the West's own essential components. Modernity and liberal globalization are not to be questioned. They are privileges and injunctions. They no longer represent precious subversion, but an ideology of conquest.