Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Michel de Montaigne to the New Media: Reading Virginia Woolf in the Twenty-First Century
- Part I ‘Theorising’ Reading, ‘Theorising’ Language
- Part II The Politics of Writing
- Part III Dialogue and Dissent
- Conclusion: ‘Thinking Against the Current’
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion: ‘Thinking Against the Current’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: From Michel de Montaigne to the New Media: Reading Virginia Woolf in the Twenty-First Century
- Part I ‘Theorising’ Reading, ‘Theorising’ Language
- Part II The Politics of Writing
- Part III Dialogue and Dissent
- Conclusion: ‘Thinking Against the Current’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons.
Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to EmpireResistance, with its inextricable connection to freedom, expressed and enacted by the ‘essayistic’, plays a crucial role in this study and, most importantly, in our lives today. But questions abound. Has it become more difficult today to resist the ‘official story’ – the reporting of corporate/government fraud (almost inseparable), military cover-ups, torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, loss of constitutional rights, increasing violence against women, war crimes, slavery and more – or have we been too overwhelmed to focus? In some ways, the shocking conditions seem to be awakening certain segments of the populace but the level of complacency is still frightening. It is troubling to find that there is no outrage, except for the consistent cry: ‘Where is the outrage?’
Woolf's call for participation, for activity, for critical thinking and critical reading seems quite urgent today, and we do see glimmers of hope as we watch sit-ins, reminiscent of the 1960s, and individuals with enormous courage who risk their lives to fight oppression.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Language , pp. 113 - 118Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010