;)
An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire
Arundhati Roy
Pages: 168ISBN: 0-89608-727-1
Format: paper
Release Date: 2004-09-01
This book is also available in cloth
Arundhati Roy offers a lucid briefing on what the Bush administration really means by “compassionate conservativism” and “the war on terror.” In An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, Roy skewers the hypocrisy of this more-democratic-than-thou clan and its cohorts, but more importantly she reminds us that we hold the power to counter tyranny—in all of its forms—in our own hands.
Focusing on the disastrous US occupation of Iraq, Roy urges us to recognize and apply this authority, urging US dockworkers to refuse to load materials heading for Iraq; reservists to reject their call-ups; and activists to organize boycotts of Halliburton. Roy also calls on people in other countries to resist working as “janitor-soldiers,” and leave the detritus of the US invasion untouched.
Roy’s Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire also offers sharp theoretical tools for understanding the New American Empire—a dangerous paradigm, Roy argues here, that is entirely distinct from the imperialism of the British or even the New World Order of George Bush the elder.
Finally, she examines how resistance movements build power, offering examples of nonviolent organizing in South Africa, India, and the United States. Deftly drawing the thread through ostensibly disconnected issues and arenas, Roy pays particular attention to the parallels between globalization in India, the devastation in Iraq, and the structural racism faced by many African Americans in the United States.
Other topics that are related to International Studies are:
Excerpt
from "How Deep Shall We Dig"
… Personally, I don't believe that entering the electoral fray is a path to alternative politics. Not because of that middle-class squeamishness—“politics is dirty” or “all politicians are corrupt”—but because I believe that strategically battles must be waged from positions of strength, not weakness.
The targets of the dual assault of neo-liberalism and communal fascism [in India] are the poor and the minority communities. As neo-liberalism drives its wedge between the rich and the poor, between India Shining and India, it becomes increasingly absurd for any mainstream political party to pretend to represent the interests of both the rich and the poor, because the interests of one can only be represented at the cost of the other. My “interests” as a wealthy Indian (were I to pursue them) would hardly coincide with the interests of a poor farmer in Andhra Pradesh.
A political party that represents the poor will be a poor party. A party with very meager funds. Today it isn't possible to fight an election without funds. Putting a couple of well-known social activists into parliament is interesting, but not really politically meaningful. Not a process worth channeling all our energies into. Individual charisma, personality politics, cannot effect radical change.
However, being poor is not the same as being we...
Arundhati Roy
Click here to view Arundhati Roy's full Author PageArundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997. It sold over 6,000,000 copies worldwide and has been translated into over 20 languages. The recipient of the 2002 Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom, she was also granted the 2006 Sahitya Akademi Award for her book The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but refused the award to protest Indian governmental actions. Her nonfiction books include An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (South End Press, 2004); War Talk (South End Press, 2003); Power Politics (South End Press, 2002); and The Cost of Living (Modern Library, 1998); and she discusses international politics further in The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Interviews with Arundhati Roy, with David Barsamian (South End Press, 2004). She lives in New Delhi, India.