Political Consciousness
“Man is a political animal” (Aristotle, Politics)
I have been listening to the news more. In December, I stumbled onto Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales and Nermeen Shaikh, and their style of reporting—characterized, for me, by their attention to the perspectives of the members of afflicted communities (as opposed to just the leaders), non-specialists commentators, citizen reporters and, generally, to questions of humanitarianism, democracy, and global community—has (in combination, of course, with many other aspects of my life) awakened something in me that I recognize as a political consciousness. This consciousness is political, not by virtue of its association with a particular political movement or ideology (I’m not, for example, attracted to DemocracyNow! for its liberalism), but, more simply, I call it political because it concerns itself with the relationship between my own thinking and the thinking of others, my own experience and the experience of others, my self and other’s various selves.
Admittedly, I have the sense that my political consciousness has arrived somewhat late. Although I have no idea who could possibly assess the punctuality of this kind of change (one of the characteristics of metamorphosis, after all, is that it keeps a unique schedule).
