Arundhati Roy, is the author of The God of Small Things, and, as a social activist, focuses on the relationship between citizens and the State. Roy gave a speech shortly after 911. Here is an excerpt, after exploring some history of American adventurism:
This historical dredging is not offered as an accusation or a provocation. But just to share the grief of history. To thin the mist a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: Welcome to the World.
“Welcome to the World”! What she seems to mean in this speech is that the USA had insulated itself against the world through a:
failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you’re not a Bushie you’re a Taliban. If you don’t love us, you hate us. If you’re not Good you’re Evil. If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.
And now in 2001, 911 functioned to break through this insulation based as it is on linguistic simple-mindedness. Such black-white thinking heaved on us from the State, keeps suffering out and simplistic hopes high, but Roy, in welcoming the USA “to the world” is inviting the USA to imagine suffering not as something outside its borders but as a reality everywhere. No one is excluded. The West is trying to build a culture, a way of life that excludes suffering and death in its ideology (since we cannot avoid either in fact)! Roy sarcastically speaks to this way of life:
Meanwhile, down at the Mall there’s a mid-season sale. Everything’s discounted – oceans, rivers, oil, gene pools, fig wasps, flowers, childhoods, aluminum factories, phone companies, wisdom, wilderness, civil rights, ecosystems, air – all 4,600 million years of evolution. It’s packed, sealed, tagged, valued and available off the rack. (No returns). As for justice – I’m told it’s on offer too. You can get the best that money can buy.
But now, as Terrorism unleashes it most recent attack in France, I can hear Roy’s words ringing in my ears:
Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened King stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here today, it’s hard for me to say this, but ‘The American Way of Life’ is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America. Fortunately, power has a shelf-life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the War Against Terror casts its net wider and wider, America’s corporate heart is haemorrhaging.
Maybe that time is approaching fast now. A way of life that excludes suffering and death on principle (i.e. no cultural practices that can give these mysteries their due) is not, as Roy says, sustainable.
Roy ends this long speech in a remarkable way. She says:
Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.
https://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/9-11/come_september.htm