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Epilogue: The Globalization of Dissent Arundhati Roy Rails Against ‘‘Imperial Democracy’’ Empire’s conquests are being carried out in your name. Worldwide popular opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq was considerable. As mentioned above, in a Gallup International Poll in January 2003 approximately half of all global interviewees said they were not in favor of military action against Iraq under any circumstances, and even if the war were first approved by the United Nations, only about one-third of those interviewed stated that they would affirmatively support it.1 In the weeks before the United States commenced Operation Shock and Awe in March 2003, more than 10 million people across the world marched against the war.2 The sheer size of organized antiwar activity directed at the United States from abroad warrants the inclusion of at least one speech in this anthology. But the speech below is included for more than the sake of diversity. While it demonstrates many of the standard features of American antiwar speeches, it also helps illustrate the provenance of Americans ’ antiwar dissent and, in that way, sharpens our understanding of the subject. ‘‘Empire’s conquests are being carried out in your name,’’ Indian activist Arundhati Roy reminds her American audience. Roy is best known for her first and only novel, The God of Small Things (1997), which has been translated into over thirty languages. Her other writings are all political nonfiction. In ‘‘The Great Indian Rape Trick’’ (1994), Roy investigated whether a filmmaker ought to restage the rape of a living woman without her consent.3 The Cost of Living (1999) addressed the effect of India’s dams on rural populations, and the implications of India’s nuclear arsenal. Power Politics (2001) criticized, among other things, privatization in India, and recounted how her criticism of the Indian government earned her a night in jail. In her most recent works, War Talk (2003), An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire (2004), and The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile (2004), Roy turned her attention wholly toward war, imperialism, and, ever increasingly, the United States. Roy delivered the following address, entitled ‘‘Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free),’’ on May 13, 2003, to a full house of three thousand at New PAGE 208 ................. 18232$ EPLG 05-30-12 14:56:11 PS epilogue 209 York City’s Riverside Church, where thirty-six years earlier Martin Luther King Jr. had condemned America’s involvement in Vietnam. Roy’s poised and poetic style, as emotionally charged as King’s but infinitely more embittered, is the result of carefully designed rhetorical devices. Early in her remarks, for example, Roy employs simile: ‘‘I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.’’ The speech’s climax is constructed with a provocative metaphor: ‘‘Democracy is the Free World’s whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will.’’ These classical rhetorical devices are effective because they are memorable, and memorable because they are imaginative. Roy’s speech, which contains a rich and venomous vocabulary, is that of a person conscious of the limits of language and the power of metaphor to fill in the gaps of what words cannot convey. ‘‘As a writer,’’ Roy says of her craft, ‘‘one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize , if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought.’’4 Simile and metaphor are the primary vehicles Roy uses to accomplish these ends. Roy’s speech may be easily criticized as style over substance, not because it lacks substance, but because it is so stylized. At the speech’s best, Roy speaks with beauty of an artist and the political consciousnesses of a statesman—literary politics itself. In the excerpted portion of the speech, for example, Roy provides a detailed, though starkly partisan, discussion of the war’s allegedly faulty justification, its management, and its unpopularity. There, she also discusses (and alleges) who is paying for the war (the poor), who is fighting it (the poor), and who will benefit from it (corporate, military, and governmental leadership). At the speech’s worst, though, Roy evidences a complete lack of diplomacy that impedes well-intentioned attempts at political compromise. Even as the speech’s allegations are powerful enough to excite and galvanize the doves, her intemperance virtually guarantees that it will be ignored or summarily dismissed by the hawks. in these times, when we...

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