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17 Democracy's Promise and the Politics of Worldliness in the Age of Terror Henry A. Giroux It has become commonplace to acknowledge that post-civil rights America is characterized by a declining interest in and misgiving about mainstream national politics. In a society in which the public sphere is largely characterized by a culture of fear and the public realm is largely accredited through the discourse of consumerism, politics is, for the most part, emptied of any substance (see Bauman Consuming Life). Similarly, the space of official politics increasingly appears utterly corrupt and inhabited by right-wing ideologues who, in their Talibanlike orthodoxy, exhibit a deep disdain for debate, dialogue, and democracy itself. What is much less discussed is the way this crisis in American democracy has been heralded and exacerbated by the nation's increasing skepticism—or even overt hostility—toward the educational system, if not critical thought itself (see Giroux and Giroux). Prepackaged knowledge produced by the dominant media along with reified representations of government Orwellian newspeak work aggressively to usurp critical consciousness and impede democratic critique and social engagement. Cynicism about politics and skepticism about education have become mutually reinforcing tendencies that to be understood must be analyzed in tandem. Emptied of any appreciable content, democracy is imperiled as individuals are unable to translate their privately suffered misery into broadly shared public concerns and collective action.As the structures of public space and the sites for producing engaged citizens are mutated, commercialized , and militarized, the crushing effects of domination spread out to all aspects of society and war and violence increasingly become the primary organizing principle of politics (see Hardt and Negri). The promise of democracy in the United States appears to be receding as the dark clouds of authoritarianism increasingly spread through every facet of state and civil society (see Giroux, Against the New Authoritarianism). Under such circumstances , the prevalence of war and violence is evident not only in the ongoing and ill-fated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in the increasing assault being waged at home on democratic values, social provisions, and increasingly on all of 18 Henry A. Giroux those populations considered either unpatriotic because they do not conform to the dictates of an imperial presidency or disposable because they have been relegated to the human waste of global neoliberalism. The war at home has given rise not only to a crushing attack on civil liberties—most evident in the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which conveniently allows the Bush administration to detain indefinitely anyone deemed an enemy combatant while denying them recourse to the traditional right to challenge his or her detention through legal means—but also to an assault on those populations now considered disposable and redundant under the logic of a ruthless market fundamentalism. While the United States has never been free of repression, there is a special viciousness that marks the current regime. War, violence, and an attack on human rights coupled with the assault on the social state and the rise of an all-encompassing militarism make this government stand out for its antidemocratic policies. The varied populations made disposable under a militarized neoliberalism occupy a globalized space of ruthless politics in which the categories of "citizen" and "democratic representation ," once integral to national politics, are no longer recognized. In the past, people who were marginalized by class and race could at least expect a modicum of support from the government, either through an array of limited social provisions or because they still had some value as part of a reserve army of unemployed labor. That is no longer true. With social dynamics now organized according to a remorseless neoliberal ideology, there has been a shift away from working toward getting ahead to the much more deadly task of struggling to stay alive. Many now argue that this new form of biopolitics is conditioned by a permanent state of class and racial exception in which, as Achille Mbembe asserts, "vast populations are subject to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead" (40). Disposable populations are less visible, relegated to the frontier zones of relative invisibility and removed from public view. Such populations are often warehoused in schools that resemble boot camps, dispersed to dank and dangerous workplaces far from the enclaves of the tourist industries, incarcerated in prisons that privilege punishment over rehabilitation, or consigned to a life of permanent unemployment. Rendered redundant as a result of the collapse...

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