Braudel is the pen name of a French American sociologist currently experimenting with writing genres other than academic.
As some people know, Braudel writes about large issues and objects, such as civilizations, their genesis, and their decline. Given the historical context in which it is produced, this blog has chances to be about the descending part of the route.
The name is not Twilight Zone but, in homage to one of Braudel’s favorite Coetzee novels: Waiting for the Barbarians. As in the novel, the name of lands of origin do not truly matter here. Only out of some professional scruple was the author’s double nationality indicated, as a token of transparency and traceability. As in the novel, what really matters is that the posts are outposts of something like a crumbling empire. As such, of course, the places of origin make full sense.
As we wait for the barbarians anytime, here is the chronicle of a civilization on the edge. The precise outcome of its becoming is not known. The texture, the shape, the very density of the brink on which we are sitting cannot be fathomed. It is a matter of palpation, assessment, guess, at most. Between terrorists and legal torturers, between ethnocentrism and progress, between Bobo neurosis and sheer combustion, what is our fate? Authoritarianism, anarchy, or something we cannot name because our imagination is bounded by models of a century past? Organized labor or better policy, Sarkozy or Obama: are these our options?
For the time being, there are clues, indexes, indicators. Things happen. New ways offer themselves, of talking and perhaps acting, perhaps rallying, perhaps forming new assemblages. Who knows. For the time being, there are stories to be told and there is a voice to be found.
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