“I have to examine the visibility and, hence, the light of the public space we share in our social and political relations. Aristotle defined light as the actualization of the visible. Allowing things to appear, its absence makes us blind. The question of public blindness is actually that of the light that makes things publicly visible.”
“Each particular “I can” that accomplishes a project is both disclosure of the world and a self-disclosure. Through it, we exhibit our identity as the accomplisher of some action.”
“authority is the public presence of the “I can” that binds itself to its word. The root of the authority of political covenants is our collective ability to bind ourselves over time.”
“Given the above, we can say that the public visibility that goes beyond bare sensuous presence is provided by disclosure. To disclose is to make visible by exhibiting the purposes of objects. I have concentrated on their practical purposes but it is easy to see how such purposes, in religious and cultural practices, can be symbolic. The meanings that express the “what is it for” of objects can extend from the practical to the symbolic. It can include the symbolic references of the red banner that the Shining Path raised at Uchuraccay.”
“Neither they nor the villagers could grasp each other’s purposes. They thus were blind to the practical and symbolic meanings correlated to these.”
“It is a well-known psychological truth that we tend to project on the unknown other those aspects of ourselves that we cannot tolerate. In Lacanian terms, he becomes the censored chapter of our consciousness. The other is taken as harboring our darker desires.[vii] In a situation of high tension, this can be disastrous. Seemingly threatened by the other, we react with violence.”
“Such violence does not just result from public blindness. It also engenders it. It does so when it attacks the conditions for public visibility. At their basis is the “I can” in its ability to shape the world and, thus, to disclose its presence and significance. As shaped by multiple agents, public space is characterized by its openness to multiple projects. Violence narrows it by enforcing a single form of the “I can.””
“When violence enters the scene, agreement is secured by force. Those with the greatest physical force determine what can be done and, hence, what can be disclosed. With this, authority becomes identified with power backed by violence. Those who are subject to it have no authority. The difficulty here is that authority is a public identity. It is the public presence of the “I can” that through self-binding preserves (and, hence, generates) its identity across time. When, however, the binding of the “I can” is through violence, such identity becomes problematic. We cannot know how the individual will react in the absence of compulsion. Given this, the person becomes an object of suspicion. The only thing we can see is his enforced identity.”
“Without the conditions for disclosure, the press is as blind as any of the participants. Such blindness points to the absence of authority. It is a function of the lack of shared disclosure based on voluntary agreement.”
“The only way to break free from this is to engage in shared disclosure. To do this, one must break down the exclusions, both social and economic, that prevent people from participating in public action.”
“To engage in it is to give Oedipus back his eyes.”