At Cooper Street

The reported racial attack on a Sikh youth at Cooper Street in Melbourne last Sunday again shows that the problem has not yet gone away. However, one positive point was that there was an attempt to prevent the attack by the companions of the attacking youth and also by the bus driver and a passenger at the bus station where the attack took place. We have in the past also drawn attention to this positive aspect of the Australian society. This indeed is an indication that getting out of what the French thinker Paul Virilio called the 'social swamp' is actually possible. This 'social swamp' is a result of individuals cooped up in their 'own black holes' and complementing the micro- fascism of local gangs who dictate local laws and local conditions of living, interacting and thinking in the modern(hyper modern) urban settings. This 'social swamp' according to him actually completes the 'obvious and super organised society' of the western world in the current times. This technologically super organised society he points out is driven by the relentless logic of speed which plays a crucial part in the militarization of urban space and the transformation of social, political and cultural life. Indeed history itself makes 'progress at the speed of its weapons system' It is here that Virilio tries to rescue a sense of history in his critique of the famous cyber Australian artists such as Stelarc. This critique by the humanist Virilio is to prevent situations where political power aided by technoscience turns against its own people. This happened, for example, recently in September 2009 when the military ruler of Guinea in Africa turned the guns at his own people who were holding a protest rally. Hundreds were killed and injured. Really a tragic consequence of attempts to control the mind and body. In India we need to be careful of the ' black hole' phenomenon as evidenced in the bizarre case of the murder committed by the 'brilliant' Phd student of IIT which was reported yesterday. At the same time the attempts to dictate what and how people should think in the wake of the condemnable Maoist violence can only throw us in to a 'social swamp'.(SFC, PG with the help of Ajay Mahurkar and Dr. Dolly Mathew)