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Isaac Rosa – Comité de Apoyo de ATTAC España

Cada vez que oigo eso de “Grecia negocia contrarreloj para evitar la quiebra”, me hago siempre la misma pregunta: ¿Quebrar Grecia? ¿Es que puede quebrar más todavía?

Ah, ya entiendo: hablan de la quiebra formal, de cara a la banca y los inversores, esa declaración de bancarrota que pondría en problemas a los bancos acreedores y a la zona euro, y que los dirigentes europeos intentan evitar a toda costa, no por compasión, sino porque mientras los carroñeros sigan cebándose con ese cadáver no picotearán demasiado en otros países.

Porque al margen de esa quiebra técnica, que no acaba de descartarse, el país no puede estar ya más quebrado. Tenemos por un lado la quiebra económica, con un país arruinado y al que el tratamiento recetado por Europa condena a no poder andar solo durante muchos años. Por otro lado, la quiebra social, con una ciudadanía abandonada a su suerte, víctima de una política de tierra quemada que extiende la miseria e hipoteca el futuro de varias generaciones.

Está también, no menos importante, la quiebra democrática: un gobierno obligado a renunciar, un Parlamento sometido al chantaje de la ‘troika’, y un gobierno tecnocrático impuesto que pese a todo no consigue los resultados esperados. Si falla también Papademos, si ni con él se dejan torcer el brazo tanto como se les exige, ¿qué será lo siguiente? ¿Bastará con imponer un comisario europeo que administre el país, como piden algunos en Alemania? ¿O habrá que ocuparlos militarmente?

Teniendo quebradas la economía, el Estado, la sociedad, la democracia, la soberanía y el futuro, ¿qué será lo siguiente que le rompan? ¿Cuál será la siguiente quiebra, como pago para evitar la Quiebra con mayúscula? ¿La quiebra territorial, perdiendo unas cuantas islas, como ya se insinuó en su día? ¿La quiebra patrimonial, subastando sus riquezas arqueológicas? ¿La quiebra nacional, disolviendo el país y dividiendo sus pedazos entre los acreedores para que hagan con ellos lo que quieran (montar un Las Vegas, por ejemplo)?

Tal vez Grecia logre al final salvarse de la quiebra, sí. Grecia, o lo que quede de ella.

Artículo publicado en Público.

Instead of bridling about criticism, teachers should take on board Michael Wilshaw's plans for improving schools

Britain's teachers deserve more sympathy. Any conversation about our economic and social ills almost always ends with the lowest common denominator agreement that education must be improved. Too many British children are not educated creatively to solve problems and are not in command of the basics. So runs the allegation and such failings are disguised by allegedly soft exams and grade inflation. Our teachers, by almost universal agreement, are letting the next generation down.

Yet there is one statistic that haunts me. A report last year found that five schools – St Paul's boys and girls, Westminster, Eton and Hills Road sixth form college in Cambridge (this last, unlike the others, in the state sector) – sent more students to Oxbridge over a period of three years than 2,000 other secondary schools combined. Around 35,000 children every year get the three As that could make them a candidate for our top universities; too few of them come from those 2,000 schools – the single biggest obstacle to promoting social mobility. Meanwhile, a third of this eligible pool of applicants come from private schools.

These are such alarming figures that much more is at work than any inadequacy on the part of our teachers. The army of teachers' critics too rarely acknowledges the many heartbreaking barriers to teaching well in so many of our schools – the children's disillusion and poverty, endemically disrupted classes and the recognition that however hard a pupil works he or she will never get a good job locally. The pupils and their schools are trapped.

But yet. To concede everything to broader economic and social forces is a counsel of despair. There are examples of brilliant schools in these areas; a well-led, dynamic school can become a site of hope and the unleashing of possibility. If the depressed parts of Britain are to break out of their spiral of decline, we have to start somewhere.

So it was good to hear Sir Michael Wilshaw, the incoming head of Ofsted, announcing in his first major speech last week that he would not tolerate the educational mediocrity that so besets Britain. Too many schools had been labelled as "outstanding" by Ofsted when they were not; he wanted outstanding to mean just that.

Wilshaw's aim is to create a "no-excuses" culture and he sees the indispensable means as stronger leadership in schools. Heads and their senior team should show their passion and commitment to teaching in everything they say or do, he said. They must be committed to professional development; they must ensure that performance management robustly rewards those who teach well. Equally, they must make sure something is done about those who consistently underperform.

Some individual heads rallied to his side, but then came the ritualistic condemnation from the teachers' unions. Chris Keates, general secretary of NASUWT, said Wilshaw "is trashing the school system, trashing the reputation of Ofsted… this is puerile game-playing at the expense of schools, their teachers and pupils". Even Malcolm Trobe, deputy general secretary of ASCL (which represents many heads), declared that Wilshaw's comments were "demoralising dedicated professionals… this is no way to improve our education system, nor to treat hard-working professionals".

So the battle lines are drawn. Keates and Trobe do speak for many teachers and heads who feel beleaguered and misunderstood. But defensive aggression in protection of the status quo, the default mode of so much contemporary trade unionism, will not advance the teachers' cause, the cause of education or the interests of their pupils. I know I dream, but imagine if the teachers' collective response had been to welcome Wilshaw's call to arms; to say that they agreed that it was a disgrace that thousands of our schools produced such woeful results; wanted to work wholeheartedly to improve leadership and agreed fully that good teachers should be acknowledged and rewarded; and action would be taken against poor performers. The nation would have applauded.

They could then have built on that bridgehead of support to argue that teachers could not fight this battle alone; that to inspire kids while doing so little to create possibilities for them once they leave school is betrayal; that to try and make any progress in the face of swingeing cuts in capital budgets and frozen teacher pay is to ask close to the impossible. They would do their part, but others should do theirs. In this way, teachers could transform themselves into the formidable leaders of a coalition pressing for broad-based economic and social improvement.

There will be teachers and heads who are desperate to open up such a national conversation, but their voices are drowned out. The heart of the problem is that teachers as a profession are reluctant to embrace the idea that there must be rewards and consequences for good and bad performance – the operational guts of what Wilshaw proposes when he argues for a no-excuses, performance-orientated culture in schools.

He has unexpected allies. The young Karl Marx criticised the utopian egalitarianism of the German socialists' Gotha programme by saying that socialists had to accept that good workers would expect the appropriate rewards, but would also expect the problem of shirkers and poor workers to be addressed.

Confronting poor performance is tough. It means establishing a framework so that teachers know what is expected, one that allows for tough conversations when those expectations are not met. It offers the chance of professional development but if that fails, teachers might lose not just pay but their jobs.

It also means that those who do well get quicker opportunities for promotion and salary hikes. To deliver such a regime demands incredible fortitude and determination from heads, along with the inspiration to show that it matters. Inevitably, they will be charged with being unfair and of victimising weaker colleagues. It is hard to marry performance with the collegiality of a staff room.

It is understandable why teacher unions are so resistant to performance-management: the doctrine is that teaching is a vocation and every teacher wants to do a good job. Performance-management is divisive. But yes, while everyone might want to do a good job, not everyone can or does. Not to manage performance is itself an extraordinary statement; it means giving up on trying to establish a framework for what good might look like and means selling the pass to state education's many enemies. Education, like the country, is at a crossroads. Having hundreds of underperforming schools is unacceptable. Wilshaw is right, and while his proposed changes won't alone do the job, they are a start. And they should be backed.

• Ofsted
• Teaching
• Schools

Will Hutton
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We should encourage both hands-on and minds-on education

For too long (in the shade of Plato), our schooling system has been premised on the distinction between "gold" (ie academic) pupils, "silver" (ie technical) and bronze (ie the rest). In an Olympic year where, in a sporting context, these kinds of distinctions might be meaningful, we should, as last week's editorial points out, renounce Platonic, self-fulfilling discrimination and promote a new gold standard of academic/vocational education that fosters and celebrates love of both hands-on and minds-on learning ("We must educate, not just school, the young").

Professor Colin Richards

Spark Bridge

Cumbria

"Self-reliance, adaptability, resilience, determination. These skills are gold," you say, in your leader. Gold maybe – but skills? Are they really things you can be trained for, such as changing a tyre or doing joined-up writing? Aren't they qualities of character, rather, and pretty much the opposite of skills, in being un-coachable? You can try to inculcate such qualities, but that's as different from coaching a skill as mining chalk from making cheese. The set of sub-skills that makes up the skill can't be listed, nor the order in which they should be taught. Even if the inculcation seems to work, in this case or that, no one has any idea why or how, reliably, to get it to do so again.

And, even if such things were skills, why should teaching them be the purpose of schools and universities (as opposed, say, to Sandhurst and the army cadet force)? It's as easy (or hard) to be determined in a bad cause as a good. Who has ever shown more determination than Hitler? Mao perhaps or Pol Pot. Such qualities might help organisms, or economies, to survive or prosper, but they aren't skills and inculcating them isn't a purpose of education.

D Maskell

Corbridge

Northumberland

While the importance of vocational courses should be recognised, rigorous academic qualifications also have a part to play in undoing the damage that a relentless diet of spoonfeeding has wreaked on young minds. Examinations such as the Extended Project, which has been pioneered at my school, have already succeeded in preparing pupils for university and beyond. By participating in seminar discussions that cover topics such as science, ethics and philosophy and then researching questions they develop into dissertations, students taking the course are gaining an invaluable ability to think for themselves. Using virtual platforms developed specifically for the Extended Project known as "Philosophy Zones", they are also learning to harness online technologies and engage with the tools of tomorrow. Only a patchwork of educational approaches can equip the next generation for the challenges of the future.

Patrick Derham

Headmaster

Rugby School

Your leader reminds us of how much the labour market has changed and how many jobs requiring manual or practical skills have disappeared. Alison Wolf's report on vocational education for 14- to 19-year-olds pointed out that we are the only industrialised country that does not require those on vocational courses to continue studying mathematics and English after they are 16.

In welcoming the government's "stripping out" of these worthless qualifications, your leader goes on to assert that practical skills and experience are of equal value as an educational route. However, this is surely misconceived when all the predictions of future economic growth expect the demand to be primarily for those with A-levels and beyond.

I am not dismissing practical skills, but are they, almost certainly more easily acquired elsewhere, what schools are really for?

Where is the justice or fairness in wanting less for all children?

Michael Young

Institute of Education

London WC1

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Melvyn Bragg on why he thinks culture has replaced class

Poor Melvyn. Even I feel a bit sorry for him. And I'm the one needling him. We're juggling teacups and Victoria sponge cakes and all the trappings of civilised gentility, but while it's all smooth and untroubled above the sofa, below it's another matter: he's paddling his feet so violently, I slightly fear for the carpet.

And what's more, dammit, he won't answer my question. And it's not even a very hard one. But that's what you get when you start talking about class. Oh, it's such a juicy subject, I could talk about it all day… and today might very well be that day. Because Melvyn, the working-class boy from Cumbria, now Lord Bragg of Wigton, has gone and made a whole BBC series about it.

It's a handsome three-part BBC2 series of the sort that doesn't really get made any more: solid, interesting, well researched and slightly dowdy (and I mean that in a good way). There are interviews and clips from TV and film, and excerpts from books, and the big theory is this: that culture has replaced class.

In brief, what Bragg believes is that people no longer identify themselves by class, but by culture. All right, I say, give me an example.

"There are a lot of very able and clever people who would define themselves by the type of music they listen to," he says. "That would be an indicator of what sort of person they really are. They'd say, 'I like "X" music or "Y" music or rhythm and blues,' or whatever sort it is. Or they might say, 'I am a Radio 4 person,' or 'I am an opera buff.'"

Hmm. Well. We're all entitled to our theories. And, in the series, Bragg traces the intertwining leaves of class and culture from 1911 through to the modern day. There's an old-school, BBC quality to the film – there's some fascinating bits, especially the earlier stuff. I'm riveted by an interview with Lord Jeremy Hutchinson, who says "one didn't know about the north" but then goes on to speak movingly about how the spectacle of seeing the Jarrow march changed the course of his life.

It's just at the end that it starts leaping to all sorts of conclusions, the most unlikely of which is that "class doesn't create culture any more". Instead, "it's culture that has created class", including "a new celebrity superclass", which seems to consist of the likes of David Beckham and Kate Moss.

Well, what can I say? It's an interesting enough theory, just pretty difficult to prove. As evidenced by Lord Bragg's difficulty in toeing the party line.

So, how would you define yourself by culture then? This leads to a long and rambling sentence which ends with: "It's what I tried to do with The South Bank Show. I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle."

"So you're a highbrow, lowbrow kind of guy?"

"Well if you want to say that, that's fine."

"No. If you want to say that. I'm asking how you, how you would identify yourself."

"I disagree with you so fundamentally. I think that thinking is old hat. I think you are behind the curve… People are not afraid to go for what they like. I met a cellist last year for one of the youth orchestras and she was into heavy metal… It's all slicing salamis. Slicing different sorts of rock and pop. So I don't think highbrow or lowbrow, I just think 'good'."

"But I was just trying to get you to answer my question!" I protest. "If we all identify ourselves by culture these days, not class, how do you?"

"I just think I look for quality. But I don't go around identifying myself. Why should I identify myself?"

Oh, I could hit my head, and then for good measure, Melvyn Bragg's head too, lustrous barnet and all, against a brick wall. It's your theory, I say! And we bat back and forth for five minutes until he finally says: "Well, I just believe in the full spectrum of culture and finding the good in all of them."

I'm still not entirely sure this is as pithy as, say, "middle class", but there you go. Lord Bragg is a spectrum kind of guy. Although for someone who claims that there's been "a shift" and that "class has withered away", there seems to be a lot about his background that hasn't quite withered away. Right at the beginning of the first episode, he goes back to the pub in Wigton that his parents ran, and says: "We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class… and now people like me are in the House of Lords."

In 1911, his father's father was a farm labourer, and his mother's mother was in domestic service, and part of Bragg's story is luck: he's a member of the lucky generation, the ones who, for the first time ever, could rise through the classes by way of the grammar schools, and access to the universities, at a time when being a graduate made you a member of a privileged elite.

But he also must have been astonishingly bright. He went from Wigton to Oxford and then snagged one of only three trainee places at the BBC "at a time when it was staffed almost entirely by public school boys".

It's hard to forget this, or not realise it in the first place. Bragg has been around so long, and seems such a solid figure of the British establishment, that it's easy to forget that by rights, he should have got a job in a factory like all his schoolmates. Though I don't think he's ever forgotten it. Not at all.

"I think the working-class thing hasn't gone away and it never will go away. I don't want it to go away. I don't try to make it go away. Quite a few of my interactions and responses are still the responses I had when I was 18 or 19. And the other things are bolted on and it is a mix. It is what it is, and a lot of people are like that. I'm a class mongrel."

But in a sense, you're disproving your own thesis, I say. Class hasn't withered away. It's still strong within you, within a lot of people, I say. And then we have another of our spats.

"I haven't! If you don't mind my saying so. I'm talking about my recognition of what I am."

"Yes, but a lot of people would say the same."

"They would. But I don't define myself as working class."

"But you're very happy to say that it's deep within you."

"Sure, but I don't define myself as that. I don't particularly define myself as middle class, It just doesn't work like that. We have lived in a semi, the same semi, for 30-odd years. We have a cottage on the fell we have had for 42 years; it was, when we bought it, two-up, two-down. We have put a roof on the barn since then, so that is a very middle-class thing to do. But I haven't gone that way."

It's a tricky business, this class thing, at the best of times. And he's not altogether comfortable with what he calls "people's perceptions about you". The reference to "the semi" is because I'd suggested in a previous question that he probably had a "nice" house.

But he's the one who has gone and made a programme on the issue, and right at the heart of the series, the hammer blow in episode one, is the claim by Lord Hutchinson, with which Bragg has already told me he agrees, that had Clement Attlee abolished public schools when he had the chance, we wouldn't have the current "apartheid" system we have now, as he calls it. It's the public schools, he says, that are the bedrock of the inequality that cripples the country still.

There's an inevitability to our next spat. I have to ask him (how can I not?) where his own children went to school. (Well, of course, they were privately educated but so what? I just want him to defend it like a man! He's just made a programme about class. These are questions that are going to be asked.)

But eventually, I say: "I came in peace, Melvyn. I haven't come to have a go."

For the first hour or so, he has been looking at me like a poodle warily sizing up the new pit bull in the park. What's worse is that I can't resist a dog fight on account of the fact that he keeps saying flagrantly inciting things like "Your birth isn't your destiny any more".

"Yes it is!" I say. "How can you say that?" I tell him about a Daily Mail story that morning which printed a photo of Prince William at Eton and then tracked down all his classmates to see where they are now: working as investment bankers and city lawyers almost to a man.

"But I just don't think class is important. I don't know Prince William but I don't think class is important to him as it was for his father and grandfather. It is a different thing altogether. He's wearing jeans in nightclubs whereas his father or grandfather would never have dreamt of that.

"It wouldn't have been something for someone of their class to do. I think we have moved away from defining ourselves by class, mostly."

Well, in Braggland perhaps. And I have my revelation: perhaps he is not describing society as it actually is. But how he wants it to be.

Is this you being an optimist, I ask?

"Yes. Although, I think I'm an optimist not a fantasist. The poor people in 1911 were massively more numerous and massively more poor than they are today. There was nothing like the range of opportunities there is now."

Well, maybe, but Bragg is a product of the high-water mark of social mobility: from his grammar school education, to his free university place, to his maintenance grant, to the purchase of his family home on a single, modest salary.

Social mobility is going off a cliff, in Britain more than anywhere. The class you're born into is more important now than it's been for several generations. But we're never going to agree on this. In Bragg's sunny Utopia, we're all united by our love of grime music or Radio 4.

"I haven't sought to go up any ladder," he says at one point.

"Well, you may not have sought it," I say. "But I guess you achieved it anyway. You're not living in Wigton any more."

"You think I have. I don't think I have. So you could be right. And I could be wrong."

But your lifestyle is out of reach for 95% of the population, I say.

"It is, and so is yours."

Though I think you'll find mine is somewhat more achievable, I say.

"I don't know what you know about my lifestyle! What is my lifestyle? It's amazing the assumptions that people make about people."

"Well, I just think that in the popular imagination, "Hampstead" and "intellectual" are two words which go together and have certain resonances. Aren't you a Hampstead intellectual?"

"I live in Hampstead."

"So, what? You're a Hampstead non-intellectual?"

"I'm not going to play ball with those sorts of labels!"

Oh, it's a ridiculous conversation in all sorts of ways. And we're both being as bad as each other. We might as well sort it out with an arm-wrestling match. But that's class for you – it just causes people to kick off in all directions. Largely, I would contend, and Bragg would deny, because of its non-withering-away sort of nature.

On the plus side, stabbing him openly right out in front seems to have convinced him that I'm not about to do it behind his back, and he actually starts to look like he might be enjoying himself.

But then I come to realise that Melvyn Bragg, the public intellectual, and Melvyn Bragg, the private individual, don't have an awful lot in common. For someone who's had such a public profile, he's actually a classic introvert.

He wrote his first, For Want of a Nail, in his early 20s, a work that invited comparisons to Lawrence and Hardy. And he's scarcely stopped since. Twenty novels, 14 nonfiction books, two children's books, four screenplays. He can't stop writing.

But then, he can't stop trying to figure himself out. One of the most unlikely revelations about Melvyn Bragg is that, as successful as he has been, he still doesn't seem any closer to knowing himself.

"Oh no. I don't. I wish I did. I really do wish I did. I'm quite confused about things. And I've come to the conclusion that at the age of 72 if I'm still confused about things it's because I want to be confused by them."

Writing is what he does "by myself". Nowadays, alone is where he seems most at home – "There's a phrase where I come from. I can suffer my own company" – though he also does all sorts of public things. He has endless letters after his name FRSL, FRTS, FBA, FRSA, FRS, who knows what any of them are – but I am impressed by the fact that he spent 15 years as president of the mental health charity Mind. It's hard to think of a post that's less to do with glamour and glory, and more to do with time and commitment.

"I wanted to get involved to tell people you can get through it. When I started with Mind, the stigma associated with mental illness was terrible. It wasn't talked about. It's only quite recently that it's been more talked about. And I probably mean the last five years."

He's always been open about the fact that he's had two breakdowns; episodes that seem marked more than anything by sheer terror.

"I think it's left scars of nervousness that I have still."

Nervousness?

"I'm just very nervous a lot of the time."

And it's then that the foot-jigging makes sense. It's just so far from any conception I'd ever had of him that it just didn't occur to me.

"Nobody would ever suspect that," I say.

"Good. I try not to. It's always been an effort though. It's always bloody well been an effort."

But don't you ever wonder what it would have been like to show more of yourself. To be more you?

"Well I think my self is the self that I made myself into for television. I think you have to, especially when you start doing this business of appearing. I didn't realise it was going to be such a smack in the face. I'd never trained as an actor. I wasn't used to it. I wasn't used to being in public."

It's fascinating, this. And I really don't think it's flannel. He is nervous. It's as plain as the nose on your face as soon as it's been pointed out. And I'm gagging to know more. But, no.

"I haven't written about it yet and I might write about it."

Oh Melvyn, I say. It's not all about the books! But he's already putting on his coat, and walking towards the door. The upper-middle-class member of the establishment. And, quite possibly, the small working-class boy from Wigton still, too. Class isn't dead, I don't think. It's just all still working itself out. I give you, as my first witness, Melvyn Bragg.

• Television
• Social mobility
• Melvyn Bragg
• BBC

Carole Cadwalladr
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The eminent sociologist on the trouble with multiculturalism – and the joys of cooking and music

Richard Sennett is professor of sociology at the LSE. A child of Russian emigres, he grew up in the notorious Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago and studied as a cellist. After injuring his hand, he turned to academia. Author of many books, including The Craftsman and The Culture of the New Capitalism, his latest, Together, looks at social co-operation in diverse communities.

You argue that we are losing the impulse to co-operate with people who are different from ourselves - what you call "the intractable Other". But isn't the impulse strengthening with greater migration and diversity?

I wouldn't say that the impulse to co-operation is weakening but that it's being deformed. The increase in inequality means the distance between social classes is growing greater. I'd say the issue for Britain is the same for a lot of ethnically layered societies. What you get is indifference as a way of managing difference. People keep to their own turf, not a complex social tapestry that mixes people together.

Is multiculturalism really about alienation and indifference rather than co-operation and solidarity?

Absolutely. I've had colleagues who've traced this in the lives of schoolchildren. At six or seven, they're interleaved with each other; by the time they're 14 it's like a chemical separation – no longer speaking to people with different colour and accents. When they have to deal with each other they are at a loss.

We hear a lot about community, but what does community mean to you?

What it doesn't mean to me is just a place to sleep. I'm struck in Britain that when people talk about community action they're talking about an old-fashioned idea of where people have their homes. But the most important thing is the workplace. Workplace communities are getting weaker and weaker. Modern capitalism doesn't encourage much interaction because it's highly stratifying. Once you stop thinking about where you sleep, the whole issue of community takes on a different kind of character.

You think the "big society" is a form of "economic colonialism". Why?

Well, it's sort of obvious, isn't it? It's a kind of colonial mentality. We're not going to give; we're going to ask you to become self-sufficient, a Bantustan. If you really want to have a society of people volunteering to work in libraries, the libraries have to be open. It's a self-evident contradiction. Look at the first impulse: to save money to make the bankers happy.

Is there such a thing as responsible capitalism?

There can be more or less responsible capitalism. I think the Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians have a more responsible capitalism than we do in Britain. They've managed to combine social need with robust economies. And they've made a much better job of training skilled manual labourers.

What's more important, equality of opportunity or outcome?

It's a false question. Think about what equality of opportunity means – one in 20 in a class gets to go to Oxbridge. In other words, meritocratic, skimming off the cream. What happens to the other 19? It's a kind of lie about what equality means – that we should think about creating a means of escape and neglect the rest. I'm more interested in how to get the 19 up to scratch. Meritocratic searches create an enormous amount of peer hostility. The thing that most angered me about New Labour was this talk of meritocracy.

Tell me about your history on the left.

I've had a rather strange political trajectory. I started out an enraged youth in the 1960s, then the cliches of the counterculture got to me so much that I became a centrist, kind of apolitical in the 70s and early 1980s. Then I started moving left again in my 40s, when I started to do interviews with workers in the new economy, high-finance services. It renewed my left-wing politics. I really believe in bottom-up politics, but I understand that it might not produce much political change.

You spent a part of childhood, while you were studying music, living in the Chicago projects of Cabrini Green. Was that difficult?

Actually the musical part of it was fine. I wasn't singled out for harassment because musicians in black culture are held in great esteem. But there was a kind of racial warfare. I just thought that was the way life was. My mother was doing party work, trying to organise black women. She thought the black proletariat were the last and best hope of communism. It sounds absurd to say it, yet people really believed that.

Why did you turn to writing novels in the 1980s?

I felt I had nothing more to say as a sociologist, so it was an experiment. One of them is OK – Palais-Royale. I enjoyed it but it's not me.

Are you able to play music these days?

I'm able to play a bit. I had some reconstructive hand surgery. I'm not very good any more. I've found this group of very tolerant musicians in London, which is great. It's such a gift to be able to play again.

You used to write a food column for the Spectator. How important is cooking to you?

I'm a physical person and l like physical things. When I lost the use of my hand in music I wanted to do something every day that was a contact with physical reality, even though I had only one functional hand: that was cooking. It gives me enormous physical pleasure. I'm not that good a cook – well, I'm OK. I like to eat bourgeois French and Italian cooking. My favourite restaurant is the River Cafe. Rose Gray was a great, great cook and Ruth Rogers is no slouch either.

You were friends with the celebrated and late French intellectual Michel Foucault. What was he like?

He was a great friend to me and his other friends. I know he was very forbidding to the public. You read about all the drugs and the sex, which was part of him, but it's kind of an external portrait, trying to make him into a Nietzschean man. He was also a very sweet, domestic person, a wonderful cook. He and his boyfriend grew tomatoes in between their marijuana plants.

You emphasise the importance of dialogical thinking in your book. What is it?

It's really a focus on how to listen to what people mean but they don't say, how to draw people out. To me that's really the foundation of complex co-operation. It's being able to attend to someone else without identifying yourself in them. It's about how to be curious about other people.

• Sociology

Andrew Anthony
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Vicenç Navarro – Consejo Científico de ATTAC España

El dogma neoliberal que ha estado imponiendo unas políticas de austeridad con recortes muy marcados del gasto público, incluyendo del gasto público social (en transferencias –como pensiones y ayudas a las familias–, así como en gastos en servicios públicos del Estado del bienestar –como sanidad, educación, servicios de dependencia, escuelas de infancia, vivienda social, servicios sociales y otros–, que determinan en gran manera la calidad de vida y el bienestar de la gran mayoría de la población), ha dominado todo el discurso y la práctica política del Consejo Europeo, de la Comisión Europea, del Banco Central Europeo, del Fondo Monetario Internacional y de la mayoría de gobiernos de la UE durante estos años de crisis. Estas políticas de recortes han sido particularmente acentuadas en los países que despectivamente se conocen en la terminología anglosajona como PIGS (cerdos), y que incluyen a Portugal, Irlanda, Grecia y España (Spain) a los que últimamente han añadido otra I (PIIGS), al incluirse Italia.

Tales recortes se han presentado como necesarios para recuperar la “confianza de los mercados financieros”, manida frase que se ha utilizado con gran frecuencia para justificarlos. Otra frase también en gran uso en la sabiduría convencional neoliberal es la necesidad de “mostrar responsabilidad fiscal”, como si responsabilidad y recortes fueran sinónimos. Ahora bien, un simple análisis de los datos muestra que, a pesar de que aquellos países han estado recortando y recortando, la famosa “confianza de los mercados” no ha aparecido por ninguna parte. Los intereses de la deuda pública en la mayoría de estos países han continuado elevadísimos, con niveles insostenibles en todos ellos. La desconfianza continúa a pesar de los recortes, y ello ha ocurrido país por país.

En España ha habido unos recortes sin precedentes (acentuados ahora más con el Gobierno del Partido Popular), aprobándose incluso una reforma de la Constitución que dificultará en el futuro la reducción del enorme déficit de gasto público social que tiene España, el más bajo, per cápita, de la UE-15 (el grupo de países de la UE con semejante desarrollo económico al nuestro). A pesar de estos recortes, los intereses de la deuda pública han ido subiendo de manera tal que el presidente Rajoy ha indicado que llevará a cabo las reformas que hizo Portugal cuando fue intervenido, posibilidad que el presidente Zapatero creía haber evitado con sus políticas de recortes, las cuales se justificaban para prevenir lo que ha acabado ocurriendo. Cabe entonces hacerse la pregunta de ¿cómo se justifica tanto recorte cuando la famosa “confianza de los mercados financieros” no ha aparecido por ninguna parte?

Una situación parecida ha tenido lugar en Grecia, donde los recortes están generando una gran agitación social, sin que los intereses de la deuda hayan bajado. Antes al contrario, han alcanzado unos niveles insostenibles. Un caso parecido es el de Irlanda, donde a pesar de los recortes de las pensiones (de más del 10%) y de la reducción sin precedentes de los beneficios sociales y del empleo en los servicios del Estado del bienestar, los intereses de la deuda pública continúan ahogando a la deuda pública. Y lo mismo está ocurriendo en Italia.

Todos estos países PIIGS han estado gobernados por partidos conservadores (dictatoriales en el caso de Grecia, Portugal y España) en la mayoría del periodo pos II Guerra Mundial, siendo las fuerzas conservadoras todavía las dominantes en su vida política y mediática. En todos estos países –al revés que en el norte de Europa– el mundo del trabajo es débil y el del capital (hegemonizado por el capital financiero) es fuerte. En consecuencia, tienen políticas fiscales regresivas, enormes fraudes fiscales y estados del bienestar poco desarrollados. Y en todos ellos la reducción del déficit público ha sido primordialmente a base de recortes del gasto público social. A pesar de ello, su deuda pública, como porcentaje del PIB, ha continuado aumentando desde 2007 sin que los recortes la hayan reducido. En España ha subido del 36% del PIB al 68%, en Portugal del 68% al 102%, en Grecia del 107% al 161%, en Irlanda del 25% al 107% y en Italia del 103% al 120%. En realidad, estos recortes han empeorado la situación en lugar de mejorarla, tal como algunos de nosotros predijimos. Los famosos “mercados” creen que, a no ser que crezcan, estos países jamás podrán pagar su deuda. Y tales recortes están dificultando que crezcan. Como ha dicho Wolfgang Munchau, codirector del Financial Times: “No entiendo cómo alguien con formación macro-económica y con un mínimo de honestidad y decencia puede apoyar hoy la fantasía de que las políticas de austeridad estimulan la economía” (“Why Europe’s Officials Lose Sight of the Big Picture”, The Financial Times, 16/10/11).

Por fin comienza a percibirse que algo no funciona con los recortes. Incluso los neoliberales comienzan a decir que tales recortes tienen que ir acompañados de un estímulo económico. Pero asumen erróneamente que la falta de crecimiento económico (que antes decían que se debía al inexistente excesivo gasto público) la causan los salarios “excesivamente altos”. Según tal dogma, los sueldos deben reducirse, lo cual hundirá todavía más las economías de tales países, porque el mayor problema que tienen estas es la falta de demanda, resultado del enorme descenso de las rentas del trabajo (que han disminuido la capacidad adquisitiva de la mayoría de la población) y de la especulación financiera, consecuencia del obsceno crecimiento de las rentas del capital financiero, y que ha provocado la escasez de crédito. La bajada de los salarios, junto con la reducción del gasto público, reducirá todavía más tal demanda, llevándonos a una Gran Depresión. En realidad, para amplios sectores de las clases populares, la Gran Depresión ya está aquí.

Artículo publicado en Público.
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Colloque organisé dans le cadre de l’ANR, Les Pouvoirs de l’art Universités de Bordeaux 3, Nice, Lyon 2 et Paris 1 Coordination: Dario Marchiori (MCF Lyon 2, EA 4160) et Luc Vancheri (PR Lyon 2, EA 4160) On s’est beaucoup demandé ces quinze dernières années ce que le cinéma – ses images, ses formes, son dispositif – devenait au contact des nouvelles pratiques esthétiques et muséographiques de l’art contemporain. L’intérêt de ces recherches est d’avoir permis de dessiner les contours d’un régime contemporain de l’art qui, tout en rompant avec les théories modernistes et postmodernistes, rouvrait l’ancienne question du médium à partir des contradictions qui l’opposent et le relient aux médias numériques. En employant indifféremment la notion demedia, la théorie nord-américaine, largement dominante dans la seconde moitié du XXème siècle, a beaucoup contribué à combler l’écart entre les «médiums» artistiques et les médias d’information. C’est tout le sens de la réflexion menée par Lev Manovich, qui a exploré les relations réciproques du cinéma et des nouveaux médias. A ce titre, son archéologie des objets néo-médiatiques l’a conduit à interroger le rôle des interfaces homme-machine et leurs conséquences esthétiques dans la réception des nouvelles images. Ce colloque entend mettre à l’étude l’impact des nouvelles technologies sur les politiques de l’image et du visuel qui façonnent le champ de l’art aussi bien que sur l’économie générale des émotions esthétiques suscitées par les formes variées de la création contemporaine. Ces changements d’échelle intervenus dans notre culture visuelle nous amènent à nous demander si ces mutations esthétiques et technologiques ne sont pas les prémices d’une véritable anthropologie politique du monde globalisé, dont l’émotion esthétique, tout à la fois objet et effet de l’art, serait le symbole et le symptôme. Trois grands axes seront privilégiés 1 – La dialectique du médium: une lecture àrebrousse-poildes pratiques modernistes L’art du 20èmesiècle aura été, entre autre chose, une tentative de redéfinir, voire de dépasser les catégories qui définissent le domaine de l’art. Si la notion demédiumest le pivot qui a permis la rupture épistémologique moderne, son déni a défini l’ère des média(s), en instaurant à la fois un paradigme et une idéologie. Faire l’histoire de l’art contemporain implique trop souvent de retracer la glorieuse avancée de «l’art médiatique», de l’intégration entre les média, de la superposition entre art et médias, en supposant une version simplifiée du modernisme. On interrogera dès lors celui-ci pour y découvrir autre chose que l’uniqueobsession du médium, notamment les tentatives qui, d’Arthur Lipsett à Paul Sharits, de Ken Jacobs à Alexander Kluge, ont réussi àréinventerl’expérienceesthétique enintensifiant ou enélargissant la perceptionsensorielle.On se demandera par exemple quels états émotionnels impliquent les poétiquesdu discontinu, du choc et de la juxtaposition des matériaux et des médiums, ou bience qu’il reste du modèle synesthésique imaginé par Susan Sontag (Film and Theatre, 1966) et Gene Youngblood (Expanded cinema, 1970) au tournant des années 70.Cet éclairage historique devrait permettre de mesurer ce qui s’est joué à l’intérieur du modèle moderniste, de redécouvrir la condition postmoderne et,in fine, de nous inviter à reprendre l’analyse des processus artistiques contemporains à partir de leur pensée du sensible et de leurs sollicitations esthétiques. 2 – L’aisthesisde l’époque post-cinématographique L’introduction des formes et des éléments propres au dispositif cinématographique dans le champ de l’art contemporain a provoqué une reconfiguration des territoires de l’art. Du point de vue théorique, nous avons assisté à la reconnaissance d’uncinémaaprès l’époque du cinéma, soustrait aux prescriptions de son modèle historique. Du point de vue esthétique, le ré-appareillage de la perception sous l’effet des mises en image multimédias a demandé que soit réfléchie la manière dont le monde de l’art repousse les frontières phénoménologiques de la réalité physique et sociale, et renouvelle les propositions qui orientent l’invention des formes contemporaines de représentation du social, du biologique et du politique.On s’intéressera ainsi tout particulièrement à la manière dont le régime des émotions fait désormaisl’objet d’écritures et de scénographies différenciées qui en modifient les expressions (ex: Eija Liisa Ahtila,Love is a Treasure, 2002) et d’une exploration cartographique conduite en temps réel à l’échelle mondiale (ex: Maurice Benayoun, Word Emotional Mapping,2005;Emotional Stock Exchange, 2005). De façon complémentaire, on s’intéresseraaux procédures d’intervention des œuvres d’art dans l’espacepublic (œuvresin situet œuvres connectées au réseau informatique mondial en temps réel) ainsiqu’aux régimes du sensible qui naissent de cette redéfinition de la situation spectatorielle. On pourra ainsi interroger à nouveaux frais l’esthétique contemporaine, à partir de la notion d’aisthesisavancée par Jacques Rancière (Aisthesis, 2011) pour définir le «tissu d’expérience sensible» de l’art. 3 – L’œuvre d’art à l’ère du numérique Si le 19èmesiècle a marqué l’avènement d’un nouveau paradigme visuel venant se substituer au modèle renaissant de laperspectiva artificialis– la divergence des analyses proposées ne lèvent rien à l’hypothèse générale –,on pourra tenter d’évaluer la portée des lectures post cinématographiques menées sur les nouveaux médias, à partir du double travail de remédiation, structurel et formel, réalisé sur les médias plus anciens.Les technologies numériques, les nouveaux dispositifs d’images, la vitesse de circulation des informations, les capacités de stockage et de partage propres aux nouveaux médias, ont profondément modifié nos manières de penser et de voir, d’apprendre et de se souvenir, d’agir et s’émouvoir.Cette situation est à la croisée du monde scientifique, du monde de l’art ainsi que de celui de la communication de masse. On pourra ainsi s’interroger sur la manière dont se sontredistribués les types de liaison, et de déliaison, qui ont structuré la relation image-écran depuis l’apparition des nouveaux dispositifs visuels et des interfaces Homme-Machine, et, à ce titre, se demander quels sujets de l’art s’inventent avec eux. On se penchera en outre sur le développement d’une culture de l’écran identifiée à la puissance écranique des objets néo-médiatiques connectifs et interactifs, on s’intéressera aux caractères de parcourabilité et d’habitabilité de l’image, aux possibilités d’exposabilité des images et à leur valeur de partage. Enfin, on cherchera à évaluer la nature et la valeur des possibilités critiquespropres à l’art,telles qu’ellespeuvent naître de cette situation générale des techniquesetdes images.Dès lors, l’analyse des conditions du sensible et l’interprétation des puissances esthétiques du contemporain nous auront permis d’établir les prémices, et la promesse, d’une politique des sensations vouées à réinventer les partages institutionnels du monde de l’art médiatique. Toutes les propositions (300 mots environ), accompagnées d’une courte bio-bibliographie, doivent être envoyées avant le30 septembre 2012à: dario.marchiori@univ-lyon2.fr et luc.vancheri@univ-lyon2.fr

René Corona, Mots de l'enfermement - Clôtures et silences : lexique et rhétorique de la douleur du néant Turin : Harmattan Italia. 216 p. EAN 9782296557345 28,00 EUR Présentation de l'éditeur : L'ouvrage cherche à montrer comment les mécanismes de la langue du pouvoir et de l'indifférence peuvent générer l'enfermement et la douleur. Il représente l'œuvre mémorielle et littéraire du camp, source de la douleur du néant, à travers l'œil aigu et la conscience lucide de quatre écrivains français : Georges Hyvernaud, Henri Calet, Raymond Guérin et Alexandre Vialatte. Cet essai tente de décrire la façon dont le témoignage, à travers la poésie, devient pure littérature. René Corona vit en Italie ; il a publié en 2009 Diachronie, poésie et traduction chez le même éditeur. Il a également traduit en italien L’Italie à la paresseus e d'Henri Calet.

Joël Hillion, Shakespeare et son double - Les Sonnets de Shakespeare à la lumière de la théorie mimétique de René Girard Paris : L'Harmattan, 2012. 256 p. EAN 9782296559509 26,00 EUR (version numérique : 19,50 EUR ; EAN Ebook format pdf 9782296479272) Présentation de l'éditeur : Dans son ouvrage majeur sur Shakespeare, Les Feux de l'envie , paru en 1990, René Girard proposait une lecture neuve de l'oeuvre du dramaturge élisabéthain. Le présent essai se veut une suite de cette recherche et se focalise prioritairement sur les Sonnets . Depuis toujours considérés comme "obscurs", ceux-ci prennent une dimension radicalement nouvelle sous l'éclairage de la théorie mimétique. Joël Hillion est professeur d'anglais.

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