It's Official: I've drunk the coolaid

The coolaid of cultural history that is. Yup, I realized it tonight in my urban/suburban history class, after I stood on my soapbox for what seemed like ages and attacked political history for ignoring cultural analysis. I think I may have scared some folks, cuz the class is primarily liberals and many of the books are based on the assumption of progress through policy making. I think the more I read for prelims, the less I'm convinced by the liberal ideas of progress and the more I buy the idea that revolution begins at the barrel of a gun (isn't that how it goes?). I'm convinced this primarily comes from so much studying of colonialism when policymaking seems so detached. I think its about power and othering and mythmaking. I think all of these inform policies and laws anyhow, so when urban histories talk about policymakers, judges, politicians as if they are somehow immune or detached from the culture in which they operate, a "national" one built on slavery, colonialism, empire and capitalism and then wonder why homeowners don't think more communally and aren't willing to sacrifice for another (an "other" who they've been racializing for centuries anyhow), it drives me nuts!

Every week, we spin out into the same wall, trying to figure out why privileged whites didn't act the way we'd like them to have acted. And all of this talk without any discussion of power and privilege in subject formation. Why would people sacrifice? They live in a nation that tells them that everyone is where they are because they either earned it, or are culturally inferior and thus deserve their lot. There is something fundamentally wrong with liberalism. And yet if you accept radicalism, do you just stay depressed waiting for the revolution that will never happen? Or do you spin out into Foucauldian web and accept your own normalization?

You knew the academic rant was coming...sorry. I'll get off my soapbox now.