Whitley Bay, walking by the abandoned sea-front buildings. Something has finished here, we agree. Something is over. It's not like the quayside in the city, with its frenetic overdevelopment. There is no art gallery here, no music centre. Only decay. Only the signs of decay.
Deleuze says somewhere that politics is finished, W. says. It's finished! What he means is the possibility of significant political discourse is finished, despite all the noise about so-called politics. Is there not more political chatter and noise than there has ever been? But we know it barely matters if one votes Left or Right in our so-called democracy, W. says, since there is little to distinguish between the parties. Professional politicians (and politics has become a profession just like any other now) do not offer us ideas, thoughts or concepts, but only ways of managing the free market. The only difference between is the degree of this management and nothing more.
A search and rescue helicopter hovers over the sea. Someone must have gone missing. Someone's disappeared. As we draw closer, we see an ambulance on the beach, and bodysuited lifeguards running into the water with floats.
What does it mean to be on the Left?, W. asks. Does it mean anything? Deleuze says we can forget the possibility of a left wing government, but we can have an attitude that is of the left. He says that there are two types of people in this world. Those who begin with themselves (and Deleuze gestures with the same movement as he speaks), and then go outwards to their house, their street, their city, their country and so on until they reach the world. And then there are those (and he uses the opposite gesture) who begin with the world, with the periphery, and go backwards through their country, their city, their street and finally end up with themselves.
The latter is not a point of view, W. says. It is a complete transubstantialisation of the self. To be of the left is to belong to the latter. It is to realise that one's place in the world is always a usurpation of others and I am already implicated before any confession of guilt.
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