http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/246644
The statement needs special attention:
"Summary
"...the concept of democratic accountability on its head. Democracy in Ethiopia must
develop organically, and Ethiopians must organize and fund themselves and defend
their own rights.....(my emphasis)."(cf. Melesse in the cables)
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I will take it literally and ...reflect
What is the discourse behind the statement?
Why is it reiterated in such a manner?
Is it authentic?
Is it for a public consumption?
Is it played ...?
Does it originate from "bad faith"/Sartre/ ...? etc.
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Whatever it is, what does it tell about the "source" of the "opinion"? "Nationalism" in Autocracy?
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This has to be taken as a challenge to the Ethiopian democratic sphere !
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The cables to download
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Worth noting in a sort of footnote : Inspite of their great purpose - TRANSPARENCY- there is some internal controversy in the life of wikleaks behind the public face. No surprise. Everything has its own morphology! (cf. Spiegel Online /German/: http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,732889,00.html and see "The flash of the day"/ sidebar on this blog ).
Nonetheless, we need the cables! and the following discourse is valid for all "Things" (wikileaks included):
"For the theorists of the art of government, such as Guillaume de La
Perriere, ‘government is the right disposition of things, arranged so as to lead
to a convenient end’ (quoted by Foucault, 1979a: 10): ‘things’, here, refer not
only to the territory and subjects of the Prince (as in the theory of sovereignty),
but primarily to their interrelations; and the ‘end’ envisaged is no
longer the ancient ‘common good’ of obedience to laws, sovereigns and God,
but instead ‘good government’: internal to the state, under the auspices of
multiple authorities (including fathers, superiors and teachers), and involving
informed and tactical – as opposed to divinely ordained – uses of the law
(Foucault, 1979a: 9, 13). Thus, this new pragmatic political rationality,
‘instead of seeking its foundation in transcendental rules, cosmological
models or philosophical-moral ideas’ (Foucault, 1979a: 14), was premissed on
the existence of the state: ‘the art of governing is rational, if reflexion causes
it to observe the nature of what is governed – here, the state’ (Foucault, 1981d:
243, original emphasis; 1988b: 149; 1981c: 355)."
An analytics of power relations: Foucault on the history of discipline
HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 15 No. 1
© 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) pp. 89–117
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