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maybe this is a semantic difference---the definition of the political that i use comes from the work of claude lefort, whose stuff is really interesting--rather than try to defend it here, i'd refer you to that--because i do not see any way in which you would loose by checking it out. i'd be happy to point you at things in particular.
the upshot is that the political is a way of thinking in the ways i outlined above--it is not the same as "politics"--you can have a regime that would work to undermine debate by reducing it to arbitrary positions based on fractured information as part of its ideological project--and that strategy could nonetheless be understood and debated--but not within the same register--so there is a kind of meta-register that enables us, for example, to have this conversation--the political is a way of designating that meta-register.
the only downside of it is confusion. in french its a little easier because the registers are distinguished by switching the gender of the word.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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