what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Monday, December 4, 2023

Ivan Illich - why the attraction?

I am still trying to puzzle over the power Illich’s writing had for me in the 1970s.

1968 had been, of course, the year of rebellion against the forces of power and tradition. My first thought was to go back to ask who else had been competing for attention in those days? C Wright Mills had been a dominant figure with his “The Power Elite” of 1956 an attack on established power.

Illich’s work was some 15 years later and went deeper – with no obvious target to blame. But I do remember some New Statesman cartoons of “Pillars of the Establishment” (as in Grosz’s painting) tearing off their masks to reveal evil and savage faces. Illich’s books were short and an essay in The Challenges of Ivan Illich – a collective reflection; by L Hainacki (2002) suggested he used epigrammatic assertions rather than persuasive arguments – which would probably have impressed me in the 1970s.

What do I now make of his legacy? It was his critical message which made the impact on me but this seems, however, to have been taken up and morphed into a widespread cynicism about anyone exercising any sort of power. This has been a deeply dangerous development which simply serves the interests of those with the real power

update; https://www.bollier.org/blog/why-ivan-illich-still-matters-today

https://www.bollier.org/blog/why-ivan-illich-still-matters-today

No comments:

Post a Comment