 Politics is in some respects, as I think you would agree, the art of the possible. So therefore we have to then look at what is the architecture of the politics and the architecture and politics of the street. So what do these movements on the street signify in some sense? Do they signify something greater? Do they signify, for example, the fact that one of the most critical problems perhaps that we have to think about is that I think all over the world there is a sense that there is very little room for ethical reflection in public life. I mean that seems to be one of the problems of modern-day politics that it doesn't really allow room for what one might describe as ethical reflection. And I think that that's a different category than something simply called corruption, for example. I completely agree. And in fact, the morality of 1% versus 99% is really a reflection of that kind of ethical concern in a very real sense. That's an interesting point of departure. If we, for instance, say that at the moment, and that's what we seem to see, at the moment we don't see a post-nation state construction as yet. So effectively we have a conjuncture in which we have political power on the ground and we have political parties or those who control the nation state who really are at loggerheads. In some sense that's what we see in Europe as well as what we see in Egypt today. In fact, the interesting part is the parties who win elections and who are winning elections in Egypt do not really want to disturb this order either. So in fact there is the same kind of conflict emerging that you have politics of one kind which go into parliament, which go into control the state and you have politics in the street which reflects a completely different reality. Do you think it's possible in that sense to build people's power in a way which will influence policy but not necessarily get into state power? Yeah, well, I mean look, I think that what we can do of course is speculate and we can look at political movements across a wide spectrum of countries and see whether some of those possibilities that you are speaking about which, I mean, do not ultimately lead to the quest for political power, right? I mean, what would be the nature of political emancipation that does not translate into a quest for political power? That's in effect really what you are saying. Is it possible? Is it really possible? Well, I mean, you know, I think that there are different ways in which one could try to answer that. I mean, let's look at one set of concerns here for a moment, right? It might seem to be a bit of a tangent but I don't think it really is. If you look at Gandhi for a moment, okay? I think one of the interesting things about Gandhi is that there is no one who was in some ways more of a nationalist than Gandhi but ironically the only nationalist who ultimately disavowed the idea of the nation state and I would say almost entirely. I mean, because in some ways Gandhi is frankly almost like an anarchic, okay, theorist. That's what he is in some ways. I mean, so if you look at one of his, what is referred to as his last well in testament, you know, written shortly before his assassination, he makes it very clear that the idea of India that he has is an idea of India where you have these villages which are largely autarkic, economically independent, all coexisting together in some ways without some kind of center, okay? Right? And Gandhi himself in some ways had divested himself of power. I mean, and there are multiple narratives and that we can look at here but if you look at simply the facts on the ground, so to speak, it's an interesting thing that for the last two and a half decades of his life, Gandhi was not actually a member of the Congress party. He was not even a for Anna Duping member of the Congress party and yet we do know of course that most of the decisions of the Congress party until at least the last few years before his death could not really be taken without Gandhi's seal of approval, right? So one of the things that Gandhi understood is that there is a very old Indian idiom and that Indian idiom is that you might be able to exercise power more effectively if you seem divested of it, okay? And I think that this might be part of the story that we might have to resuscitate to try to answer your question. Namely that if you look at mass movements, I think if you look at let's say Chiapas for example, okay? Now there I think you have an interesting illustration of a movement which is based I would say largely on two demands. One is a demand for economic justice and the other is a demand for political autonomy of some kind, right? But it's not clear to me that the Zapatistas were really interested in political power as such. Now of course the unfortunate thing is that this political movement does not serve as a very good example for the kind of model that you might be thinking of because if you look at Mexico over the course of the last 18 years since the Chiapas rebellion, I mean Mexico has been frankly a country that has followed the neoliberal regime paradigm down to brutally, right? I mean so clearly perhaps in this case the Zapatistas renunciation of power if I may put it this way didn't really serve any purpose you see, right? So here I'm looking at an example where perhaps if we look at a movement which is not completely dedicated to the task of political participation simply with the end of gaining political power well this is one illustration of where I think it was not actually very productive to think that way, you know, right? So effectively the problem still remains with how do you really control the politics of a country without the standard notions of what constitutes politics in that sense and how can you step outside it? How to distribute political power within society so that it doesn't just become an electoral political game in that sense. One way to think about that is to think about the fact that you see we all have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that living in a democracy and here I'm using democracy in the richest sense of the world not thinking of any particular democracy, right? But living in a democracy means living A with a certain element of uncertainty and B, living with political consequences that we ourselves may not find to be desirable but that nonetheless may be desirable for the whole for the political community as a whole, okay? There may be outcomes that we may not like and yet we may have to learn to live with those outcomes, right? And so I think a very good illustration of that would be obviously, for example, what's happened in Egypt and Tunisia with the elections very recently. Now, you've got all these people who are secularists, for example, saying that, look, I mean, we had always argued that if you had these free elections, this would bring the Islamists to power, right? Now, I frankly don't find that argument to be very persuasive because in the first instance, if the Islamists do come to power in an electoral battle, then I think that's fine. I mean, that is the nature of the electoral game that we have to understand and that might be an illustration of a consequence that we may not be happy with or some people may not be happy with but living in a democracy means precisely this, that we have to accept certain kinds of... If you're much more unhappier to live under a military dictatorship because you want to avoid that, that could be a very simple argument. Well, yes, but some people might argue that, look, if they've come to power, then this has got to become another Iran, right? And clearly living in Iran could not be very pleasant. Well, I mean, again, one can dispute that, you know. Between Mubarak and Iran through the electoral victory of the Islamists, what is the difference? Is I think a debate of a different kind. Of a different kind, yes. But coming back to this issue, I think we really sort of can conclude on that note. It's interesting that the withering away of the state is in that sense the aim of a Gandhian philosophy, of an anarchist philosophy, of a Marxist philosophy as well. Because in all of them, it's really the question is centralization of political power in this form. Ultimately is always repressive. And therefore, in a long-term sense, how do you reach that place is really the issue. And at the moment what we're seeing is globalization has actually increased the repressive nature of the state without the participatory nature of democracy being fulfilled. And that's really the contradiction of today. Yes, I would agree. But I would, what I would add to that is this. You see, I think that if you look at globalization, all right. You know, when most people think of globalization, they think in part of what exactly along the lines of what you have said, namely that look, what globalization in effect does is it leads to certain forms of aggregation of power. It leads to homogenization. All right. So under globalization, let's put it this way, we can be ironical about it a bit. You know, the people who are great advocates of globalization would argue that, well, it, you know, collapses boundaries. Okay. You know, what's that cliche that Hillary Clinton had, you know, all the words a little village, you know, or you can look at Friedman's, you know, cliche, right. You know, so forth and so on. But of course, one has to be ironical about it because in fact, actually, walls have come up everywhere. Walls that didn't even exist two decades ago, right. So the migration of people becomes much more difficult under globalization. Passport visa regimes have become incredibly strict. This is globalization of capital, which masquerades as globalization. We're not talking of internationalization, which would be quite different. But what I wanted to really add is this. You see, and I think that this is where it actually complicates the question of how we're going to look at politics. All right. Because we have to be attentive to the question of what I'm going to call the vocabularies of politics. You see, if you look at globalization, in my view, what has been most effectively globalized are the knowledge systems of the modern West. How we understand something called literacy, what we understand by growth, what poverty means, what development means. Everything that we do in the social sciences, and when I say social sciences, I really do mean not just economics, which has now become the dominant discipline for most people, but I mean anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, all of that. I mean, if you're living in India, or you're living in Sudan or China, virtually all our social sciences have come from the West. They've been borrowed lock, stock, and barrel. Now, the real consequence of this is that when we work with certain ideas about politics or growth or development, we tacitly fall into using certain kinds of assumptions. And this is what I mean when I say that in fact what has been most insidiously globalized are the categories of knowledge found in the modern disciplinary structures of the modern university in the West. And this is why it becomes important to think about what is the relationship between that and political action as we see it. Because in effect, for example, let's go back to a question about the nation state. What is the nation state? I mean, the nation state came into existence really after the Treaty of Westphalia. And then over the course of the last two, three centuries we have developed what is called the nation state system. But clearly there are other ways, because effectively what you're asking is are there other ways of imagining large political communities? And clearly there have been other ways of imagining political communities which were not entirely embedded in the idea of the nation state. Now if political action ultimately is simply going to lead to a nation state, and then within the nation state maybe what these political movements are going to do is they're going to rearrange power to some degree, provisionally. But if we're still working with the same set of categories, whether you're here or you're in Tunisia or Egypt or the US frankly makes no difference. And so what I'm suggesting is that one of the things that we'll have to bring into our understanding of politics is in fact the very nature of the categories that we use to try to understand the world around us. I think that they have a great bearing and it won't be enough for somebody to say, look, but that's not how people act. They simply act. I mean they're not worried about the categories. The problem of course is that we tacitly use certain ideas which are available to us. Of course I think these are all very important issues where you look at what globalization really means. Of course we've talked about the repressive nature of the state and also we haven't really addressed the other function of the state which is the redistributive function of the state which is also supposed to, a nation state is supposed to play. But we really have to speak about all these issues again and I'm very happy to continue the discussion when you come back later. But let's watch what is happening now. I think we have really entered as you said right in the beginning a very important moment where politics can be reimagined and politics can be rethought. And this is a moment which is something we need to watch and it's important that it has come out of West Asia and not out of the usual mode of history as people have thought to be. Thank you very much. Good to have you with us and hope to have you again. My pleasure. Thank you.