CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR

Kudos to Lance Tapley and the Portland Phoenix for the extensive coverage on the protests against the rapid and thorough takeover of our lives and our imaginations by corporate America. However, Tapley’s analysis of the complexities and contradictions of domination and resistance is rather lame. Capitalist hegemony depends on, and indeed deploys, the contradictions of social and economic life in its service. Opposition to such hegemony requires a complex understanding of its workings. Tapley’s pluralist, rhetorical claim that the military could be both an enforcer of global corporate-power and guarantor of the right to protest allows his reader to believe that the workings of corporate power are benign at best and neutral at worst. Such an analysis not only undermines Tapley’s attempts to outline the complexities of the “anti-globalization/pro democracy” protests in Maine, it also minimizes the courageous efforts of Maine activists.

Kiran Asher

Portland

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