The 3rd Eye

시민의 저항을 교묘히 가로막는 세 가지 요소
Arundhati Roy, Public Power in the Age of Empire (2004)

신자유주의라는 이름의 제국주의가 세계를 정치적으로 극우화하고 경제적으로 양극화하는 작금에 뚜렷한 실적을 보이기 힘든 투쟁을 벌이는 일은 대개 절망적일 뿐이다. 어차피 비슷하게 생각하는 이들만이 이런 종류의 책을 사고 읽고 또 뭔가 조금이라도 배운다면 세상은 그저 이질적인 표본집단들(sample selection)의 섞이지 않는 집합에 불과하지 않을까. 과학적 불변의 진리가 존재한다면 그리고 절대적 윤리가 존재한다면 (또는 그러하다고 믿는다면) 분명 사회적 정치적 경제적 진리 역시 존재할 것이다. 만약 그렇지 않다고 호도하는 세력과 집단이 있다면 하나씩 까발릴 뿐이다.

2002년 미국사회학협회 전체학술대회 강연회 내용을 담은 이 팜플렛에서 아룬다티 로이는 날로 치열해져 가는 제국주의적 침탈과 압제의 시대에 특히 세 가지 점이 피압박 세계시민과 저항세력에게 큰 문제점으로 대두했음을 지적한다.

(1) 끔찍한 문제가 더 이상 따끈따끈하지 않을 경우 미디어의 관심권에서 손쉽게 사라지는 경향. (2) 엔지오(NGO)의 발현이 던지는 위험. (3) 상징적인 수준을 넘어서는 저항에 최대한의 폭력으로 대처하는 더욱 지독해진 제국.

(1)과 (3)은 이미 익히 전해 듣고 또 알고 있었던 점이지만 다시 한 번 되짚어 보는 것도 나쁘지 않았다. 그러나 (2)번 문제는 사실 그다지 관심을 쏟지 않았던 분야이므로 상당히 충격적이었다. 정부가 의당 해야할 바를 시장에 맡긴다는 명분하에 포기해가는 추세에 상당히 우려를 금치 못하고 있었지만 그것이 어떤 식으로 엔지오의 발현과 연결되는지 그리고 이러한 현상이 국경을 넘어 세계적인 신자유주의 자본주의 질서에 어떻게 편입되어 가는 과정에 불과한지를 로이는 명확히 밝힌다.

그 대목을 아예 여기에 옮긴다.

[A]s the state abdicated its traditional role, NGOs moved in to work in these very areas. The difference, of course, is that the funds available to them are a minuscule fraction of the actual cut in public spending. Most large well-funded NGOs are financed and partronized by aid and development agencies, which are in turn funded by Western governments, the World Bank, the UN, and some multinational corporations. Thought they may not be the very same agencies, they are certainly part of the same loose, political formation that oversees the neoliberal project and demands the slash in government spending in the first place.

Why should these agencies fund NGOs? Could it be just old-fashioned missionary zeal? Guilt? It's a little more than that.

NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, hte interpreters, the facilitators of the discourse. They play out the role of the "reasonable man" in an unfair, unreasonable war.

In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They're what botanists would call an indicator species. It's almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation.

In order to make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work--whether it's in a country devastated by war, poverty or an epidemic of disease--within a shallow framework more or less shorn of a political or historical context. At any rate, an inconvenient historical or political context. It's not for nothing that the "NGO perspective" is becoming increasingly respected.

Apolitical (and therefore, actually, extremely political) distress reports from poor countries and war zones eventually make the (dark) people of those (dark) countries seem like pathological victims. Another malnourished Indian, another starving Ethiopian, another Afghan refugee camp, another maimed Sudanese... in need of the white man's help. They unwittingly reinforce racist stereotypes and re-affirm the achievements, the comforts, and the compassion (the tough love) of Western civilization, minus the guilt of the history of genocide, colonialism, and slavery. They're the secular missionaries of the modern world.

Eventually--on a smaller scale, but more insidiously--the capital available to NGOs plays the same role in alternative politics as the speculative capital that flows in and out of the economies of poor countries. It begins to dictate the agenda.

It turns to confrontation into negotiation. It depoliticizes resistance. It interferes with local peoples' movements that have traditionally been self-realiant. NGOs have funds that can emply local people who might otherwise be activists in resistance movements, but now can feel they are doing some immediate, creative good (and earning a living while they're at it). Charity offers instant gratification to the giver, as well as the receiver, but its side effects can be dangerous. Real political resistance offers no short cuts.

The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in.

Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.

(pp. 42-46)

=== 출간 정보 ===

Public Power in the Age of Empire
by Arundhati Roy
# Paperback: 64 pages
# Publisher: Seven Stories Press (November 15, 2004)
# ISBN: 1583226826
# Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.2 inches