I think of 3 writers a lot lately. The first is Michel Foucault, who as you know addresses power and the notion of truth-tellers. Truth tellers are those without power because the powerless have the most to risk by telling the truth. The Second is Paolo Freire who writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed that the powerful cannot liberate people without power. Only those without power can liberate themselves, while oppressors can't even liberate themselves from the constraints of their own well-entrenched roles. The Third is Percy Bysshe Shelley; his poem Ozymandius rings in my ears as we watch statues of Saddam Hussein stand amidst the rubble wrought by war. The United States could be the superpower that one day stands like the great ruler Ozymandias. Shelley's words bear repeating. Ozymandius should keep us humble.
in peace,
Karen C. Spear-Ellinwood, doctoral student
Dept Language, Reading, & Culture//University of Arizona
the poem appears below:
By I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart....Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 5 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: 10 My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."
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