My revolution

my revolution 2
For someone of my generation (the love generation) slogans about revolution can be shaded with nostalgia. Buying into the old ideas of large scale social change and the newer ideas of personal transformation, and sometimes a fusion of the two, a change that freed us from the greyness of the post-war era was really what we yearned for. Although seldom articulated with any clarity it was a myth of ‘the revolution’ we shared – an altruistic vision of the future – a better social world. This is precisely why I was struck by the personal tone of the ‘My revolution’ graffiti – so fitting, I thought, for a personalized world in which it is so much harder to imagine society or indeed any larger group than your immediate social network. And this at a time when commentators are predicting the end of party politics and a new era of issue politics in which our social and civic responsibility is redefined in terms of what matters most of all to us - in immediate terms. I realized how wrong I could be when I discovered that the slogan comes from the lyrics of Felipe Coronel (Immortal Technique) hip hop MC and political activist, with a very clear agenda for social change. Now I’m sure there’s a link or two to critical literacy in all this – and certainly a lesson to be learnt, too!