Sunday, June 18, 2006

Evo and free trade

From the AP: the Morales administration says it wants to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States. Tough to say whether it will ever actually happen, but it does underline how problematic labels are, and how proclaiming Morales a clone of Hugo Chávez misses the mark.

On a separate note, I think a great topic for research would be to look at the correlations between politics and referring to yourself in the third person:

"If Evo Morales negotiates a free trade agreement before and perhaps ... the constituent assembly takes another position, any negotiating will have been useless," Morales said.

Who tends to do so, and why? Greg would like to know.

3 comments:

Camilo Pino 11:37 PM  

First person use is just a prelude to the royal we, reserved for Popes, Royalty and Latin American Presidents.

Greg Weeks 7:37 AM  

Maybe, but I'd be interested to know whether democratic leaders have done so as well. There must be some psychological basis.

Anonymous,  12:30 PM  

The use of the third person reference is not reducible to any distinct political tendency, but does point up the paradoxical and incongruous notion of self and identity.

Any attempt to 'spin' this in the political context seems pointless, verging on hackery.

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