Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Valorization of Expediency?


What on earth is "valorization of expediency"??

I always look forward to reading OpEd articles by Bhanu Pratap Mehta. In his latest piece, 'Sin of Littleness', he discusses a 'contagion of small-mindedness' in public life. He laments that ideas have been replaced by vendettas, the future with past resentments, constructive engagement with rank cynicism.

Without dwelling on specifics, he discusses the sense of insecurity among our leaders and their loss of authority. So far so good...but the subsequent analyses talks of 'formations of power', 'zeitgist which equates expediency with innovation...expediency redounding on itself', and, finally, the last straw - 'valorization of expediency'.

By now the newspaper in my hand feels like a heavy academic journal, and the big words remind me of Amitabh Bachchan in Amar Akbar Antony.

What was BPM trying to say?

If one goes back to the words with a dictionary in hand, it could mean, "to give a value to self-serving means".

That is some progress but I am not there yet...

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NB: According to Google, this expression also figures in a literary article titled, Stephen Cope - As if Objectivist: Oppen’s Political Epistemophelia: "...Ezra Pound’s valorization of the expediency for poetry of ideogrammic script is only the most exemplary of High Modernist bids...". 

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