The Judging of Nations: Some comments on the assessment of regimes in the New States

Extract

LikeProphecies, revolutions restart time, and the distance between l'An I and l'An X is greater than any other decade in history. After that, or a little bit more, things seem to slow down, not because less happens but because less happens for the first time. The ‘infinite grandeur of beginnings’ fades, a certain possibility disappears from things. Attempts may be made to prolong the excitements of setting out. Pillars are erected in squares, purification movements launched in schools, guerilla styles imitated in offices. But all this soon becomes parody, the sort of thing V.S. Naipaul memorializes, as the ordinariness of life reasserts itself. This is where the New States are now, and their study as well, and it is an awkward point for both.