"An enchanted community of citizens, driven by idealist pragmatism, demanding imaginative transcendence of the here and now": Masha Gessen on a parallel polis

A/UK has been developing and updating the idea of a “parallel polis'“—a coherent and effective community-driven space of power, culture, communication and resources—over the last year or so (it’s a key notion in our founder Indra Adnan’s recent book, The Politics of Waking Up). It comes from the thinking and practice of Czech dissidents in the 70s and 80s, like Vaclav Benda and the better known Vaclav Havel.

We’ve read the 2017 take of New Yorker contributor Pankaj Mishra on the continuing relevance of a parallel polis for Western societies, and their gathering tendencies towards cognitive/affective manipulation and oligarchic power elites.

Here, another notable writer from the New Yorker, Masha Gessen, takes up the job of renewing these concepts, in this brilliant lecture at the Hannah Arendt Centre, embedded above.

“An enchanted community of citizens, driven by idealist pragmatism”, Gessen quotes at one point, “demanding imaginative transcendence of the here and now.” And much more like that - enjoy! (We’ve posted YouTube’s guides to the stages of his presentation below).

Here’s a happy connection: we’ve blogged that Gessen has written about The Initiative for the New Yorker. The Initiative was a Swedish “new politics” party that was, like us, initially inspired by Denmark’s Alternativet (we wrote about them here). We hope to contact Masha, whose displays an appetite for democratic innovation, to compare notes and experiences.

• The new evolutionism (11.33)

• Auto-totality (13.50)

• Parallel Polis (15.53)

• Second Culture (16.28)

• Organised Crime (51.29)

• The Tea Party Movement (57.27)

Russian and American journalist, author, and activist, Masha Gessen, appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.