Inchoate displays of anger

AMELIA HC YLAGAN

“Inchoate” means imperfectly formed or formulated: formless, incoherent, the Merriam-Webster dictionary says, to which the Cambridge dictionary adds, “not completely developed or clear.” When Sanjoy Chakravorty, professor of global studies at Temple University, Pennsylvania, called the fever of street protests around the world in 2019 “inchoate displays of anger,” “inchoate” can only mean futile and desperate.

The Guardian, in its Oct. 25 issue, cites experts in academe on political science, speaking on the long-playing “protests in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and Iraq as well as in Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Albania… the UK (against Brexit), France (yellow vest movement), and Spain, in the restive region of Catalonia. The Middle East has convulsed with so much dissent that some are calling it a second wave of the Arab Spring. In South America, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela have experienced popular unrest.” The article asks, “Protests rage around the world — but what comes next?”

Read on…

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