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Norbert Elias on Shame
From Norbert Elias’ The Civilizing Process. Useful re: group functioning and individual psychological processes of shame. Apologies for the gender exclusive pronouns. The feeling of shame is a specific excitation, a kind of anxiety which is automatically reproduced in the individual on certain occasions by force of habit. Considered superficially, it is fear of social…
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Not enough lifeboats
You cannot take even one breath without manipulating the common fabric of material existence. Everything manipulates everything else. Every action shifts the ground upon which everything else is built. There is no such thing as a fully autonomous project. The question is not whether but how to manipulate. How will you step into responsibility to…
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We are people of this generation.
Students for a Democratic Society’s 1962 Port Huron Statement begins with these words: “We are people of this generation…” During a public messaging training that I recently led for a student group, I reflected back to the group my observation that members often referred to themselves as activists — in both internal conversations and external…
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re: Left fragmentation in USA, circa 1968-present (rough notes for future writing)
And I’m back to posting very rough notes… (1) Conceptual shift over past half century from civic/political framework to hobby/elective framework (i.e. “activism”). (2) In concert with broader cultural and structural shift away from “the commons”, toward individualism. (3) The implosion and fragmentation of the Left in the early 1970s. (4) Consolidation of radicals across…
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Marx and the state (#marxtheory)
I recently argued that there is a common thread that connects (1) Marx’s analysis of material world and superstructure, (2) his prediction of the inevitability of communism, and (3) his underdevelopment of subjective political strategy. Now I want to suggest that these three themes are connected to a fourth: Marx’s treatment of the state as…
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Power and self-selection
He who is active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake,’ that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives. —Max Weber The “crisis of our times” is that those driven by ideals and those driven by ‘power…
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sense of wonder
From childhood I can remember experiencing rare moments of overwhelming wonder. I did not have words to describe what I felt, but it was as if everything in all of its complexity somehow made perfect sense and I was part of it, inseparable from it. In youth, when I learned about political injustices—racism, imperialism, global…
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the life of the group vs. what the group accomplishes
This Monday during Cihan Tuğal’s comparative analysis of revolts in North Africa, Southern Europe, and Turkey—part of the Berkeley Sociology Colloquium Series—he offered this gem about the occupation of Gezi Park: Even though a non-commodified space monetarily redistributes resources among its participants, it does not result in an egalitarian world beyond the revolt itself. [from…
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Jonathan Matthew Smucker 