Philosophy
If you've ever watched "The Usual Suspects," you probably remember the line that "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." The same basic idea applies to our obsession with individualism and its concomitant concept of 'personal responsibility': you are free to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, to overcome any obstacles that are in your way, and to become whoever or whatever you want. Thus stated, it's a narrative of redemption and transcendence, bound to inspire anyone it touches.
But while this attitude reveals the possibility of individual liberation and success, it also conceals the fact that the political, legal, cultural and economic system's logic and structure are rigged to perpetuate the inequalities upon which it necessarily depends. Instead, and because it's much easier to point to a particular individual instead of seeing the invisible structural connections and abstract philosophical presuppositions on which the entire system depends, it will be the individual who will be blamed for her failure to overcome the virtually impossible odds that were stacked against her from the outset.
If you've ever read C. Wright Mills' classic work "The Sociological Imagination," and understood the inescapable interaction between 'the personal troubles of milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure,' the following poem by performance artist Agnes Török, which powerfully exposes the insidious presuppositions embedded in the concepts of personal responsibility and austerity measures, should make you want to go back and re-awaken your own sociological understanding of the relationship between individual biography and collective history.
But maybe what we need is to go from this:
To this:
- Dartmouth, Fraternities, And Arguing From (near) Ignorance
If you haven't read the Rolling Stone expose on fraternity life at Dartmouth, do. It paints a disgusting picture of what goes on in the fraternities of an elite liberal arts college. You have organizations run by pre-adults with no oversight....
- Is The Time Of Intellectual Revolutions Past?
A question came up in a seminar I'm team-teaching with a buddy in sociology. Is it possible to have another "Copernican revolution," that is, an idea so revolutionary that it changes the general worldview? Thomas Kuhn argues that we think...
- Alger's Bootstraps
Today is the birthday of Horatio Alger, the man whose dime store novels helped cement the "rags to riches" if only you work hard myth in our collective conscience. Rags to riches is not completely accurate, of course. It was more rags to middle class....
- All Those In Favor Of Personal Responsibility, Raise Your Invisible Hand
Over at Mad Melancholic Feminista, my fairy blog mother Aspazia has an amazing post about health care, women, and class. It is well worth a read. As a good philosopher, I will respond by completely ignoring the point of her discussion and taking off on...
- Pawel Kuczynski's Thought-provoking Illustrations
As you've seen in this fascinating lecture by Slavoj ?i?ek, the logic of the reigning neoliberal corporatist hegemony requires that people become mindless, selfish, individualistic consumers and automata in a zero-sum game rather than thoughtful citizens...
Philosophy
Agnes Török - Worthless
But while this attitude reveals the possibility of individual liberation and success, it also conceals the fact that the political, legal, cultural and economic system's logic and structure are rigged to perpetuate the inequalities upon which it necessarily depends. Instead, and because it's much easier to point to a particular individual instead of seeing the invisible structural connections and abstract philosophical presuppositions on which the entire system depends, it will be the individual who will be blamed for her failure to overcome the virtually impossible odds that were stacked against her from the outset.
If you've ever read C. Wright Mills' classic work "The Sociological Imagination," and understood the inescapable interaction between 'the personal troubles of milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure,' the following poem by performance artist Agnes Török, which powerfully exposes the insidious presuppositions embedded in the concepts of personal responsibility and austerity measures, should make you want to go back and re-awaken your own sociological understanding of the relationship between individual biography and collective history.
But maybe what we need is to go from this:
To this:
- Dartmouth, Fraternities, And Arguing From (near) Ignorance
If you haven't read the Rolling Stone expose on fraternity life at Dartmouth, do. It paints a disgusting picture of what goes on in the fraternities of an elite liberal arts college. You have organizations run by pre-adults with no oversight....
- Is The Time Of Intellectual Revolutions Past?
A question came up in a seminar I'm team-teaching with a buddy in sociology. Is it possible to have another "Copernican revolution," that is, an idea so revolutionary that it changes the general worldview? Thomas Kuhn argues that we think...
- Alger's Bootstraps
Today is the birthday of Horatio Alger, the man whose dime store novels helped cement the "rags to riches" if only you work hard myth in our collective conscience. Rags to riches is not completely accurate, of course. It was more rags to middle class....
- All Those In Favor Of Personal Responsibility, Raise Your Invisible Hand
Over at Mad Melancholic Feminista, my fairy blog mother Aspazia has an amazing post about health care, women, and class. It is well worth a read. As a good philosopher, I will respond by completely ignoring the point of her discussion and taking off on...
- Pawel Kuczynski's Thought-provoking Illustrations
As you've seen in this fascinating lecture by Slavoj ?i?ek, the logic of the reigning neoliberal corporatist hegemony requires that people become mindless, selfish, individualistic consumers and automata in a zero-sum game rather than thoughtful citizens...