Semiotic Regimes: the Two-Party System
| from
Henry E. Hale, "The Continuing Evolution of Russia's Political System", in Richard Sakwa, Henry E. Hale and Stephen White, Developments in Russian Politics 9 (Duke, 2019). One
implication of the centrality of personal connections in Russia is that
the key 'players' in the country's political arena are often not
'parties' or even formal institutions like the Duma, but extended
networks of actual personal acquaintance led by powerful
'patrons'. At the very least, this is how many political insiders
in Russia see it.
The most important power networks in Russia today fall into at least three main categories. 1. One set of networks grew out of the economy, buiding vast business empires by gaming the post-Soviet privatization process and then translating this wealth into political clout. These networks, led by figures widely known as 'oligarchs', would get 'their' people in positions all across Russian political society and often controlled imoportant mass media. In the 1990s, oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky were household names and thought to be among only a handful of men who essentially ran the country during President Boris Yeltsin's final term in office. 2. Another category might be called 'regional political machines', networks based in peripheral regions in which a strongman could use his (or, rarely, her) leverage as governor to gain control over local economic assets, media and legislatures. These assets could then be mobilized to deliver large shares of the province's votes to themselves or whoever they chose, leverage they could convert into influence in federal politics. Major political machines in regions like Tartarstan and Primorsky Krai were thus highly sought-after allies by national politicians, though the biggest and most famous of ll political machines ws the one led until 2010 by mayor Yuri Luzhkof in Rissua's capital metropolis, Moscow. 3. A third type of network consists of those with home bases in the state itself. Perhaps the most prominent example today is that of Vladimir Putin, who turned a series of personal and professional acquaintances (many acquired during his days in the KGB or as a St Petersburg city official) into an extensive network that now occupies key posts in the state (most obviously, Putin himself serving as president), the economy (e.g. Igor Sechin controlling the oil company Rosneft), mass media (e.g. Yuri Kovalchuk founding the national media group), and multiple political parties with diverse ideologies (e.g. Putin's St Petersburg associates Dmitry Medvedev atop the United Russia party) and Sergei Mironov leading the Just Russia party). This network started to come together as a coherent power network of national importance in the late 1990s, as Putin was finally reaching the pinnacle of Russian power, and it now represnts the country's dominant network. |
| from James R. Flynn, What is Inteligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2009) The scientific ethos, with its vocabulary, taxonomies, and detachment
of logic and the hypothetical from concrete referents, has begun to
permeate the minds of post-industrial peoples. This has paved the
way for mass education on the university level and the emergence of an
intellectual cadre without whom our present civilization would be
inconceivable. 29 from Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development (Harvard, 1996)
Reasoning skills are essential for higher mathemtics. Therefore, by the twelfth grade, the failure to develop enhanced mathematical problem-solving strategies begins to bite. American schoolchildren cannot do algebra and geometry any better than the previous generation. 22 What follows is my version of the cognitive history of the twentieth century. . . Science altered our lives and then liberated our minds from the concrete. This history has not been written because, as children of our own time, we do not perceive the gulf that separates us from our distant ancestors: the difference between their world and the world seen through scientific spectacles. . . . As use of logic and the hypothetical moved beyond the concrete, people developed new habits of mind. They became practiced at solving problems with abstract or visual content and more innovative at administative tasks. 172-174 The term intelligence is often used synonymously with "IQ", "g", or "general intelligence", especially in some of the psychometric literature. . . however, the ability to engage in cognitively complex behaviors will be shown to be independent of IQ, g, or general intelligence . . . cognitive complexity will be seen to be the more general of the two notions and the one most theoretically important to keep in mind when referring to intelligent behavior. 22 The hatred and terror that drove people to such violence were shaped by social tensions and religious beliefs, but the passions themselves derived from deeply rooted fantasies, extravagent in their evocation of demonic lovers and Satanic revels. These fantasies shared, for the most part, a standard structure and a similar set of primary themes. p. 7 |
| what was found is this: The graphic to the
right (The two-party System . . . Cognitive Performativities and Emotional Configurations)
reflects the cumulative result of my
empirical studies of popular discourse available over the internet.
It depends heavily on my reading of Simon
Clarke, Social
Theory, Psychoanalysis and Racism (Palgrave Macmillan,
2003), especially on his discussion of Melanie Klein's paranoid-schizoid
and depressive
positions.* This text provided me with a conceptual
framework that helps make sense of
the mass of empirical materials now at our disposal. The graphic image is of the Lorenz attractor, borrowed from Wikipedia's article on Chaos Theory.) It represents the fundamental axes of the two-party system. On the right, the parnoid-schizoid modality, most strongly rooted in the populist-Bourbon master (dorian knight) vassal relationship that Wilbur Cash describes. But this white power structure rooted in the southern slave states was not the only white supremacist socio-political formation. Sinclair Lewis's midwest was of even greater weight in the affairs of the nation, after reconstruction. And within urban-industrial America, concentrated around the great lakes and the Atlantic coast, there is a third racist accretion to the southern hegemony--Catholics in the northeast and midwest, concentrated in the key occupations of white supremacy (on the formation of the herd as process): see below, "assembling the base". |
Cognitive Performativities and Emotional Configurations
| LEFT* |
RIGHT |
|
| Topology |
depressive |
paranoid-schizoid |
| Political style |
progressive |
proto-Dorian |
| Cognitive mode |
concrete & pre-op |
pre-op and gestural |
| Regime type |
rational-bureaucratic |
patrimonial |
|
A. Here are the sources for the psychological-emotional conceptualization of the Two-Party System: Semiotic Regimes:
Simon Clarke, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Racism (Palgrave Macmillan; 2003) Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009) Eli Zarestsky, Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis (Vintage, 2005) Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightement: the French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2001) B. and for the cognitive developmental conceptualization of the Two-Party System: Semiotic Regimes:
The Development of Children (Sixth Edition) by Cynthia Lightfoot, Michael Cole, and Sheila R. Cole (2009) Laura E. Berk, Development Through the Lifespan, (1998) Piaget, Genetic Epistemology Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development (Harvard, 1996) Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy (Routledge, 2002) A. R. Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations (Harvard, 1976) |
(under the sign of the Sado-sexual Eigenvector of GOP Performativity)
from Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism (Yale Univesity Press, 2008)
Politics is not merely the realm where preexisting interests,
grievances, and passions are given expression. Rather, it is in
and through politics that interests, grievances, and passions are
forged and new collective identities created. Backlash, the
ideological cornerstone and justification for modern conservatism,
masks what was a long-term process whereby various groups in different
places and times attempted to link racism, anti-government populism,
and economic conservatism into a discourse and institutional strategy
through linguistic appeals, party-building, social movement organizing,
and the exercise of state power. In the process, the very
interests and self-understanding of these groups were continually under
construction as they moved from coalition to collective political
identity. As opposed to being entrenched and traditionalist (or
reactionary, depending on one's politics), the Right that
developed is better viewed as contingent, mobile, and highly adaptive,
constantly responding to changing conditions on the ground. 4-5)
|
Elites and their Masses
see Elites: Strategic and Otherwise
MSNBC/CNN New York
Times and Washington Post
NIHILISM
BILDUNG
Commercial republicanism Civic republicanism
concrete-operational and formal-operational and
pre-operational concrete operational
concrete-operational and formal-operational and
pre-operational concrete operational
Fox News
RESSENTIMENT
Fascism
pre-operational and gestural
rentier sectors; provincial capitals; patrimonial and predatory businesses
and racist political ecologies
The
original impetus for this kind of analysis
| The
original impetus for this kind of analysis emerged from a reading of
the comments published in the Connecticut Post of August 31, 2006 re.
the Jonathon Edington murder case (Rabids/Thoughtfuls).
I noticed the similarities between this set of comments and this set of slogans: the
pro- and anti-war demonstrators' signs in a CNN newscast, 4:00 to 6:00
PM, 9-15-07.
from
CNN newscast, 4:00 to 6:00 PM, 9-15-07: pro- and anti-war
demonstrators'
signs (applying the concept of cognitive regime):
pro-war demo signs: "Traitors Go to Hell!"
"Deport Anti-War Protesters!"
"Treason!"
anti-war demo signs: "End the War Now!"
"U.S. Out of Iraq!"
"Support the Troops! End the War!" Figures 1-The two-party System: Semiotic Regimes I Cognitive Performativities and Emotional Configurations - is what resulted from this line of thought. Note the distinction between the topology (where there is a structure on a set of elements) and the topography (which is simply descriptive) of the two-party system. By topologies I mean the following: take the set of all statements made in a well-defined bounded discursive space (the two-party space). First, the rhetorical elements form two disjoint sets. Second, there is a structure on each data set: a left structure and a right structure. Each data set has both a psychoanalytic and a cognitive dimension. These psychological-semiotic structures are provided by Simon Clarke, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Racism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The Clarke text is deployed as interpretive grid. Without this psychoanalytic framework it is impossible to understand the rhetorical performances of right-wing political actors--and the responses of their right-wing audiences/constituencies/herds. from Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (Yale, 2004)
The hatred and terror that drove people to such violence were shaped by social tensions and religious beliefs, but the passions themselves derived from deeply rooted fantasies, extravagent in their evocation of demonic lovers and Satanic revels. These fantasies shared, for the most part, a standard structure and a similar set of primary themes. 7 The cognitive-semiotic structures are provided by standard developmental theory (page, bibliography). Pre-operational and gestural cognitive modalities dominate the right rhetorical set. More abstract (formal operational) and factual (concrete operational) dominate on the left. Indeed, the fundamental character of the left is its committment to science, explicitly, and bildung, implicitly. a. from Merlin
Donald, "The mind considered from a historical perspective: human
cognitive phylogenesis and the possibility of continuing cognitive
evolution." In D. Johnson & C. Ermeling (Eds.) The Future of the Cognitive Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 360-61
"mimetic representations are evident in human children before they acquire language competence. . . . They continue to be important in adults, taking the form of highly variable social customs, athletic skills, and group expressive patterns (such as mass demonstrations of aggression or rejection)." b. and from Merlin Donald, A Mind So Rare (2002): . . . modern culture contains within it a trace of each of our previous stages of cognitive evolution. It still rests on the same old primate brain capacity for episodic or event knowledge. But it has three additional, uniquely human layers: a mimetic layer, an oral-linguistic layer, and an external-symbolic layer. The minds of individuals reflect these three ways of representing reality. (p. 262) |
Analysis of comments sent to Connecticut Post, August 31, 2006 re. Jonathon Edington murder case (article no longer accessible)
Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological model
Four Stages of Piaget's Theory of Development
| A third example of
a
well-defined bounded discursive space, this one
from memory: The Congressional debate on the auto industry bailout produced a similar disjoint bifurcation of a well-defined discursive space (Cong. Record trascript). On the Left were references to the input-output matrix of auto production in the United States, and concerns about the systems impact of an auto 
industry collapse. While poorly expressed (and never using
the
Chicago Fed's map of US parts plants: Delphi
and Midwest Auto Parts), the Left's
cognitive operations
were focused on facts and concepts appropriate to a discussion of
economic policy.On the other hand, the Right confined iself to primarily moralistic arguments and accusations about rewarding the bad behavior of auto executives. Of course the attacks on Detroit, as the iconic symbol of blacks and unions, were just one more performance of a r*c*st semiotic. Absent from the set of of Right rhetorical elements were economic data and economic concepts--a striking omission in a debate on economic policy. Instead it is the shibboleths of a provincial Protestantism that were repeatedly deployed. Indeed, GOP economic policy statements are nothing more than the shibboleths of a provincial Protestantism, and ought not be taken as real conceptualizations of things economic. These statements are easily debunked by real economists (Zombie Economics, see Paul Krugman, Brad de Long on the Ryan kill Medicare "plan" krugman). However, by taking them seriously (that is what Krugman does when he addressed these statements as economic) the critics inadvertently lend credibiity to the pre-scientific cognitive performativity of the right. The specific performative domain of today's rightwing politics is primarily preoperational and gestural. There are psuedo-factual statements on the right: Jon Kyl says abortion services are “well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does” is an example. But this is actually a demonic accusation cloaked in a factical expressive modality, what I call a psuedo-concrete-operational expressive modality. Of course, one might say John Kyl simply lied . . . but that would 1) be too simplistic, and 2) miss the whole point of this kind of analysis, which focuses on the audience and the audience reaction to statements made by political actors. To argue over the "facts", as liberals do, is to lend credibility to the operations of the sado-sexual eigenvector of GOP performativity. |
Cognitive Modalities: a summary of sources |
| Psychometrics ("Q"): Flynn, Nisbett, Ceci; Hernstein and Murray •IQ tests
•PISA •MEAP |
|
Evolutionary: Donald, Mind: cognitive evolution Table 7.1 p. 260
•episodic (primate)
•mimetic (homo erectus, h. sapients) •oral-mythic (h. sapiens sapiens) •theoretic (required by modern capitalism*) •post-theoretic (Foucault, Sellars, Deleuze) |
|
Developmental: Piaget et. al.
•pre-operational
•concrete operrational •formal operational •post-formal thought (Commons) |
|
Psychoanalytic: Freud-Klein: mechanisms of defense
•projection
•displacement •reaction formation •denial •identification |
| Cultural-historical: Vygotsky, Luria, Ong, Bruner, Flynn, Tomasello. The Social Origins of Language (Oxford, 2014)
• zone of proximal development
• joint intentionality • intersubjectivity |
| Jerome Bruner, "Celebrating divergence: Piaget and Vygotsky" Human Development 40.2 (Mar/Apr 1997): 63-73. Piaget
was principally (though not entirely) preoccupied with the ontogenesis
of causal explanation and its logical and empirical justification. This
was even the focus of his masterful studies of moral development, a
topic that does not ordinarily lend itself to such an approach.
Vygotsky, on the other hand, was principally (though not entirely)
concerned with the ontogenesis of interpretation and understanding.
Piaget devised methods of inquiry and a theory appropriate to analyzing
how children explain and how they justify their explanations - and did
it brilliantly. The price he paid, of course, was the usual price one
pays for ignoring context, transactional dynamics, background
knowledge, and cultural variation. To grasp how somebody interprets or
understands something, which was Vygotsky's concern, requires that we
take into account their cultural and linguistic background and the
context in which they find themselves both `in the small', in the sense
of a particular communicative situation, and `in the large' of a
patterned cultural system. Vygotsky's emphasis, accordingly, was on
situated meanings and on situated meaning-making, which inevitably
generates a cultural-historical approach. The two approaches, in
consequence, diverged increasingly as they matured perhaps, some would
say, to a stage of incommensurability.
I think, and I hope you agree, that we are enormously fortunate to have had two such rich theoretical accounts as an inheritance from our mentors, even if they prove to be incommensurate. Just as depth perception requires a disparity between two views of a scene, so in the human sciences the same may be true: depth demands disparity. So I conclude this excursion into the thought of these two great developmental psychologists with a salute to their profound difference. To have had either of them as a guide would have been a gift. To have had them both is stronger stuff, and even though it may at times seem overwhelming, we are the better for it. |
Cognitive-linguistic Cardinality (orders of magnitude/index of cognitive complexity)
the Quantum Heterogeneity of Dasein in the context of Merlin Donald, A Mind so Rare, Table 7.1, p. 260 (Apologies to George Cantor) אi index of cognitive complexity (Ceci) |
|
i=4 Internet and the Extended Mind
|
|
i=3 Foucault (Kant Hegel Nietzsche)
|
|
i=2 Formal operational
|
|
i=1 Concrete operational
|
|
i=0 Oral-mythic/pre-operational
|
|
i=-1 Mimetic/gestural (homo erectus)
|
|
i=-2 Primate semiosis
|
| The Development of Children (Sixth Edition) by Cynthia Lightfoot, Michael Cole, and Sheila R. Cole Development Through the Lifespan, Laura E. Berk Jerome Kagan, The Human Spark: The Science of Human Development 2013 Piaget, Genetic Epistemology Stephen J. Ceci, On Intelligence: A Bioecological Treatise on Intellectual Development (Harvard, 1996) The term
intelligence is often used synonymously with "IQ", "g", or "general
intelligence", especially in some of the psychometric literature. .
. however, the ability to engage in cognitively complex behaviors
will be shown to be independent of IQ, g, or general intelligence . . .
cognitive complexity will be seen to be the more general of the two
notions and the one most theoretically important to keep in mind when
referring to intelligent behavior.22 f |
