:
from the New Deal to Donald Trump:
Beyond the Sapient Paradox
XXXthe Gutenberg Parenthesis
the Flynn Effect
"Thoughts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind."
"Philosophy always arrives too late . . . . The Owl
of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall."
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic
facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add:
the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
History without philosophy is only a screen
on which to project the shibboleths of our time
Hitler is to Trump as tragedy is to farce
"Philosophy always arrives too late . . . . The Owl
of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall."
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic
facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add:
the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
History without philosophy is only a screen
on which to project the shibboleths of our time
Hitler is to Trump as tragedy is to farce
Figure 2. U.S. Political Economy by Sector, 1910-1938
Source: "Membership List, May 1927," in the Morris L. Cooke Papers, box 66,
FDR Library; and United States Government Manual 1937
for more info on Fig.2 click on Keynesian Elite: Career Matrix
Joanna Bockman. Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism (Stanford University Press, 2011): three reviews
| The
election of 2016 occured in the context of the situation
indexed by Figure 3, and is inconceivable outside this context.
Many have commented on the cognitive performativity of the candidate
and then the President, but don't take seriously the historicity, fragility,
and reversibility of cognitive development as a cultural-historical
phenomenon.
Figure
3 is an effect of cultural-historical developmental processes, of which
schooling itself is only one of several key inputs affecting the
cognitive and cultural development of situated* organisms (not Cartesian
selves). Cognitive development is not a normative, inevitable
process. It is an effect of history and politics, as well as
evolution, and can suffer reversal or collapse. Cognitive development is also not a solely ontogenetic process: the contextual and embedded character of mind; the social character of mind and agency; and the institutional and historical contexts of cognitive performativity must be borne in mind. (Jan Derry, Vygotsky, Philosophy, and Education, Wiley, 2013, pp. 17, 24) Mainstream elite media* observe but do not comprehend the cognitive-discursive peculiarities of Trump's performances, and thus take Trump's utterances at face value, arguing the merits and feasibility of building the wall and the ban on Muslims. They note the dog-whistle character of Trump's rhetoric, but discuss only the whistle, never the dog: the cognitive and emotional reactions of the audience toward whom the whistle is directed. Media, therefore, must also be scrutinized in the context of Figure 3. Figure 3 suggests that a catastrophic decline in cognitive performativity preceded and made possible the fascist-patrimonial victory of November 2018. (An alternative title for Figure 3: From the New Deal to Donald Trump.) Focusing on the person of the Chief Executive and his various performative moments obliterates the cultural-historical dimensions of history. The brutishness in language and behavior that are the chief characteristics of Trump's mass-oriented performances must be understood as manifestations of something of great ontological significance. To understand this, thinking must first emancipate itself from the Cartesian presuppositional matrix--the ontological presupposition of the Cartesian self and its associated rhetorical elements of consciousness, belief, motive, ideology and interest. Failure to do so has the effect, a priori, of blocking conceptualization of questions of ontology, agency, intentionality, habitus, networks and contexts. And thinking must approach the question of "ontology" as a question of genetic ontology (see below): the performative dimensions of ontology.f ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *situated in cultural-historical bundles such as: 1. Schiller Hall bundle; 2. European Socoalist bundle; 3. E. V. Debs bundle; individudation and associated milieux Modernization is key concept, not class struggle or socialism. R. I. Moore, The War On Heresy (Harvard, 2012) |
Figure 3a. PISA Math Scores, 2003 to 2018*:
21
Developed Nations & East Asian Cities and City-States
*to be released December 3, 2019
Programme for International Student Assessment WIKI
Korea and Japan are in light blue; Asia: Asian cities and city-states (C & C-S) are in light orange (see below for a breakout of the components of this category); Scandinavian nations + Switzerland are in dark blue; Anglo-Saxon nations in orange; France, Germany, Belgium and Poland in green; Italy, Portugal and Spain in red; the United States in yellow.
Of the European nations omitted from this graph, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus scored below the United States in math. Ahead of the United States but not shown are Estonia, Slovenia, Ireland, Austria, Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Lithuania, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic.
The United States does better on reading and science, but math is taken by many as the more important indicator.
Korea and Japan are in light blue; Asia: Asian cities and city-states (C & C-S) are in light orange (see below for a breakout of the components of this category); Scandinavian nations + Switzerland are in dark blue; Anglo-Saxon nations in orange; France, Germany, Belgium and Poland in green; Italy, Portugal and Spain in red; the United States in yellow.
Of the European nations omitted from this graph, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Cyprus scored below the United States in math. Ahead of the United States but not shown are Estonia, Slovenia, Ireland, Austria, Russian Federation, Czech Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Lithuania, Hungary, and the Slovak Republic.
The United States does better on reading and science, but math is taken by many as the more important indicator.
|
Donald observes that contemporary homo sapiens' semiotic behavior
"contains within it a trace of each of our previous stages of cognitive
evolution." Wrangham and Wilson state that "patterns of collective
violence found among humans include similarities to those seen among
chimpanzees." Gomez writes of "the possibility that, at a reduced
scale, the mind of an ape can be upgraded by giving him, on the one
hand, a regime of socially controlled attention and interactive
experiences with humans, and on the other, a new, more explicit form of
representing the world, would confer dramatic support to the Vygotskian
notion that higher cognition can be created through cultural processes
of development that change the nature of cognitive ontogeny."
Malafouris and Renfrew, in How Things Shape the Mind, write that "the
human mind exists as a historically situated actuality—that is, an
emergent product of complex ecological relationships and flexible
incorporative forms of material engagement." And Dupre: "It is . . .
clear that recognition of the variety of factors involved in
development makes possible a diversity of individual outcomes within
even quite narrowly defined populations."
This is the scope and the scale of the “issue” of “Trump.” Tr*mp is a critical update to the sapient paradox; call it sapient paradox part two. The SP begins with wondering why it took so long for anatomically modern homo sapiens to become behaviorally modern. SP part two asks under what circumstances modernity itself can collapse, implode, and also be destroyed through hostile action, wilful neglect, |
the implosion of neo-liberal
"society"
|
What we are now engulfed in is the implosion of neo-liberal
"society." The term "society" is bracketed because, in the
conventional use of the term, an ontological stability is implied,
whereas in reality this society is in the process of blowing its brains
out, and that along four axes of ontological catastrophe:
•First, the disintegration of cognitive
performativities (decognification, disindividuation; Trump's rhetorical
performances seen from the standpoint of literacy and cognition: Trump as everyman)
•Second, the explosion of fascist performativities within the orbit of the GOP (Robert O. Paxton, Anatomy of Fascism: "The legitimation of violence against a demonized internal enemy brings us close to the heart of fascism."). •Third, the assault on rational-bureaucratic institutions--i.e., an assault on the very idea of science-based professionalism and public service. •Fourth, the triumph of nihilism. Some call this the neo-liberal subjectivity*; I call it the incredible shrinking self (see below). The Unity Caucus (UAW) as the antithesis of the incredible shrinking self, as the central nevious sysetem of the modern UAW: my observational platform from which to view the period: New Deal to Trump. The Unity Caucus also as the antithesis of the politics and the ontology of ressentiment and the mechanisms of defense. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2018) |
The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and
rational self-interest would one day triumph . . .
The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and rational
|
from
J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006)
You
have to think about England as a whole, not just Brooklands and the
Thames Valley. The churches are empty, and the monarchy shipwrecked
itself on its own vanity. Politics is a racket, and democracy just
another utility, like gas and electricity. Almost no one has any civic
feeling. Consumerism is the one thing that gives us our sense of
values. Consumerism is honest, and teaches us that everything good has
a barcode. The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and
rational self-interest would one day triumph, led directly to today's
consumerism.
|
The great dream of the Enlightenment, that reason and rational
|
|
The brutishness in language and behavior?
Ressentiment and the Mechanisms of Defense is the Genetic
Ontology of Trump's Theatrics
| Lee
Atwater has shown how the discursive and symbolic elements of the
Southern Strategy were generated through the construction of a
theatrical arena in which hatred is expressed and sadism
performed. This sado-sexual performativity is the essence of the
GOP's mass appeal. Well before Trump, the evocation of evil and
the channelling of rage against a scapegoat was the stock-in-trade of
Republican politicians, who tapped into and gave expression to " . . .
a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible
and insatiable . . . " (Nietzsche, Geneology of Morals, III. 14) The rhetorical violence of Trump rallies, not ideology and policies, is what is fundamental. The Trump performances--the audience, the cultural-historical context, and Trump himself as a therapeutic object with which the audience member can identify--become intelligible when viewed through the prism of certain key concepts: • Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment; • psychoanalysis's concept of the mechanisms of defense; • Wilbur Cash's concept of the proto-Dorian convention; • the Lacan-Atwater Signifying Chain; • and Robert Paxton's concept of redemptive violence. On the right there are not issues, but postures, gestures, various encodings of the same sado-sexual reflex (the inner logic of racism). Rage enacted in a political-media theater of violence, sadism, and revenge. The cruelty of it all is the most important thing. The vicarious thrill, the “enthusiasm for inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation”(OED*): this is what is seen at Trump rallies. The GOP's performative cadre are specialists in herding hominids of a particular cultural-historical configuration (ressentiment). Hence the concept of semioitic regime. *Oxford English Dictionary online, s.v. "Sadism" |
Figure 4. the Lacan-Atwater Signifying Chain
|
from
Wikipedia:
(Lee
Atwater's Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy)
As a member of the
Reagan administration in 1981, Atwater gave an
anonymous interview to political scientist Alexander P. Lamis. Part of
the interview was printed in Lamis's book The Two-Party South, then
reprinted in Southern Politics in the 1990s with Atwater's name
revealed. . . . Atwater talked about the Republican Southern Strategy
and Ronald Reagan's version of it:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now you don't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster. Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps? Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a by-product of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger." |
He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting
from It’s Just Too Much’: "A Florida Town Grapples With a Shutdown After a Hurricane, New York Times, 1-7-19.
“I voted for him, and he’s the
one who’s doing this,” an employee of the Federal prison in the Florida
Panhandle said. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not
hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals, II, 14
Here the works of vengefulness
and rancor swarm; here the air stinks of secrets and concealment;
. . . and what mendaciousness is employed to disguise that this hatred
is hatred! What a display of grand words and postures, what an
art of "honest" calumny!
the PISA Results: Evolutionary, Historical, Developmental, and Psychological Perspectives
The GOP as the Stupid Party? An inadequate conceptualization
The Imus Brouhaha and that which is called "Racism"
| from Jonathan Bernstein, "Where Does Trump Get His Odd Ideas?" (Bloomberg Opinion, May 28, 2019) The reporting is pretty
clear: Trump doesn't read briefings, on politics or anything else. He
doesn't appear to have absorbed the basics of public policy, whether on
health care or national security or even issues, like trade, that he
cares about. Instead, he seems to pick up fragments of information in
conversation or, more often, from cable television. Often, it's
partisan talking points, which isn't surprising since much of what airs
on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC consists of partisan talking points.
|
from Werner Stark, Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom (Fordham University Press, 1966-72) vol. 1, p. 188
"As democratic convictions became
settled . . . 'the people' emerged increasingly as the true sovereign,
and the conception gained ground that 'the people' is sane and sound,
and its voice, at least to some extent, is sacred."
from Friederich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, § 863
“The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of leadership."
What Is a People? (Columbia, 2016), by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler . . .
Semiotic Regimes
Analyzing Power Relations: Five Frameworks
Herding Primates:
the Psychological Correlates of the Two-Party System
the "Two-Party System:" Semiotic Regimes
Analyzing Power Relations: Five Frameworks
|
Deleuze & Guattari Vincent/McMahon Piaget/Vygotsky Michael Mann This site | Three regimes (primitive, despotic, capitalist) Left vs. Right: (topologies of the two-party system) Cognitive modalities (topologies of the two-party system) Four networks of power Five genetic ontologies (topologies of the two-party system) |
Herding Primates:
the Psychological Correlates of the Two-Party System
| Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age ( (McGill-Queens University Press, 2010) We are changing, of course,
but that does not necessarily mean we are progressing. Combined
with all the forces that today exhort us to look into our own private
lives, the “civilization of change” has stimulated a massive interest
in psychic disorders. It can be heard from all quarters, and it
takes form in the many marketplaces that offer inner balance and
tranquility. Today, many of our socials tensions have been
expressed in terms of implosion and depressive collapse or, in a
similar way, its flip side: explosions of violence, rage, the search
for new sensations. pp. 185-6
As addictive explosion reflects depressive implosion, so the drug-taker’s search for sensation reflects the depressed person’s lack of feeling. Depression, that crossroads of pathology, serves as a canvas upon which to sketch out the changes in modern subjectivity, the displacement of the hard task of being healthy. In a context in which choice is the norm and inner insecurity the price, these pathologies make up the dark side of contemporary private life. Such is the equation of the sovereign individual: psychic freedom and individual initiative = identity insecurities and the incapacity to act. p. 232 |
the "Two-Party System:" Semiotic Regimes
| LEFT* |
RIGHT |
|
| Topology |
depressive |
paranoid-schizoid |
| Political style |
progressive |
proto-Dorian |
| Cognitive mode |
concrete & pre-op |
pre-op and gestural |
| Regime type |
rational-bureaucratic |
(r-b and) patrimonial |
| Here are the sources for this 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) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Note on use of the term "Left." Progressivism and Liberalism are opposites, not twins. The genetic ontology of Progressivism is Bildung and the Will to Power; The genetic ontology of Liberalism is Nihilism. Today liberalism is referred as the left, covering over the genetic-ontological transformation of the post-war years (see Hall et. al.) The New Deal is not represented in in the above figure and table, The Two-Party System: Semiotic Regimes. |
| QHD-5
is the antithesis of the Cartesian a-priori so central to contemporary
media performances. The term Dasein is used to problematize homo
sapiens as a species unlike any other, whose "nature" it is to be
subject to cultural and historical development as a result of its own
activity, to be subject to the psychological consequences of such
processes (Nietzsche), and to be capable of embarking on projects whose
objective is self- and societal-transformation. (On "human nature" see Sahlins.) TEST |
|
http://invisible-university.com/the%20sapient%20paradox.html#Sahlins
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/400/707/2414073/ |
|
The Quantum Heterogeniety of Dasein: Five Genetic Ontologies* (QHD-5) Five "principles of production of practices" (Bourdieu, In Other Words, p. 108)
*Miguel de Beistegui, Truth and genesis: philosophy as differential ontology (Indiana University Press, 2004) |
primate paleolithic ressentiment & the mechanisms of defense bildung & the will to power nihilism |
| genetic ontology |
representative
texts: short version long version |
Primate |
•Richard Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (Pantheon, 2019) •Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: a Theory of Ontogeny (Harvard, 2019) •Allan Mazur, Biosociology of Dominance and Deference (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) •Christopher Boesch, Wild Cultures: A Comparison Between Chimpanzee and Human Cultures (Cambridge University Press, 2012) Juan Carlos Gomez, Apes, Monkees, Children and the Growth of Mind (Harvard, 2004) John C. Mitani et. al., eds., The Evolution of Primate Societies, (University of Chicago Press, 2012); William Calvin, A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond (Oxford, 2004) Franz de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (Harper & Row, 1982) Julia Adams and Mounira M. Charrad, Patrimonial Power in the Modern World (Sage, 2011); Getty, Practicing Stalinism () |
Paleolithic |
John F. Hoffecker, Landscapes of the Mind: Human Evolution and the Archeology of Thought (Columbia, 2011) Renfrew, Frith, and Malafouras, The Sapient Mind: Archeology meets Neuroscience (Oxford, 2009) Timothy R. Pauketat, An Archaeology of the Cosmos: Rethinking Agency and Religion in Ancient America (Routledge, 2012) Michael Tomasello, Natural History of Human Thinking (Harvard University Press, 2014) Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew, How Things Shape the Mind : A Theory of Material Engagement (MIT Press, 2013) Robin Dunbar, Clive Gamble and John Gowlett, eds., Social Brain, Distributed Mind (Oxford, 2010) Andrew Whiten and David Erdal, "The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins," Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2012) 367, 2119–212 Philip G. Chase, The Emergence of Culture. The Evolution of a Uniquely Human Way of Life (Springer, 2006); |
|
After the State
|
|
| Ressentiment & the Mechanisms of Defense (despotic regime, white supremacy) Fascism |
Nietzsche, Freud, Klein. Michael André Bernstein, Bitter Carnival : ressentiment and the abject hero (Princeton University Press, 1992) Frank John Ninivaggi, Envy Theory: Perspectives on the Psychology of Envy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010) Simon Clarke, Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Racism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) Fyodor Dostoevski, Notes from Underground Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry Tara Westover, Educated Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (Knopf, 2004) R. J. B. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford University Press, 2009) Mary Vincent, "The Spanish Church and the Popular Front: the experience of Salamanca province," in Martin S. Alexander and Helen Graham, eds., The French and Spanish Popular Fronts (Cambridge University Press, 1989) Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion, and Race across the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2008) Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightement: the French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford University Press, 2001) Aristotle Kallis, Genocide and Fascism: the Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe (Routledge, 2009) Macgregor Knox, To the Threshold of Power: 1922/33: Origins and Dynamics of the Fascist and National Socalist Dictatorshhips, Volume 1 (Cambridge, 2007) Susan Juster, Sacred Violence in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: the Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (2009); Anatol Levien, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2005) Joseph E. Lowndes, From the New Deal to the New Right : race and the southern origins of modern conservatism (2008), Carter, Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? Don E. Carleton, Red scare! Right-wing hysteria, fifties fanaticism, and their legacy in Texas (Austin, Tex. : Texas Monthly Press, 1985) Thomas B. Edsall, Building Red America: the New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (Basic Books, 2006) Michael W. Miles, The Odyssey of the American Right (Oxford University Press, 1980) Richard M. Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the origins of McCarthyism: foreign policy, domestic politics, and internal security, 1946-1948 (New York University Press, 1985) James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in Post-Vietnam America (Hill and Wang, 1994) Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: the Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (W. W. Norton, 2009) Julia Adams and Mounira M. Charrad, Patrimonial Power in the Modern World (Sage, 2011) Elmer Gantry;Heart of Darkness FOX News |
| Progressive Narcissism; Bildung; the Will to Power |
Nietzsche, Hegel, Vygotsky.
Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: A Theory of Ontogeny (Harvard, 2019) Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 49-50; 269-275; 369-370; 486-487 Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 77-78; 132-139; 144-147; 166) Marshall W. Alcorn, Jr., Narcissism and the Literary Libido: Rhetoric, Text, and Subjectivity (New York University Press, 1994) Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (Verso, 2000) Stephen Rumph, Mozart and Enlightenment Semiotics (University of California Press, 2012) Harold Mah, Enlightenment Phantasies: Cultural Identity in France and Germany, 1750-1914 (Cornell, 2003 S.A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge Univesity Press, 2008) Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Harvard, 2000) Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (Free Press, 1991) |
| Nihilism; Regressive Narcissism and the culture of consumption; repressive desublimation; the last man |
Nietzsche. Miguel de Beistegui, The Government of Desire: A Genealogy of the Liberal Subject (University of Chicago Press, 2018) Carole Sweeney, Michel Houellebecq and the Literature of Despair (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) Kieran Keohane, Anders Petersen, and Bert van den Bergh, Late Modern Subjectivity and its Discontents: Anxiety, Depression and Alzheimer’s Disease (Routledge, 2017) Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010) Steve Hal, Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum, Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: crime, exclusion and the new culture of narcissism (Willan Publishing, 2008) Bülent Diken, Nihilism (Routledge, 2009); Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism (Harvard, 2006); Robin Usher, Ian Bryant and Rennie Johnston, Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge (Routledge, 1997); Republic of Outsiders: the power of amateurs, dreamers, and rebels; The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food NYT Eli Zaretsky, Secrets of the Soul: a Social and cultural history of psychoanalysis (Vintage, 2004); Novels. Michel Houellebecq: The Map and the Territory (2010), Richard Powers, Generosity: an Enhancement (2009); Choire Sicha, Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City (2013); Vernon God Little CNN & MSNBC; Facebook, Twitter . . . |
| Michael Tomasello, Becoming Human: a Theory of Ontogeny (Harvard, 2019): Shared, Collective intentionality; the cultural intelligence hypothesis Simon Jarvis, Wordsworth's Philosophical Song (Cambridge, 2007): Beyond the transcript the bildung-proletarians around whom formed the action networks of plebeian upstarts who created the UAW. |
| DETROIT STEEL PRODUCTS (4) PS:
We organized—my own plant [Detroit Steel Products] was oganized; out of
1800 people we had only 40 people in the union, ’35 ’36
. . . . PF: when you had only 35 40 people in the union. Were those 40 distinct sociogically? PS: philosophically they were distinct. They wanted a revolution. They wre socialists or syndalists, some dues paying members of SP or CP or PP, some were Wobblies. Some were just, some believed that didn't pay dues . . . |
If one looks at the east side as mocrocosm of New Deal (ahdn at that time Detroit was the grat ind.) from the stndpoint of agency, one sees the antithesisof widespread leftist notions of a potentially soaidary mass.
Homer Martin as proto-Trump
Genetic ontologies in the new deal era, from Toledo to Saginaw
this is what is not found among the hegemoinic actors on the CIOside
see Fascism:
***Watch Trump rallies closely. The audience is usually unfocused, almost bored in the haze of broken English spoken by Trump. Bored, restless, talking among themselves, cognitively not there, but waiting for the punch line, the expletive, the primitive, hate-filled denunciation: license has been given (Kallis). Then they wake up, some more slowly than others, as they catch on, and howl their delight, only to subside into a state of not being. This the pundits refer to as "energy." This is, ontologically speaking, some really primitive stuff. This is why media discourse on the real-world economic grievances of white men simultaneously get it and miss it completely. They are finally being forced to address what has been a trend obvious for decades, but not discussed in the media until the breakdown of elite control of public discourse in the primary campaigns of 2016. What they miss is the deep structure of this rage; the cognitive primitiveness of its expression; the centuries long history of ressentiment as the inner logic of ultra-nationalism and fascism and racism
Mappings
Beyond sadism (the beating heart of the GOP), and related to it, are the cognitive consequences of a politics of bestiality. It is not merely that Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader (Politico, August 13, 1915).
Language on the threshold of gesture and reflex. Regression to infantile narcissism (see Criminal Identities ) via processes of identification, to a politics of patrimonialism.
Trump is the apotheosis of the GOP's core performativities. In thhis sense there is nothing new. But what is new with the Trump campaign--and decisively so--is that a charismatic demagogue has literally hijacked the base of the Republican Party. The genetic ontology of ressentiment produces a subject. But that subject--the Trump enthusiasts one sees at rallies and in interviews and focus groups--has been embedded in the cultural-historical field of white supremacy (see The Imus Brouhaha and that which is called "Racism"). The containment of white rage has depended on two things. First, an economy of white affirmative action guaranteeing great masses of "white" folk sole access to those sectors of employment embedded in local government (police, fire, govt administration, utilities, transportation, building services, construction, and even manufacturing). And second, a semioitic regime of ego-reinforcing symbols (positive and negative identifications). When you add the election of Barak Obama to the economic consequences of the regime of neoliberal globalization (which includes declining wages as well as job losses) you add insult to injury, and one gets a psycho-cultural crackup of world-historic proportions. This is what Trump exploits.
see Fascism:
***Watch Trump rallies closely. The audience is usually unfocused, almost bored in the haze of broken English spoken by Trump. Bored, restless, talking among themselves, cognitively not there, but waiting for the punch line, the expletive, the primitive, hate-filled denunciation: license has been given (Kallis). Then they wake up, some more slowly than others, as they catch on, and howl their delight, only to subside into a state of not being. This the pundits refer to as "energy." This is, ontologically speaking, some really primitive stuff. This is why media discourse on the real-world economic grievances of white men simultaneously get it and miss it completely. They are finally being forced to address what has been a trend obvious for decades, but not discussed in the media until the breakdown of elite control of public discourse in the primary campaigns of 2016. What they miss is the deep structure of this rage; the cognitive primitiveness of its expression; the centuries long history of ressentiment as the inner logic of ultra-nationalism and fascism and racism
Mappings
Beyond sadism (the beating heart of the GOP), and related to it, are the cognitive consequences of a politics of bestiality. It is not merely that Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader (Politico, August 13, 1915).
Language on the threshold of gesture and reflex. Regression to infantile narcissism (see Criminal Identities ) via processes of identification, to a politics of patrimonialism.
Trump is the apotheosis of the GOP's core performativities. In thhis sense there is nothing new. But what is new with the Trump campaign--and decisively so--is that a charismatic demagogue has literally hijacked the base of the Republican Party. The genetic ontology of ressentiment produces a subject. But that subject--the Trump enthusiasts one sees at rallies and in interviews and focus groups--has been embedded in the cultural-historical field of white supremacy (see The Imus Brouhaha and that which is called "Racism"). The containment of white rage has depended on two things. First, an economy of white affirmative action guaranteeing great masses of "white" folk sole access to those sectors of employment embedded in local government (police, fire, govt administration, utilities, transportation, building services, construction, and even manufacturing). And second, a semioitic regime of ego-reinforcing symbols (positive and negative identifications). When you add the election of Barak Obama to the economic consequences of the regime of neoliberal globalization (which includes declining wages as well as job losses) you add insult to injury, and one gets a psycho-cultural crackup of world-historic proportions. This is what Trump exploits.
Although Begriff is
generally translated as 'concept' or 'notion,' Hegel scholars often
object that this obscures its relationship to the verb begreifen, which
comes from greifen, to grasp or seize. Thus Begriff is more than
concept or notion because it implies that mind is activity, rather than
substance, engaged in capturing, embracing, or encompasing its object
within consciousness. 9
Hegel "spoke of a 'sunburst,' perhaps meaning the French Revolution or Enlightenment liberalism, both of which were profoundly impacting Germany at that time. But rather than specific historical events, the sunburst was a new way of thinking, an attitude that rejected provincial beliefs and authoritative religions. 12-13 [Joe Adams on anti-religion of uaw; John Perry on conflict with clergy)
Hegel "spoke of a 'sunburst,' perhaps meaning the French Revolution or Enlightenment liberalism, both of which were profoundly impacting Germany at that time. But rather than specific historical events, the sunburst was a new way of thinking, an attitude that rejected provincial beliefs and authoritative religions. 12-13 [Joe Adams on anti-religion of uaw; John Perry on conflict with clergy)
the Myth of the Cartesian Self
the taboo against discussing class and race
Marx and Nietzsche
"7,500 Strike, Shut Three Chrysler Plants," Detroit News, May 20, 1943
| This
first block of interviewees were all early leaders of the emergent
forces that came to be known as the UAW. Most of them were
"Debsian" Socialists, others were Communists. Most of them were neither skilled
workers in the sense as it was understood at the time (skilled trades
& tool & die), but neither were they laborers or assemblers or
press operators: they were welders, trimmers, skilled machine workers
and repairmen. Frank Fagan (Murray Body) provides both a synoptic view of the operation and is in fact an embodiment of the kind of bildungs-proletarian who were at the center of agency. He is an actor in his time, and a collaborator in mine the extended mind of the unity caucus Most of them were part of the trans-Atlantic population movements out of central, northern, and western europe. They were, most of all, intensely rather that merely literate. interviewed by Jack Skeels in 1960 have one * U of M interviews conducted by Neil Leighton ** Interviews that I conducted in the mid-1970s have no asterik. —Paul Silver comments on his job as paint tester— In reviewing these interviews now [spring 2015/spring 2019] in the context of all that has happened in the world since then, which may be summed up as the wreckage of socialism, the persistence of fascism, and the triumph of nihilism--all pre-conditions for the emergence of trump. These interviews are a set of dialogic unfoldings that cumulatively and retrospectively form a lens through which to examine the ontologies and events, the transformations and reactions, that are subsumed under the terms unionization and New Deal. The factories, meeting halls, and neighborhoods of southeastern Michigan are laboratories in which to investigate the play of forces: first, the deep structures, the genetic ontologies (the principles of the production of practices) that dominate the manifold areas of human activity; and second, the irruption of forces of an entirely different kind, referred to variously as bildung and the will to power--aufheben, emergence, praxis, agency. Liminal zones (Bourdieu) (key concepts: liminality; individuation)
|
Detroit East Side: UAW Locals: interviews
| Leon Pody* |
Murray Body |
UAW Local 2 |
| Frank Fagan |
Murray Body | UAW Local 2 |
| Frank Fagan* | Murray Body | UAW Local 2 |
| Lloyd Jones* |
Murray Body | UAW Local 2 |
| Dick Frankensteen | Dodge Main |
UAW Local 3 |
| Dick Frankensteen* | Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Charles Watson | Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Harry Ross* | Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Richard Harris* |
Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Joe Adams | Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Joe Ptazynski |
Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Earl Reynolds | Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| John Zaremba* |
Dodge Main | UAW Local 3 |
| Sam Sweet |
Plymouth |
UAW Local 51 |
| John McDaniel | Packard |
UAW Local 190 |
| John McDaniel* | Packard | UAW Local 190 |
| Harry Kujawski | Packard | UAW Local 190 |
| Eddie Dvornik | Packard | UAW Local 190 |
| Adam Poplewski* |
Packard | UAW Local 190 |
| James Lindahl*** |
Packard |
UAW Local 190 |
| Leonard Klue | MICHIGAN STEEL TUBE | UAW Local 238 |
| Paul Silver |
Detroit Steel Products |
UAW Local 351 |
| N = 35 interviewees |
MIDLAND STEEL |
UAW Local 410 |
| John Anderson |
CP, Midland Steel |
MESA, UAW 155 |
| Bill Jenkins | Chrysler Highland Park |
UAW Local 490 |
| Tony Podorsek |
body-in-white supervisor | Dodge, Cadillac |
Detroit East Side: Midland Steel, UAW Local 410: interviews
| Bob Brenner | Tool and Die |
| Barney Kluk | Tool and Die |
| Ed Tyll | Tool and Die |
| Jim Peters |
Chrysler line |
| Oscar Oden |
Chrysler line |
| Ben Wainwright | Chrysler line |
| John Perry | Chrysler line |
| William Hintz | Chrysler line |
| Joe Block | Chrysler line |
| Tiedermann | Chrysler line |
| George Bidinger |
Large presses |
| George Borovich | Large presses |
| Chester Podgorski | Large presses |
| Louis Voletti | Large presses |
| Lawrence Voletti | Large presses |
| Herman Burt | Paint Machine |
| Levi Nelson | Shipping & Recieving |
| Agnes Baransky |
Small presses |
| Lotte Klas |
Small presses |
| John Anderson |
Organizer, Local 155 |
what does cog dev mean? Nature of discursive or related performances
there is a "choice" between civilization and barbarism. Actually, in retrospect, someone will write that only one outcome was likely, and that outcome is the one that has prevailed.
| Jack Zeller |
Chrysler-Jefferson |
UAW Local 7 |
| Ed Carey* |
Chrysler-Jefferson | UAW Local 7 |
| Francis Moore |
Hudson |
UAW Local 154 |
| Minnie Anderson |
Hudson |
UAW Local 154 |
| Leon Pody* | Hudson | UAW Local 154 |
| Leon Pody* | Briggs | UAW Local 212 |
| Bill Mazey |
Briggs |
UAW Local 212 |
| Ernie Mazey | Briggs | UAW Local 212 |
| Ken Morris* |
Briggs | UAW Local 212 |
| Art Vega* |
Briggs | UAW Local 212 |
| Irwin Bauer |
Budd Wheel |
UAW Local 306 |
Detroit West Side & Dearborn: UAW Locals: interviews
| Ed Lock |
Ford |
UAW Local 600 |
| Percy Llewelyn |
Ford |
UAW Local 600 |
| Shelton Tappes | Ford |
UAW Local 600 |
| Shelton Tappes* | Ford | UAW Local 600 |
| John Anderson |
Fleetwood |
UAW Local 15 |
| Irene Marinovich (I) |
Ternstedt |
UAW Local 174 |
| Mary Davis |
CP |
|
| Stanley Novak |
CP/UAW |
|
| Blain Marrin |
Tool & Die |
UAW Local 157 |
Flint and Pontiac: UAW Locals: interviews
| Norman Bully |
Buick (Flint) | UAW Local 599 |
| Arthur Case* |
Buick (Flint) | UAW Local 599 |
| Larry Jones |
Chevrolet (Flint) | UAW Local 659 |
| Bill Genski |
Fisher Body #1 (Flint) |
UAW Local 581 |
| Bill Genski* | Fisher Body #1 (Flint) | UAW Local 581 |
| Bud Simons* |
Fisher Body #1 (Flint) |
UAW Local 581 |
| Bert Harris** |
Fisher Body #1 (Flint) | UAW Local 581 |
| Cliff Williams +Yaeger |
Yellow Cab (Pontiac) |
UAW Local 594 |
| Charlie Yaeger* |
||
| Bob Travis** |
Flint |
UAW Local 581 |
| Henry Kraus** | Flint |
| Garrison-FF-LDB re. Joe Adams on oral agreements! CP x-ref Packard (Christoffel and Lindahl) Anderson, Ind: Delco-Remy; Guide Lamp (Victor Reuther) |
Toledo, Milwaukee, South Bend, and Cleveland
| Wyndham Mortimer | White Mtr (Cleve.), Flint |
CP & UAW |
| Al Rightly |
Studebaker |
UAW Local 5 |
| BOOK: The Auto-Lite Strike of 1934 |
Auto-Lite |
AFL-18384 |
| George Addes* | Willys Overland (Toledo) | |
| Joseph Ditzel* |
Chevrolet (Toledo) |
|
| James Roland* |
Chevrolet (Toledo) | |
| Roy H. Speth* |
Seaman Body (Milwaukee) |
|
| BOOK: Stalin Over Wisconsin |
Allis-Chalmers |
UAW Local 248 |
| Garrison to FF re. Christoffel |
Allis-Chalmers |
Invisible%20University/Stupid%20Party%20RMD/RMDTheory.html
Victor Nell, Cross-Cultural Neuropsychological Assessment: Theory and Practice
Haritos-Fatouros, fascism page
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2006) 29, 211–257. CRUELTY
1910 ERC; Taylor Society formed
1911 (July 29) LDB to Robert LaFollette re. Alaska
McElwain to FF, 117
1918 War Industries Bd; War Labor Bd.; Shipping Bd.
NJ Chamber of Commerce 1-26-22
Cleveland Chamber of Commerce-Carmody; FF and Croly
Can Prosperity be Planned
Some Notes on Labor Organizations
TS Bull re NRA and fascism
This first block of interviewees were all early leaders of the emergent forces that came to be known as the UAW. Most of them were Socialists
NCES, Highlights PISA 2006 NCES, PISA 2012, Math
NCES, PISA 2015, Math