shiels
_
all words are this. Systemic, systematic, institutional... you chucking these in too?
maybe you're having a different debate but i think the overuse of the word signals a net good. to nudge away from a bias, a default position everyone has
'structural'
all words are this. Systemic, systematic, institutional... you chucking these in too?
maybe you're having a different debate but i think the overuse of the word signals a net good. to nudge away from a bias, a default position everyone has
craner
Beast of Burden
Well, I haven't put a lot of thought into it, but the peculiarly abject and authoritarian response by Chapter partly derives from the personnel and nature of the institution, a liberal arts center. But, as with the bigger corporations who did this stuff, there was an element of commercial imperative.
To an extent, I think you could also take it at face value; I'm sure individuals who make PR decisions for these companies and businesses do agree with or are influenced by these arguments. The slippage between a liberal instinct and a more specific political framework with more broad and radical aims is difficult to distinguish, though, partly because of a lack of political education generally, but also due to things like radical chic.
luka
Well-known member
Yeah I know. But when you say structural instead of Babylon plan you give the illusion of having an advanced engineering blueprint of reality.
craner
Beast of Burden
It's related to the way a lot of terms and ideas that were being made by obscure French and American philosophers and theorists from the 1960s-80s started to really flood into universities in the late 80s and 90s and have now perculated more generally into society and public discourse, at first imperceptibly but now openly, but without many people being able to draw the precise lineage.
Like, we were talking about the journey from Judith Butler to Trans Rights somewhere else.
Like, we were talking about the journey from Judith Butler to Trans Rights somewhere else.
craner
Beast of Burden
Yeah, but they turn it into a conspiracy activated by malicious agents.
luka
Well-known member
And as you say they are ideas which are contested and contestable. They lead to a myriad of conclusions and outcomes, sometimes self-contradictory and not all of which are necessarily desirable, even in their own terms. They're theoretical positions which are being worked out in flesh and blood and money and power.
luka
Well-known member
This is why you call David Harvey's idea of neoliberalism 'conspiratorial' isn't it?
craner
Beast of Burden
Having an arts education from a British university in the 1990s and actually reading all the theory texts that they put on the reading lists turned out to be very useful training for this moment. I've told you this before but it's still true, I spent more time reading Marx and Freud during my literature degree than I did reading Shakespeare or Dickens.
craner
Beast of Burden
Yes, that is the thrust behind his book on the subject, and imparting the most diabolical motives to the actors. It's a fictional narrative assembled out of carefully selected data.
luka
Well-known member
How does it happen in your view? That one set of ideas gains the ascendency for a time
shiels
_
is this in response to my question? i agree. post structuralism which says all this goes back to the master structure, language. and any of these criticisms of the words we use are therefore kind of in agreement
luka
Well-known member
They and others like them have made common cause, agreed on specific tactics, funded universities and conferences and political campaigns and candidates, astroturfed and so on and so on, often to little effect it has to be said.