Fascism: 1975 and 1993
According to Dead Horse, the definition of “fascism” has made an odd shift between 1975 and 1993, with some interesting parallels to the recent bail-out. Here are the two American Heritage definitions:
From 1975: “A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.”
From 1993: “A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and usually a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.”
Dead Horse writes:
Notice what’s missing in the 1993 definition? “[M]erging of state and business leadership…” And that fascism is an extreme right phenomenon. By removing “extreme right” from the definition clowns like Goldberg were free to write “Liberal Fascism”, a most moronic combination of two antithetical terms.
An addition to the 1993 definition is “socioeconomic controls”. What form of government doesn’t have socioeconomic controls? Sweden has socioeconomic controls. Someone who didn’t know anything about fascism could grab onto “socioeconomic controls” and presume that fascism was against free markets, you know, like liberals.
Of course, fascism is against free markets. But then most people who proclaim that they are for free markets are against free markets. The question is never about the existence of socioeconomic controls. It’s about what kind of controls and who benefits. The same class of people who benefited from fascism in Germany and Italy are the same kind of people who benefit from the execution of Paulson’s plea.
It’s the merging of state and business leadership that is becoming official with this proposed bailout.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
Conditions of Receptivity
Dr. Sinthome:
At what point do certain statements, certain declarations, certain assertions, take on the capacity to resonate and produce effects in a receiver? What are the conditions for the possibility of being heard? … I became capable of receiving a message where before I was not. But how and under what conditions? Likewise, under what conditions do certain political positions and declarations begin to resonate within the social field? This question is at the very heart of social change and is not secondary or ancillary to questions of critique. For without adequately answering these questions, adequate strategies of producing change cannot be formulated. However, a glance at the history of political transformations also seems to indicate that while these shifts are cultural in character, they also seem to involve material transformations that problematize the cultural sphere, calling for new institutions, new group formations, new ways of feeling, new subjectivities, and new ways of living.
Scarcity and Desire
Two related posts on scarcity and desire posted over at Larval Subjects. The discussion on contingency, necessity and scarcity in relation to After Finitude seems like a really interesting topic, as in history I think that people don’t do enough to emphasize not only the contingency of certain historical events, but the way in which their outcome shapes how we reflect on them retroactively. If history is to move beyond the economy of scarcity, and therefore beyond ideology and metaphysics, which attempt to establish the necessity of causality, then it should take up the task of locating what, within history, supersedes it, demonstrates its inherent deadlock / impasse.
This advertisement featuring Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson serves as a great example as to how ecology functions as the perfect ideological supplement to post-political administrative society:
Teaching, ISA’s and the Pedagogy of Alienation
A really wonderfully insightful post over at Larval Subjects. I highly suggest anyone reading this blog to check it out. While the particular contents discussed deal with the issue of pedagogy, I think there is definitely a universal quality to the post. Here’s a short excerpt:
Back in 2002 when I was still a graduate student, I won a teaching fellowship that provided a healthy stipend and gave me additional teaching experience. Among the requirements of this fellowship, I had to attend a weekly seminar with other recipients where we discussed issues pertaining to pedagogy and the aims of teaching. We had endless discussions about the humanist tradition, the liberal arts tradition, and the aim of cultivating the person intellectually, civically, ethically, artistically, and spiritually.
Among the things I found most frustrating about these discussions was the way they seemed to disavow the institutional structure of contemporary universities, failing to acknowledge the place of the university in the contemporary capitalist world. It seemed to me that these discussions functioned as a sort of alibi, a certain willful blindness, a certain disavowal of the role universities serve vis a vis capitalism. And in being willfully blind this way, in telling ourselves nice, narcissistic stories about our aims, we perhaps end up reinforcing these very structures.