On Thu, 2 Nov 2000 12:24:12 -0800 (PST) Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Yep, that's it: the eighty million plus dollars from rich corporations, the
existence of mass media to drive home his political message, the existence of
an economic system that allows the concentration of wealth so that such a
dunderhead could sail through Yale and Harvard-- those are definitely trivial
factors.
Yes, absolutely trivial: because you know, YOU KNOW, that conscious beings *aren't* behind those corporations... the media... or the concentration of wealth. Yeap, that's right. Society has become totally administered - and we didn't even realize it! It's on automatic pilot. Who is to blame? NO ONE!!! Because it's all materialistically determined - "economic factors" and "vectors" eh? Explain to me the reason why *one* person votes for Bush. Oh, because they're stupid, right? Nice.
> As C. gets bored of pointing out, saying it's due to "collective
psychosis" is a form of intellectual laziness. It's not an explanation, and it
adds nothing to our understanding of why privileged sons like Shrub achieve
positions of political power.
First, I wasn't claiming to provide an explanation (holy shit, deja vu!). Second, a psychoanalytically informed understanding of how power works *is probably the most rationalistic and humanist* kind of analysis to date. Psychoanalysis attributes cultural logics to conscious beings, individuals who participate, reflectively and unreflectively in society - as part of -CONSTITUTIVE OF- society. Your critique belies human participation, consciousness and responsibility. It is nothing short of naive (at best) and downright anti-humanist (at worst).
ken