>
> - Why, why, why use the term populism???? What does this
Because the element of collective identity is absolutely crucial in this spectacle. Its purpose is crude bonding among members of this collectivity through participation in the spectacle, and th emain dramatis personae are defined by the relationship to the collective as someone above it (the authority figure meten out the punishment) and someone below it (the outcast). Without the collective dimenstion the spectacle would serve no purpose (if it was just the authority figure and the transgressor, the former could simply kill the latter without the trouble of arranging a spectacle) and has no meaning (without defining the dramatis personae as "authority" and "outcast" the whole spectacle would be simply a private affair between two nameless individuals). Since crude bonding and convenional role playing is the essence of populism - i decided to use the term. But this has nothing to do with a social-political movment, just like "national socialism" has nothing to do with 'socialism'.
> - Foucault described popular disciplinary spectacles in
> which the sovereign authority demonstrated its power over the
> transgressing subject. His most famous example is the
> execution of a regicide, an enemy of the sovereign, not the
> people.
I think he missed the collective. Th eking and th epeople were supposed to be one, an attampt on a king is like an attempt on the father - it hurts the entire "family."
> from the AP is the emphasis on intolerance of ambiguity. The
> shaming of the liberal wimp is a distortion of public
> dialogue that is also intended to model internal dialogue.
I was aiming to explain the popularity of this form of discourse or spectacle, not to evaluate its merits or demerits.
>
> - I agree that it is difficult to not refer to presocial
> mechanisms. Some psychologists are heavily pumping
> evolutionary social psychology in a way that often goes
> overboard teleologically. But there are some convincing
> points. Child observation studies stress how children look
> to parents for cues on how to respond to strange situations;
> the child doesn't refer to what they know, they look to the
> parent. It can at least be argued that this mechanism has
> survival value; whether it is genetically grounded is another
> matter.
I understand that cognitive processes are grounded in the chemical "makeup" of our brian - and there is strong evidence that this is influenced genetically (e.g. herdity of certain associative disorders) - but I think that we do not yet understand how this actually work. What I had in mind here is cognitive processes that center either on "borders" or "cores" (i.e. defining things by identifying their central features or core properties while paying less attention to the peripheries which remain ambiguous; or by careful outlining the perimeter that separates an entity from its environment while paying less attention to the core). The border-centric style is more dependent on interaction with environment and also more rigid (thus needing more structured interaction) since changing environment can erase the demarkating lines that identify objects (I forget the reference, but I can look to my old notes). Thus border-centric styles may tend to be mor prone to authoritarianism (because it provides conventionality and structurce that these folks need to properly function) while core-centri styles are more liberal and tolerant of ambiguity because they do not need sharp distictions to function cognitively. Furthermore, these congnitive styles likely depend on the brain makeup and chemistry - and thus may be influenced by genetics. However, I do not think that this proposition can be either supported or refuted by the current state of knowledge - it is just a conjecture.
As far as evolutionary social psychology is concerned - i think most of it is not only conjectural (i.e. impossible to prove or disprove given current state of knowledge), but also teleological moves it form the realm of science to that of metaphysics.
In any case, I think that such a response remains a
> kind of metacognitive option, and it can be organized around
> group processes, resulting in terrible dumbing down, literal
> mindlessness (in the sense of a forswearing of cognitive
> functions and mimicing of attitudes and ideas) when people
> are afraid and they are pushed into this kind of coerced and
> coercive (pseudo)solidarity.
I agree. But there is a lot of people who would prefer that to uncertainty and ambiguity - and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Quite frankly, I have serious doubts that these folks, which form a good part of humanity, can be helped even by the best crafted and implemented socialist system.
Wojtek