<> On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 21:36:06 -0500yahwrote: <> <>> ALL institutions in capitalist society must misrepresent themselves. <>> Businesses always do. They talk about how they are job creators, <>> pillars of the community, donors, places where people find family <>> and <>> can be a part of a team. <> <> Mmm. Well, yeah, but I'm not quite sure it's the same thing. <> Business certainly tries to paint itself in rosier colors <> than it deserves, but if you ask a businessman why he's <> in business, he'll usually tell you it's to make <> money. Very few businessmen will tell you they're in <> business because they want to create jobs; *that* would <> be a lie on the same order as the Unis' lie about <> Excelsior and Videbimus Lumen and so on. <> <>> The family represents itself as this wonderful refuge from the harsh <>> world of capitalist rationality and state discipline. <> <> Does the family represent itself at all? It it not rather the <> object of (mis)representation by the ideological apparatus? I <> hope this doesn't sound like a mere verbal cavil; 'the family' <> is certainly an institution, but it's not an institution in <> the sense that Columbia University -- to take a nearby and <> thoroughly loathesome example -- is an institution.
yeah. i took you to be using the word institution in a technical way, not in describing and individual organization.
institutions are ways of organizing social life to meet human needs: the economy, the state, health, work, family, religion, schooling, justice, etc. you can't see, fuck, taste, grope, or smell institutions. about the only way you can figure 'em out is to get their effects to show up. usually, you do that by violating some tacit social norm.
shag