Yes, yes, and it was Marx himself who said the following in his 1852 "Eighteenth Brumaire":
> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
I think it's an inarguable fact that our values are majorly, if not entirely, influenced by "regional" culture and ideology. I'm not sure there is any space "inside myself" that hasn't been reached and adulterated by both the lies and earnest claims of others. All my direct empirical observations are shelved on a (somewhat) common ontology.
Zizek gives me the creeps, but I think you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology. The early Christians were not radical individualists, they were a collective of idolotrous dianysian Judean.
> They've firmly commoditized the opposition.
Yes, this is called "recuperation", per Wikipedia:
> In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.
> you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology
I'm not so sure about that. In fact, most recently I've been consuming a lot of Walter Benjamín and Hannah Arendt - and if they aren't considered progressive then I'm not sure what could be. I've also been trying to catch up on American Pragmatism from the likes of Peirce, James and Dewey (and a bit of Rorty too I suppose) - again, about as progressive a bunch as I think you could reasonably ask for. I would also argue that both Žižek and Sartre fit into the progressive.
But it is fair to say that I'm balancing that out nowadays with the likes of Kierkegaard and even Spinoza. My actual opinion is that an atheistic existentialism (in the form of guys like Sartre and Foucault) went too far. Exactly as Curtis laments in this post, I feel that we've lost some of the enchantment that we used to have. If a yearning for the re-introduction of that enchantment, and perhaps letting go a little of the seeking of political power, is being "locked inside [...]conservative ideology", then I will accept that charge.
I believe we can desire a kind of collectivism that is separate from the desire to wield political power. It just so happens that almost all modern collectivist philosophical theory (that I am familiar with) is centered around the desire to affect social change through political power.
Firstly, thanks for engaging in earnest with my response.
> Walter Benjamín and Hannah Arendt - and if they aren't considered progressive then I'm not sure what could be.
This reads almost like a joke to me, because neither of these thinkers are radical any longer. "American Pragmatism" is "about as progressive a bunch as I think you could reasonably ask for?"
It was my mistake to use a meaningless word like "conservative," whose antithesis in my mind would be Galeano, Fanon, Federici, or Freire.
> neither of these thinkers are radical any longer
I believe the question was whether or not those thinkers were indicative of "anti-collective propaganda" or being "locked inside [...] conservative ideology".
I have no interest in the degree of radicalness. I especially have no interest in thinkers who are even more politically minded than those I have already mentioned.
There's no such thing as "more" or "less" political writing. May as well say you're interested in "less chemical food." Food is made of chemicals, and the pen is mightier than the sword.
> Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
I think it's an inarguable fact that our values are majorly, if not entirely, influenced by "regional" culture and ideology. I'm not sure there is any space "inside myself" that hasn't been reached and adulterated by both the lies and earnest claims of others. All my direct empirical observations are shelved on a (somewhat) common ontology.
Zizek gives me the creeps, but I think you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology. The early Christians were not radical individualists, they were a collective of idolotrous dianysian Judean.
> They've firmly commoditized the opposition.
Yes, this is called "recuperation", per Wikipedia:
> In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.