This is a really good piece, John. I wonder if you'll have time to write more about how this intersects with contemporary essentialist attitudes on the right. I mean, they're historical attitudes but they're resurging as the more multiculti Star Trek-with-drone-strikes neocon movement is in retreat and the Britishized paleocons are continuing to advance, as are their politics of purification. It seems to me that there's some interaction between the notion that the libtards are using science as a stick to beat down the True American and the notion that the True American must protect his genetically European heritage; the latter seems like a far more direct and insidious mandate to protect the general welfare from interlopers than vaccine mandates, but maybe I don't grasp all the ins and outs.
I agree! I loved this piece. Also, I think you're right that Agamben is probably more correct than Foucault in his assertion that biopower has always been a constitutive feature of societies. Control over women's "chaos inducing" sexuality seems to have been pervasive since pre-modern times (Daniel Boyarin in "Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture" has some great readings on this point).
I think what you say here sums it up for me, "It’s not always easy to draw the line or decide what is really taking place in a given situation, but continuing to think about biopolitics might sometimes provide us with a good place to start." Anyone who tries to invoke "biopower" as some dispositive principle is probably not thinking in a very careful way about the current political scene. Reminds me of what you wrote about with the Arendt center with their invitation to the AFD politician. Invoking principles of free speech is mostly meaningless without good judgment.
This is some of your best writing on here to-date, imo. You managed to uncover and articulate the unease I had with his piece but kept driving :) Thanks and so glad you’re taking time off to write. Hope you’re having fun with it.
Richard Kimball's American Gothic narrative, as Our Host covers in the piece in which he described it, is (bear with me) vaguely reminiscent of what many convicted in Lubyanka evidently claimed to think: 'Comrade Stalin is being deceived by his advisors!'.
That is to say, his Damsel America must have been captured by Alien forces and deceived by them because otherwise he would have to contend with an America that wants something very different for itself than what he thinks it ought. It is, for what it's worth, not as bad as but a way-station on the road to the notion that most Americans aren't _really_ Americans. …not as bad because it believes that Americans are being deceived and can be un-deceived, not (again, horrors!) an America that's actually getting something like what it really wants.
This is a really good piece, John. I wonder if you'll have time to write more about how this intersects with contemporary essentialist attitudes on the right. I mean, they're historical attitudes but they're resurging as the more multiculti Star Trek-with-drone-strikes neocon movement is in retreat and the Britishized paleocons are continuing to advance, as are their politics of purification. It seems to me that there's some interaction between the notion that the libtards are using science as a stick to beat down the True American and the notion that the True American must protect his genetically European heritage; the latter seems like a far more direct and insidious mandate to protect the general welfare from interlopers than vaccine mandates, but maybe I don't grasp all the ins and outs.
I agree! I loved this piece. Also, I think you're right that Agamben is probably more correct than Foucault in his assertion that biopower has always been a constitutive feature of societies. Control over women's "chaos inducing" sexuality seems to have been pervasive since pre-modern times (Daniel Boyarin in "Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture" has some great readings on this point).
I think what you say here sums it up for me, "It’s not always easy to draw the line or decide what is really taking place in a given situation, but continuing to think about biopolitics might sometimes provide us with a good place to start." Anyone who tries to invoke "biopower" as some dispositive principle is probably not thinking in a very careful way about the current political scene. Reminds me of what you wrote about with the Arendt center with their invitation to the AFD politician. Invoking principles of free speech is mostly meaningless without good judgment.
Also John, where did Rorty write what you quoted?
This is some of your best writing on here to-date, imo. You managed to uncover and articulate the unease I had with his piece but kept driving :) Thanks and so glad you’re taking time off to write. Hope you’re having fun with it.
Richard Kimball's American Gothic narrative, as Our Host covers in the piece in which he described it, is (bear with me) vaguely reminiscent of what many convicted in Lubyanka evidently claimed to think: 'Comrade Stalin is being deceived by his advisors!'.
That is to say, his Damsel America must have been captured by Alien forces and deceived by them because otherwise he would have to contend with an America that wants something very different for itself than what he thinks it ought. It is, for what it's worth, not as bad as but a way-station on the road to the notion that most Americans aren't _really_ Americans. …not as bad because it believes that Americans are being deceived and can be un-deceived, not (again, horrors!) an America that's actually getting something like what it really wants.