Bangladesh’s export-led growth has been built largely on cheap labour in the ready-made garment sector, leaving the economy dependent on a model in which global capital continues to benefit from low-cost Bangladeshi workers.

Renowned economist Prabhat Patnaik speaks to The Daily Star about why it is time for the Global South to break free from this dependency and chart a new path toward true economic sovereignty.

Read it here: https://www.thedailystar.net/slow-reads/big-picture/news/why-the-global-south-must-rethink-export-led-growth-4263296

X becomes known to be a dominating relation.

Does that by itself give us sufficient reason to attempt to eliminate X immediately? Or can that reason be defeated when we have sufficient reason to think that eliminating X now would produce an equally bad or worse alternative? Can a feasible alternative to a dominating relation be worse than the relation we are trying to eliminate?

It doesn't seem conceptually true that if X is dominating, every feasible alternative to X must therefore be better. An alternative might itself be dominating, perhaps to a worse degree. Imagine being forced to choose between losing an arm and losing your head. Rejecting one option doesn't free you from the dominating relation. The domination consists partly in someone else's power to force the choice, while the available options can still differ significantly in how bad they are. More generally, replacing one dominating arrangement needn't prevent the emergence of another that is even worse.

Once the justification for immediate liberation depends partly on its expected costs, a hegemonic power can try to make liberation so costly that those costs themselves become reasons against revolt. The dominating power can then appeal to conditions it helped create as reasons for the continuation of its own domination.

Should anti-domination therefore prevail at any cost to other goods? If so, we seem committed to treating those other costs as incapable of defeating the demand for immediate liberation, however severe they become. If not, sufficiently high costs can defeat that demand, which creates both a threshold problem and a counting problem. A dominating power may deliberately impose additional costs on resistance precisely because those costs will count against resistance.

Discounting those manufactured costs is also troubling. If the deaths, injuries, deprivation, or other harms caused by resistance matter morally, why should they matter less merely because the dominating power deliberately made resistance more dangerous? Yet counting them fully seems to allow domination to manufacture reasons for its own continuation. I don't yet see how a cost-sensitive account of anti-domination avoids that problem without either accepting some threshold at which other goods defeat immediate liberation or giving anti-domination lexical priority over them.

A mediation on Giorgio Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory and the mansions of the mega rich as the aestheticization of financial power and domination.

Just a curious freshman here. I’m not really into these philosophies of politics and stuff (forced to since I took Political Science for my college degree) perhaps, I’ve only understand the cap of her thoughts about politics, but I didn’t expect people have come to hate her—according to these redditors. I haven’t totally read the whole thing in her book, but I might’ve missed it that I never realized she must’ve said something wrong. If ever you have time, please enlighten me🙏

An attempt to answer the "is it fash?" question dialectically by arguing that the taxonomical struggle is actually due to a contradiction in the contemporary landscape of the far right. Namely that fascism is a reactionary mass movement but its emergence is both engendered and frustrated by neoliberalism, which is a response to the possibility of mass militant organisation, at the same time as mass consumer culture and crises in social reproduction allow fascist ideas to proliferate and gain institutional power.

Hello, conservatives.

I'm currently putting together a serious reading library on conservative thought, political philosophy, and the intellectual origins of the modern Right, and I'm hoping some people here can help me expand my reading list.

For some context, I've been an ANARCHIST for most of my life, so my own political background is pretty far removed from conservatism. As a result, I realized that I actually know surprisingly little about the history and intellectual foundations of conservative thought beyond the handful of names that tend to come up repeatedly.

I'm particularly interested in understanding conservatism as an intellectual tradition rather than simply collecting contemporary political books. I'd like to read the arguments from their original sources and understand how different conservative traditions developed over time.

So far I've been looking at writers such as Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, Irving Babbitt, T. S. Eliot, Frank Meyer, and Eric Voegelin, among others.

I'm interested in books dealing with things like:

The philosophical foundations of conservatism

Traditionalism and the defense of inherited institutions

Conservatism's understanding of human nature

The relationship between religion, morality, and political order

Constitutionalism and limited government

Property, markets, and economic conservatism

The conservative critique of rationalism and utopianism

Natural law and classical political philosophy

Nationalism, patriotism, and political community

Burkean vs. libertarian vs. traditionalist conservatism

American conservatism specifically

The differences between European and American conservative traditions

Critiques of socialism, progressivism, liberalism, and revolutionary politics from a conservative perspective

I'm not necessarily looking for contemporary partisan books or political memoirs. I'd much rather read works that have had lasting influence on conservative intellectual history, including books that conservatives themselves might disagree about.

If you had to recommend 10–20 books to someone coming from a radically different political background who genuinely wanted to understand conservatism, what would you put on the list?

I'm especially interested in recommendations that might be considered essential reading, foundational texts, overlooked classics, or books that provide a perspective that outsiders frequently misunderstand.

Thanks in advance. I'm trying to approach this in good faith and understand the tradition before judging it.

Reflections on the Revolution in France — Edmund Burke

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful — Edmund Burke

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents — Edmund Burke

Letters on a Regicide Peace — Edmund Burke

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot — Russell Kirk

The Conservative Reader — Russell Kirk

Prospects for Conservatives — Russell Kirk

The Politics of Prudence — Russell Kirk

Conservatism in America — Clinton Rossiter

Conservatism Revisited — Peter Viereck

Conservatism: From John Adams to Churchill — Peter Viereck

The Conservative Tradition in America — Allan Guttmann

Conservatism: Dream and Reality — Robert Nisbet

The Sociological Tradition — Robert Nisbet

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays — Michael Oakeshott

On Being Conservative — Michael Oakeshott

Experience and Its Modes — Michael Oakeshott

The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism — Michael Oakeshott

The Meaning of Conservatism — Roger Scruton

A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism — Roger Scruton

How to Be a Conservative — Roger Scruton

The Need for Nations — Roger Scruton

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left — Roger Scruton

Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet — Roger Scruton

The Doctrine of State and the Principles of State Law — Friedrich Julius Stahl

Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism — Juan Donoso Cortés

Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville

The Old Regime and the Revolution — Alexis de Tocqueville

Recollections — Alexis de Tocqueville

Two Treatises of Government — John Locke

On Liberty — John Stuart Mill

Considerations on Representative Government — John Stuart Mill

The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns — Benjamin Constant

Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments — Benjamin Constant

The State of Society in France Before the Revolution of 1789 — Alexis de Tocqueville

Essays on Freedom and Power — Lord Acton

Essays on the History of Liberty — Lord Acton

The Good Society — Walter Lippmann

The Public Philosophy — Walter Lippmann

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics — Ludwig von Mises

Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition — Ludwig von Mises

Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War — Ludwig von Mises

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality — Ludwig von Mises

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. I: Rules and Order — Friedrich Hayek

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. II: The Mirage of Social Justice — Friedrich Hayek

Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. III: The Political Order of a Free People — Friedrich Hayek

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism — Friedrich Hayek

The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason — Friedrich Hayek

Individualism and Economic Order — F. A. Hayek

Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics — F. A. Hayek

Man, Economy, and State — Murray Rothbard

Power and Market: Government and the Economy — Murray Rothbard

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto — Murray Rothbard

The Ethics of Liberty — Murray Rothbard

Competition and Entrepreneurship — Israel Kirzner

Discovery and the Capitalist Process — Israel Kirzner

Capital and Interest — Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk

Social Economics — Friedrich von Wieser

Capitalism and Freedom — Milton Friedman

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement — Milton & Rose Friedman

A Program for Monetary Stability — Milton Friedman

The Citizen and the State: Essays on Regulation — George Stigler

Human Capital — Gary Becker

The Firm, the Market, and the Law — Ronald Coase

The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan — James Buchanan

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy — James Buchanan & Gordon Tullock

The Politics of Bureaucracy — Gordon Tullock

The Logic of Collective Action — Mancur Olson

Collectivist Economic Planning — Friedrich Hayek (Ed.)

A Critique of Interventionism — Ludwig von Mises

The Social Crisis of Our Time — Wilhelm Röpke

Civitas Humana — Wilhelm Röpke

Economics of the Free Society — Wilhelm Röpke

The Foundations of Economics — Walter Eucken

Principles of Economic Policy (Grundsätze der Wirtschaftspolitik) — Walter Eucken

The Logic of Liberty — Michael Polanyi

Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy — Michael Polanyi

The Managerial Revolution — James Burnham

What Is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies — Leo Strauss

The City and Man — Leo Strauss

The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis — Leo Strauss

Liberalism Ancient and Modern — Leo Strauss

Order and History, Vol. I: Israel and Revelation — Eric Voegelin

Order and History, Vol. II: The World of the Polis — Eric Voegelin

Order and History, Vol. III: Plato and Aristotle — Eric Voegelin

Science, Politics and Gnosticism — Eric Voegelin

Hitler and the Germans — Eric Voegelin

Up from Liberalism — William F. Buckley Jr.

God and Man at Yale — William F. Buckley Jr.

The Unmaking of a Mayor — William F. Buckley Jr.

What Is Conservatism? — Frank S. Meyer

The Conservative Mainstream — Frank S. Meyer

The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom — James Burnham

The Struggle for the World — James Burnham

The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 — George H. Nash

A Time for Choosing: The Rise of Modern American Conservatism — Jonathan M. Schoenwald

The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism — Matthew Continetti

The word "psychology" carries within it psyche, the Greek term for soul. Modern secular usage has reshaped this ancient concept, redefining it as the conscious and unconscious dimensions of individual and collective mind.

Decades into the era of psychotherapy and the broader mental health industry, and within a world of deepening crises, this raises a pointed question: is psychology, as we've inherited it, equal to the challenges we now face? In other words, how does what call "psychology" intertwine with the exigencies of crisis in its concrete and abstract dimensions?

This panel takes up that question through the specific case of Jungian thought, asking whether depth psychology can meet a moment defined by social, political, and material crisis, and whether it even endeavors to do so.

Questions the panel will address include:

Can Jungian Studies adequately equip itself to deal with the social, political, and material problems of 2026? Does it even endeavor to do so?

Can Jung be "radical," or does his notion of interiority foreclose that from the start?

By making Jung palatable for mainstream and academic consumption, do we kill what makes Jung Jung? How do we critically engage with his ideas without domesticating them?

Does our conception of the psyche remain too "introverted," too divorced from the material, or are these actually separate problems?

Anti-Oedipus and the tradition of libidinal materialism accuse psychoanalysis of capturing immanent flows of desire within transcendent structures like the archetype or the Self. Does Jung have a rejoinder, or must depth psychology concede the point?

Is there a way to read the archetypal as immanent rather than transcendent, and if so, does it remain recognizably Jungian?

Panelists:

Dr. Bob Langan (host), University of Essex

Gabriela Sova Spulirova, University of Essex

JF Martel, author, filmmaker, and co-host of Weird Studies

Dr. Christian McMillan, University of Essex

I'm reading Frederic Jamesons Postmodernism book atm and would be interested in contemporary texts (preferably written from a Marxist perspective) that deal with the question if we still live in the era of postmodernism, or if we have already left it behind.

Any suggestions?

I’m a big fan of thinkers such as Foucault and Marx, and whilst I don’t necessarily agree with all their points, their analyses and dissections of society etc are outstanding to me. I’m relatively new to the realm of critical theory, with more of a background in traditional western philosophy, and I also haven’t engaged with many female authors, which I’d like to.

My concern with getting into feminism is that I really have no idea what’s up. The internet seems to be a complete mess, full of over-the-top and divisive rhetoric from all sides, and I rarely get to hear an academic, nuanced, measured discussion and analysis of the female condition within society (i.e feminism). I’m obviously an advocate for feminism in the basic sense, but I’d like to actually dig deeper, avoiding overly-radical or superficial perspectives so that I may develop a genuine understanding. Given the nature of the discussion, feminism, I think it goes without saying that I’d love to engage with some female writers.

Also, since I am a young male, and therefore lack the firsthand experience of the female experience, it might be beneficial to my understanding for books specifically engaging with the side of gender inequality that may be more foreign to men.

Cheers! ☺️

New essay on freuds mass psychology. Part of a 4 part series exploring psychoanalytic accounts of mass psychology! Let mw know what you think to this

Lessons from Scandinavia

Here I am with one of many threads asking for reading suggestions! I’m working on what I guess is a research project proposal of some kind, although I’m not sure quite what its final form will be yet, but I know at the core of it is the question of failure, and how failure as a space can be transformative or generative (mostly through like a comp-lit perspective: Beckett, autotheory, etc).

And I know that something that’s inevitably foundational here is Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure! But I’m not really sure where else to look from there — mostly I’ve been looking at academic work and journal articles; but I feel like some like, book-length stuff or the work of specific theorists might be helpful to like, hang some of these disparate authors together! I know that Critical Failure Studies is an emerging field (Routledge did a handbook a few years back) but I’m not sure how much of it exists in the space of critical theory vs more academic/journal-led writing

Any suggestions very welcome!

Thanks so much

So I got served up a reel by the algorithm and didnt like it, it wasn't in my watch history either and the vague specifics I remember brings up Ted kaczynski.

It was about a professor from I think an English University, who had written essays and a few books (possibly) about how the integration of technology would negatively effect social cohesion.

That increased technological communication and socialising would create a panopticon of self discipline.

He was active in the 90s but moved to the wilderness and went completely off grid (you can see why kaxzynski is coming up). Seemed like he was still in contact with people today but when colleagues of hes wanted to out together a collection of his works (some unpublished) he said no and just did not want to be engaged in the contemporary discourse at all.

His work sounded very interesting and its funny that I found out about him from a medium it sounds like he would hate.

If anyone knows who this professor is I would be so greatful for the information and soon hope to move away to the wilderness myself, promise not to do any big post runs.

SOLVED It was Philip Agre

Everyone argued over whether Wenders was right or a coward for saying filmmakers should "stay out of politics" after being confronted about Berlinale's silence on Palestine. This piece skips that fight and goes after something both sides assumed: that self-expression through art is political action.

The argument: the Western left has spent 60 years substituting actual political organizing for cultural self-expression... first cinema and music, then social media. We got "woke," we protested, we posted. Fascism's still rising and nothing's fundamentally changed. The piece traces this back to Marcuse's 1968-era idea that artists/outsiders should catalyze a "new sensibility" since the working class was too pacified to revolt...except capitalism just absorbed that critique instead of resisting it. We got representation and inclusion; we lost unions and the welfare state.

There's also a solid detour into Third Cinema (Solanas/Getino, Sembène, Sanjinés) as a real counterexample — films embedded in actual political movements instead of standing in for one.

Full piece: https://filmunderground.substack.com/p/the-berlinale-and-modernitys-marcusian

Curious if this lets Wenders off too easy by making it structural, or if it's the sharper read.

I am new to marxism and except for Marx himself my introduction has been This Life by Martin Hägglund and Mute Compulsion by Sören Mau (also Postone but I won't mention it here). I am currently comparing Hägglunds and Maus interpretation of the law of the tendential of the rate of profit to fall. Mau claims that this law cannot be found within a single capitalists production itself but is located as a contradiction between what is rational for the capitalists and what is rational for Capital:

Since the 1970s, most Marxist theories of crisis have taken as their point of departure the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This law hinges on the assumption that in the long run, the organic composition of capital will rise rapidly enough to outpace its countervailing force, namely a rise in the rate of surplus value. But, as Heinrich has demonstrated, there are some serious problems with this assumption.38 Boiled down to its essentials, the problem can be stated this way: Regardless of how we express the rate of profit, it is always a relation between two quantities. The direction of movement for these two quantities (or parts of these two quantities) is known. That, however, is not sufficient; the point is, which of the two quantities changes more rapidly – and we do not know that.39

What is at stake here is, once again, what we can and what we cannot conclude on certain levels of abstraction. What Heinrich argues – convincingly, in my view – is that we cannot demonstrate the existence of a necessary tendency of the rate of profit to fall on the basis of an analysis of the ideal average of the capitalist mode of production. This conclusion does not imply the denial of the possibility that the profit rate might fall precisely in the manner predicted by the ‘law’. Nor does it even imply the denial that such a tendential fall of rate of profit has taken place throughout the history of capitalism.40 It merely implies that the long-term tendencies of the profit rate is an empirical question which cannot be deduced from the analysis of the core structure of capitalism.41

Where does this leave us? The good news is that we do not need the law of tendency of the rate of profit to fall in order to have a coherent Marxist theory of crisis, or to derive the necessary tendency to overproduction. In order to see why, it is necessary to recall that the aim of capitalist production is profit – an aim which is forced upon individual capitals by competition. For any individual capital, the possibilities for making a profit are not restricted by the size of the market, since individual capitals always have the possibility of capturing market shares from their competitors. In other words, from the perspective of the individual capital, the expansion of production, insofar as it allows this individual capital to undercut its competitors, is immediately also an expansion of the market. On the level of the totality, however, this leads to a general overproduction. A crisis therefore arises from the contradiction between what is rational from the point of view of the individual capital and what is rational from the point of view of the capitalist system as a whole. Clarke sums up this dynamic well:

Once the capitalist has taken command of production, the characteristic way in which the capitalist appropriates a profit is not by responding to fluctuations in demand for the product, but by introducing new and more productive methods of production in order to reduce his costs below those of his competitors. The capitalist who is able to reduce his costs is not confined by the limits of his share of the market, but can expand his production without limit in the anticipation of undercutting his competitors.42

For this reason, capitalist production necessarily results in crises of overproduction. This is a mode of explanation firmly rooted in the fundamental contradiction of capitalism, namely the contradiction between use value and value. In the capitalist mode of production, the production of useful things is subordinated not only to the production of value, but to the valorisation of value, and the mute compulsion of competition forces individual capitals to produce without regard for the limits of the market, like a stuck gas pedal in a car heading towards a cliff.

I accept that this necessarily leads to overproduction, and I think I understand that it leads to crises because all capitalists will increase their productivity, and eventually they will not make a profit because they are unable to sell a larger and larger part of their products, reducing the rate of profit. Intensifying the exploitation of workers to extract relative surplus value has a limit and cannot counteract the reduction in the rate of profit.

Hägglund however seem to believe that the contradiction can be located in the production itself:

Striving to make the rate of profit rise is intrinsic to any capitalist enterprise. In order to sustain my water business, I have to keep making a profit from the production and distribution of water. Such profit depends on converting the surplus time of living labor into surplus value for my capitalist enterprise. Given the limits of the workday and legal constraints on labor conditions, however, there are restrictions on how much I can exploit the lifetime of my workers. The major method for making my business profitable and staying competitive is rather to extract relative surplus value from my workers by making the technological means of production more efficient. This is why I built a hyper-well in the middle of our village when I sought to increase the rate of profit for my water business. The hyper-well makes it possible for my workers to produce more water in the same amount of time and thereby increases the relative surplus value I can extract from their labor.

Striving to make the rate of profit rise is thus inseparable from pursuing a technological development that reduces the socially necessary labor time for a given commodity. If I seek to make the production of a commodity more profitable, I seek to make the production of the commodity more efficient, which is to say less time consuming.

By the same token, however, I am caught in the contradiction that characterizes the capitalist mode of production. As a capitalist, I can extract surplus value only from living labor time. Yet, in seeking to extract more surplus value from my workers, I am led to develop technologies that increasingly replace living labor time (from which I can extract surplus value) with nonliving production time (from which I cannot extract any surplus value).

As a result of such technological development, the rate of profit for my water business has an inherent tendency to fall. When my production of water becomes more efficient, there is a shift in what Marx calls “the organic composition of capital.”32 The ratio of living labor time (from which I can make a profit) decreases, while the ratio of nonliving production time (from which I cannot make a profit) increases. Thus, even if the mass of surplus value and profit increases due to the efficiency of the hyper-well as a means of production, the rate of profit for my water business will tend to fall for the same reason.

Hence, we can specify the dynamic of the contradiction in the capitalist mode of production. On the one hand, in striving to make a profit, I develop ever more efficient technological means of production. On the other hand, the more efficient my technological means of production become, the more my rate of profit tends to fall.

To sustain a rate of profit, the capitalist mode of production must inhibit its own drive toward increased technological productivity. If the proportion of nonliving production time is allowed to increase indefinitely, the proportion of living labor time will decrease indefinitely and the possibility of making a profit will diminish. When I have perfected my hyper-well to such a degree that it barely requires any living labor time to operate, I am left with almost nothing from which I can extract surplus value in order to make a profit.

The law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit is not a prediction but a structural dynamic that renders intelligible the counteracting tendencies under capitalism. It is because the rate of profit tends to fall that capitalist employers must intensify the exploitation of living labor and/or export the production facilities to locations where labor is cheaper to buy. Given the reduction of socially necessary labor time, the only way to increase the extraction of relative surplus value—on which profit depends—is to intensify the exploitation of workers by lowering the relative value of their wages. Unemployment and the exportation of jobs are not something that can be removed under capitalism, but a necessary condition for the production of capital wealth. Lowering the relative value of wages and sustaining a rate of profit depends on a surplus population of the unemployed who are willing to work for less, either domestically or in poorer countries to which production is moved.

Most importantly, the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit renders intelligible the tendency toward crises under capitalism. A continuously increasing technological productivity leads to crises under capitalism, since the replacement of living labor time with nonliving production time makes the rate of profit fall. The falling rate of profit can be counteracted through numerous strategies, but ultimately it requires the destruction of large amounts of capital, either through crises of devaluation or through full-on destruction of existing capital in war or through other means.

Are these two interpretations reconcilable? Hägglund says that the capitalist mode of production must inhibit its own drive towards increased technological productivity which does not seem proper to me because they could then be out-competed by the capitalists that do increase their technological productivity. Or is hägglund talking about the capitalist system overall here? If that is the case, how can we be sure that the expansion of production requiring living labor does not "out-pace" the dead labor caused by technological productivity? (e.g. "bullshit jobs" as postone writes or just more service work/engineering/etc)

At the same time, I am wondering why the capitalist wouldn't hire less workers as productivity increases to reduce expenses in an attempt to actually adjust to market demands by predictions which Mau denies is possible. This would argue in favor of Hägglund if that is the case and perhaps this is what Hägglunds mean with "In order to sustain my water business, I have to keep making a profit from the production and distribution(!!) of water.".

I feel like I am stuck here and am unable to compare these two interpretations. Could someone aid me in a direction from here?

Albert Memmi grew up in Tunis, a colonized, but French-educated enough to know the colonizer almost as well as he knew himself. He was in a position to draw both portraits from the inside.

The colonizer: In his own words, the colonizer "is a privileged being and an illegitimately privileged one; that is, a usurper." Skin color and passport hand you the privilege whether you asked for it or not. This sounds very familiar nowadays. According to Memmi, the colonizer has three options: leave the colony, stay silent, or stay and fight the system. He argues that few would opt for the third option with success. He has a term for the second one though: "humanitarian romanticism”. Again another very contemporary dynamic; think about aid workers today, who draw hardship pay and a security detail while ostensibly there to fight poverty.

The Colonized: Memmi wrote in 1957 that a qualified worker among the colonizers earned three or four times more than the colonized worker, without producing three or four times as much. He presents an economic argument that the colonized had no incentive to be more productive with such an imbalance. Memmi described colonized women who tried desperately to uncurl their hair and lighten their skin, chasing an acceptance that never actually occurred. No matter how fluent or how polished a colonized became, he argued they would still be met with disdain.

In commenting liberation movements, Memmi rejected half-measures like a negotiated "French Union" outright. His final word was that the colonized refusal "cannot be anything but absolute" Not just revolt, but revolution, breaking what he called an iron collar.

We discuss the book at length in our podcast Threads of Ifriqiya, and we try to draw parallels to contemporary times of which we identify many. I will link the podcast in the comments.

I’m finally getting curious about the world again post-graduation from my MSW and am starting through my book pile, beginning with Kenneth Gergen’s Relational Being. I would love any discussion!

One thing I’m really enjoying is the fruitfulness of measuring Gergen and my ideas against one another. Here at the beginning, Gergen and I are having some hefty ontological disagreements. He rightfully advocates for a model of self that serves as an alternative to traditional Western conceptualizations of an individualistic, bounded self. I join him in this project, and propose the Greek middle voice as the structure of an "agent-in-the-world." I'll spare the lengthy explanation to summarize this as: I produce the action in the social world that returns to produce me.

Where I first diverge with Gergen is his notion that the bounded self is the problem - he calls it a prison - and relational being is the solution. We are both lovers of Buddhist thought and many of these ideas infuse our scholarship. But taking dense religious concepts like nonduality and emptiness, which he expresses by locating the self as a wave that recedes back into the water and then putting them to sociological and psychological work doesn’t hold for me.

Firstly, I don’t see bounded self as pathology to which relational being is the cure. I admit, he may have a more nuanced position behind relational being, but it looks a lot like a less structured version of how Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong (From the Soil, 1947) talks about differential modes of association. For Fei, Chinese identity is construed relationally, though a self is still present. Instead of Gergen’s dance or duet metaphor that entirely disappears the self, Fei posits a social structure like concentric ripples formed by throwing a stone into a lake with a self at the center.

If this is not a picture of relational being, then I may have misread Gergen. But with Fei’s model, the pathology diagnosis cuts both ways. Let’s take the idea of narcissism, something that Gergen specifically pointed to as evidence of pathology of a bounded self. Chinese culture has this, too, from what I observed when I was over there. They call it zilian, or self love. But when I pressed the idea in my conversations, as opposed to a bounded self’s hyperinflation of it’s own ego, zilian looked more like a relational self’s hyperinflation of others’ estimation of the relational self’s ego. Relational constructions of being seem to suffer pathology as much as bounded self constructions of being do. The diagnostic tool is capturing the wrong thing as far as I can see here at the onset.

My counter is that this is a both-and situation. The self is just as ontologically significant as the thing to which the self is relating. While Gergen only talks about relations among selves as of chapter 2, I would extend relata to not just include other bodies but also matter and environment, and samskara (a Buddhist term for mental constructs).

Nonduality and emptiness are still relevant to me because even though there is actual hardware with bodies and matter, our interpretation of that hardware is effectively the only thing we have access to. So in that sense, yes, subject-object relations is empty. And, as Thich Nhat Hanh once said, I fully agree that with this ultimate view in mind that “if the wave is capable of touching himself and the other waves very deeply, he will realize that he is made of water. Being aware that he is water, he transcends all discrimination, sorrows, and fears.” It’s a powerful image.

But my picture of self-within-reality, at least while we are all out here relating to one another, would not be the wave and the ocean. It would be the jewel net of Indra. Here, a 3D positioned net has a jewel on each knot. And each jewel is cut in such a way that it reflects every other jewel on the net. It preserves the interdependence that Gergen is gesturing to as well as the self represented at each knot. Whether or not this all recedes into an ocean at the end is not in my purview. But I am a social worker who wants to do transformative social work, and I think we need a both-and picture of subject-object relations.

- The Social Construction Worker