A bad ontology becomes the real when it governs the world’s institutions

Evidence

However, our family-individual conundrum — the question of whether the family or the individual is the proper unit of analysis for a human world conceived as competing units of self-subsistent capital— is not yet resolved. We are not simply dealing with an analytic elision or disavowal in liberal and neoliberal formulations of human nature. Rather, we are dealing with a world made and governed by this elision and disavowal. … What happens when the indispensably necessary ethos and labors highlighted by McCloskey, Tronto, and England are both disqualified and trod underfoot as homo oeconomicus becomes the real in every sense of the word? — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 204

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The performativity argument — that a false depiction of the human becomes ‘the real’ when installed as governing truth — is the chapter’s most paradigm-shifting move, distinguishing the critique from a mere correction of an error.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader reading on institutions producing reality — the Milgrom/Roberts material on how institutions are constituted by norms and beliefs that then become self-fulfilling. — connects to: Ontology describes the conditions under which a world and human reality exist; Dialectical critique exposes ontology as disguised history — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 694; Uncompromising world-rejecting ideals must be domesticated into organized systems to survive — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 179 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Ontology describes the conditions under which a world and human reality exist #expands (0.85)
• Spurious universal entities are produced by unrepresentative social institutions #exemplifies (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 733
• Dialectical critique exposes ontology as disguised history #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 694
• Uncompromising world-rejecting ideals must be domesticated into organized systems to survive #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 179
• Advanced societies conflate knowledge with decision-competence and truth with power #corroborates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 634
• Institutionalized discursive practices can lose credibility and collapse #qualifies (0.75) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 53
• The operational concept becomes false by atomizing facts within the repressive whole #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 430
• Belief in institutions now depends on circulating images of them #exemplifies (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 136