Advanced capitalism generates a false conviction of individual centrality that blocks collective action

Evidence

Graduates and undergraduates alike seem caught in a doctrine of individual uniqueness. In a dehistoricized academy, they find no difficulty in claiming their opinions’ center as their own self-possession. This is matched by the ease with which collectivities in the person are assigned centralized unitary descriptions: the fifties, the sixties, the seventies; Romanticism, Structuralism, Phenomenology. In the meantime, even in the most superficial and minimal analysis, one of the most striking characteristics of any version of advanced capitalism is the fragmentation and decentralization of the individual’s putative political and economic control over her own life. … The “deconstructive” lesson, as articulated in “Limited Inc.,” can teach student and teacher alike a method of analysis that would fix its glance upon the itinerary of the ethico-political in authoritarian fictions; call into question the complacent apathy of selfcentralization; undermine the bigoted elitism (theoretical or practical) conversely possible in collective practice; while disclosing in such gestures the condition of possibility of the positive. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 808

Categorization

• XREF: Contradiction Spivak names — lived fragmentation of control paired with felt individual uniqueness — speaks directly to the reader’s question about whether strategic identity is available collectively, since false self-centrality forecloses collectivity. — connects to: Widespread individual exit strategies undermine collective mobilization and perpetuate subordinate status. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 2747; Advanced capitalism generates an illusory conviction of individual self-centering among its elite classes — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 808; Financialization establishes ideological dominance of individual profit over collective interests — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 109 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Individualism becomes a defense of the status quo by delegitimizing group-based demands #corroborates (0.88)
• Financialization establishes ideological dominance of individual profit over collective interests #corroborates (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 109