British youth political disengagement stems from self-fulfilling beliefs of powerlessness

Evidence

By contrast with their forebears in the 1960s and 1970s, British students today appear to be politically disengaged. While French students can still be found on the streets protesting against neoliberalism, British students, whose situation is incomparably worse, seem resigned to their fate. But this, I want to argue, is a matter not of apathy, nor of cynicism, but of reflexive impotence. They know things are bad, but more than that, they know they can’t do anything about it. But that ‘knowledge’, that reflexivity, is not a passive observation of an already existing state of affairs. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 45

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s core concept of ‘reflexive impotence’ — the self-fulfilling belief that nothing can change.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s corpus on Islamophobia and the War on Terror, where Muslims are also descriptively disempowered by pre-emptive framing and reflexivity itself becomes a control mechanism. — connects to: Political disengagement in British youth stems from reflexive impotence, a self-fulfilling prophecy, not apathy. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 45; Awareness of political futility functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 45; Political disengagement is socially produced in conversation, not just held in beliefs — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”: The work of avoiding…, 30

Related

• Political disengagement in British youth stems from reflexive impotence, a self-fulfilling prophecy, not apathy. (similarity 0.93)
• Awareness of political futility functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Political disengagement in British youth stems from reflexive impotence, a self-fulfilling prophecy, not apathy. #corroborates (1.00) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 45
• Awareness of political futility functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy #corroborates (1.00) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 45
• Political disengagement is socially produced in conversation, not just held in beliefs #complicates (0.75) — Nina Eliasoph, “Close to home”, 30