Collective action can reframe self-estrangement from dread into transcendence

Evidence

Freud observed that when a person is confronted by their doppelganger, they become unfamiliar to themselves. On an individual level, that is deeply destabilizing, as I have learned. But I also know, as an activist who has lost herself in causes and crowds, that becoming unfamiliar to oneself need not be a horrifying experience; I have felt it to be transcendent. When we come together in movements working for the scale of change demanded by our times (which is less green juice than Global Green New Deal), it changes us, and we become people who are, if not unfamiliar, then certainly unexpected. Braver. More hopeful. More connected. More able to feel love toward people we barely know. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1089

Categorization

• XREF: The unselfing-experience and self-estrangement theme echoes Lionel Trilling’s ‘sincerity and authenticity’ and also connects to the reader’s earlier notes on total silence as destabilizing or transcendent. — connects to: Self-blame converts revolutionary anger into individualized depression — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 27; Therapeutic self-naming privatises suffering and prevents collective solidarity. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1372; Goth reconceived outsiderdom as collective, self-chosen celebration rather than solitary tragedy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1041 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the chapter’s conceptual pivot — Klein revalues the doppelganger experience (Freudian horror) as potentially transcendent, which is the emotional core of the Bernie unselfing. It resists one-line summary.