Cultural domination by the master, not material scarcity, explains oppression

Evidence

The account I have given replaces phallocentrism as the chief concept of cultural analysis by the identity—at once more specific and more universal—of the master subject who has held and shaped most of the high ground of western culture, especially that delineated as the territory of reason. It is not material conditions—nature as stingy mother—which have kept us everywhere in chains, as Marxist fundamentalism would have us believe, but our own cultural bondage to the logic of the master. Since culture was shaped around the written word in Plato’s time, the ruling elites (whose identities are condensed in the master subject) which stand at the apex of various forms of domination have been able through their command of social resources to exercise control over culture disproportionate to their numbers. … Mainly by means of the deep structures of dualism, even the challenges to the ruling elites have been appropriated by the master forms of consciousness or remade in their terms. Although the superrich increasingly own both the world and the word, the master identity is more than a conspiracy: it is a legacy, a form of culture, a form of rationality, a framework for selfhood and relationship which, through this appropriation of culture, has come to shape us all. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 723

Categorization

• XREF: The master-subject thesis replaces phallocentrism — a pivotal claim against a Marxist-materialist and a merely phallocentric reading; key methodological statement. — connects to: Women cannot safely let themselves be defined by the caring voice — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 787; Domination is analyzed via its functioning instruments, not its legitimation — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 1486; Cultural domination operates through dispossessing people of their word, not just economically. — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 449 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Repression stems from economic power structure, not from schooling #contradicts (0.85) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 571
• Cultural domination operates through dispossessing people of their word, not just economically. #exemplifies (0.82) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 449
• Oppression alienates the subordinate into viewing herself through the master’s eyes #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 674
• Domination is analyzed via its functioning instruments, not its legitimation #expands (0.78) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 1486
• Cultural domination persists through the colonized’s own consent, not force alone #qualifies (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 822