Dreamwork’s confabulated consistency models how contemporary power maintains itself

Evidence

When we are dreaming, we forget, but immediately forget that we have done so; since the gaps and lacunae in our memories are Photoshopped out, they do not trouble or torment us. What dreamwork does is to produce a confabulated consistency which covers over anomalies and contradictions, and it is this which Wendy Brown picked up on when she argued that it was precisely dreamwork which provided the best model for understanding contemporary forms of power. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 123

Categorization

• DEFINE: Extends the dreamwork analogy as a model for ideological smooth functioning introduced earlier via the contradiction between chapters.
• XREF: Connects to ch8’s entry on audit culture where symbolic representations displace actual work — both about confabulated consistency masking underlying incoherence. — connects to: Market bureaucracy is more Kafkaesque than centralized totalitarian rule — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 133; The pretense the big Other remains ignorant sustains ordinary social reality — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 95; Legitimating myths trap power-holders in chains of forced consistency — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671 (+2 more)

Related

• Dreamwork’s confabulated consistency models how ideology now covers its contradictions. (similarity 0.92)
• Dreamwork’s confabulated smoothness models how capitalist realism papers over contradictions (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberalism and neoconservatism rule together purely through dreamwork’s confabulated consistency (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Legitimating myths trap power-holders in chains of forced consistency #expands (0.85) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 671