Groups internalize external threat as an oath to preserve cohesion after danger recedes

Evidence

Yet, particularly as the life of the group extends in time, the interiorization of the third is an insufficient guarantee of group autonomy, for the danger which it came into being to combat may disappear, or at least momentarily abate. The Bastille falls, the enemy beats a prudent retreat. Now, although the various members of the group may be intellectually aware that the danger is far from over and that the king’s troops may return any minute in greater force, the enemy presence is no longer there to maintain the necessary sense of urgency, and the members of the group are tempted to drift back into the private life of serial dispersal. So at this point, reinforcing the system of revolving thirds, the group interiorizes the danger itself in the form of the oath. Its classic form and paradigm is of course the tennis court oath, its purpose to maintain by sheer internal determination that cohesion which had previously been little more than a response to external stimuli. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 509

Categorization

• XREF: This is the Sartrean group-in-fusion mechanism Jameson traces — connects to Adorno’s and Lukács’s accounts of how revolutionary solidarity is forged and then institutionalized; the oath as internal substitute for the external enemy parallels how the Frankfurt School sees ideology freezing praxis. — connects to: Groups first form against an external threat, then transfer their unity onto an object — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 506; External threat makes groups punish their own deviants harder — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 21; External danger and social isolation drive members toward group conformity. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4142 (+14 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies Sartre’s group-in-fusion and its necessary movement from external enemy to internalized oath.

Broader Connections

• External threat makes groups punish their own deviants harder #corroborates (0.85) — Walter G. Stephan, Oscar Ybarra, Kimberly Rios Morrison, Intergroup Threat Theory, 21
• External danger and social isolation drive members toward group conformity. #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4142
• Shared misery and external threats drive stigmatized groups toward protective internal solidarity #corroborates (0.82)
• Shared prejudice threats build protective ingroup solidarity #corroborates (0.80) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 952
• Group cohesiveness shifts terrorist goals from political change toward self-maintenance #complicates (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4147
• Low cohesion or threat makes groups rigid against minority dissent #contradicts (0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1412
• Collective-retaliation threat, encoded in honour culture, sustains group trust #corroborates (0.75)