Individual moral commitment is always embedded in broader traditions and movements, never purely autonomous.

Evidence

I am not alone. I could not claim, could I, that I have moved or mobilised myself after all, autonomously and on my own? Insofar as I struggle against antisemitism, I vaguely sense that I am participating in something greater than myself. I am, as it were, ‘framed’. I follow certain rules. I play, indeed, I want to play a part in a larger dynamic that includes but also exceeds social confines. I join— at times I seem caught—in broader trends and movements. One could indeed say, and with good reason, that there is a spirituality to it all, and though I know too little of it, I would like to think that I have inherited a certain history, a tradition even. Like many others, individual and social actors, I respond to antisemitism and, perhaps to a comparable extent, to the forces that, however tenuous or fragmented, are gathered against it. I experience these things. I feel, at any rate, interpellated and in some measure supported. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1187

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Althusser’s concept of interpellation — the author uses ‘interpellated’ directly — and to the broader theory that subjects are constituted by ideology rather than pre-existing it.