Personalized peace collapses when replacements lack human connection to the enemy

Evidence

With its insistence on the irreducible alterity that represents both a condition of possibility and a condition of impossibility of every identity, a perspective informed by post-structuralism provides a much better theoretical framework to grasp the specificity of modern democracy than rationalist approaches. The notion of the ‘constitutive outside’ forces us to come to terms with the idea that pluralism implies the permanence of conflict and antagonism. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 142 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The shift to confronting and reimagining structures requires something else: a recognition that this work is not something we can do on our own, as individuals, with a charity donation or an equity and diversity training, or a performance of virtue on social media. Indeed, a central reason why so many of us cannot bear to look at the Shadow Lands is that we live in a culture that tells us to fix massive crises on our own, through self improvement. Support labor rights by ordering from a different store. End racism by battling your personal white fragility—or by representing your marginalized identity group in elite spaces. Solve climate change with an electric car. Transcend your ego with a meditation app. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1074 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Humanizing gestures alone can spontaneously suspend war hostilities; Shared humanity overcomes preconceived enemy divisions between strangers — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 190; Enemy objects arise when ambivalent conflict is displaced onto a substitute — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab: A History of the…, 442 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Humanization can reverse moral disengagement even amid ongoing combat #complicates (0.77)
• Constitutive outside makes conflict permanent and irreducible in identity #complicates (0.75) — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 142
• Individualized self-improvement solutions block collective confrontation of structural crisis #complicates (0.71) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 1074