Polite conduct can be conscious resistance rather than unconscious hegemonic concession

Evidence

From the perspective of the Woman’s Convention, polite behavior on Jim Crow streetcars and trains did not constitute supine deference to white power. Nor did politeness constitute unconscious acts of political concession, as Pierre Bourdieu’s oft-quoted analysis would otherwise have us believe. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 883

Categorization

• XREF: Contests Bourdieu’s habitus/upholding-hegemony reading, a relevant rejoinder for knowledge on social reproduction. — connects to: Politeness and social mixing mask a tacit acceptance of inhumanity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1690; Ruling-class procedural politeness masks a threat against open confrontation — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2350; Polite deception can actually build rather than undermine trust (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does intentional, self-conscious performative respectability differ from Bourdieu’s mnemonic body-training account?

Broader Connections

• Politeness and social mixing mask a tacit acceptance of inhumanity #complicates (0.82) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1690
• Politeness now signals inhuman conditions rather than human address #complicates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 32
• Ruling-class procedural politeness masks a threat against open confrontation #complicates (0.78) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2350
• Trivial compliance gestures progressively erode moral resistance #complicates (0.76) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 258
• Polite deception can actually build rather than undermine trust #expands (0.75)
• People accept their social position through embrace, fatalism, or passive submission #complicates (0.74) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 1131