Real action modifies man and reality while verbal action only creates puppets

Evidence

This contradiction can explain many things: for example, the difference between real action on the one hand, which modifies in an essential way both man and external reality (in other words, real culture) and which is Americanism, and on the other hand the gladiatorial futility which is self-declared action but modifies only the word, not things, the external gesture and not the man inside. … The second only creates a superior kind of puppet, modelled on a basis of rhetorical predicates, which will collapse into nothingness the moment the strings are cut which give from outside the appearance of motion and of life. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1132

Categorization

• XREF: Foreshadows the representation vs. reality distinction the Islamophobia field will rely on — the ‘puppet’ ‘collapse’ language parallels how ideological constructs mask material relations. — connects to: Action modifies the being of things, not just their appearance; Performative utterances create reality rather than admit truth-valuation — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 136; Literary description signals the breakdown of human relation to action — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 402
• SEED: The distinction between ‘real action’ and ‘gladiatorial futility’ (word-only action) is a strong lens for critiquing performative corporate/state diversity gestures.