Shared suffering makes strangers discuss delicate political topics openly.
Evidence
Horkheimer now suggested taking the situation in a railway compartment as a model of how one might carry out research into German opinion on political topics in a manner different from, and more realistic than, the usual methods of questioning. In railway compartments, discussions often took place in which strangers discussed even the most delicate topics with astonishing openness. At the time the model was an obvious one, since shared suffering or shared memories of suffering brought people into contact more quickly than usual. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 460
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: how the physical spaces of postwar reconstruction (crowded compartments, shared deprivation) accidentally produced a research method.
- XREF: connects to: Sharing feelings of misery and attributing them to impersonal structures builds collective political subjectivity — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1885; Some suffering resists articulation when public dialogue is skewed — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1141; Postwar shared suffering made German strangers unusually open in conversation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1868 (+1 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Sharing feelings of misery and attributing them to impersonal structures builds collective political subjectivity — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1885; Some suffering resists articulation when public dialogue is skewed — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1141; Postwar shared suffering made German strangers unusually open in conversation — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1868 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Postwar shared suffering made German strangers unusually open in conversation
#exemplifies(0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1868 - People voice political opinions privately but suppress them in group settings.
#complicates(0.75)