The master’s belief in the slave’s inessentiality is an illusion masking real dependency

Evidence

The master’s view is set up as universal, and it is part of the mechanism of backgrounding that it never occurs to him that there might be other perspectives from which he is background. Yet this inessentialness which he believes the slave to have in relation to his own essentialness is an illusion. First, the master more than the slave requires the other in order to define his boundaries and identity, since these are defined against the inferiorised other (see point 4 below); it is the slave who makes the master a master, the colonised who make the coloniser, the periphery which makes the centre. Second, the master also requires the other materially, in order to survive, for the relation of complementation has made the master dependent on the slave for fulfilment of his needs. But this dependency is also hated and feared by the master, for it subtly challenges his dominance, and is denied in a variety of indirect and direct ways, with all the consequences of repression. The real role and contribution of the other is obscured in culture, and the economic relation is denied, mystified, or presented in paternalistic terms (Memmi 1965:21; Waring 1988). — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 199

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into the earlier-extracted claim that mastering groups both rely on and deny their dependence — the mechanism that produces nature-as-standby-reserve. — connects to: Masters both rely on the dominated and deny that dependency through backgrounding. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 197; Defining the other as lack incorporates it into the master’s self, precluding real recognition — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 215; Liberating the mystified slave requires external intervention to build consciousness (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Oppression alienates the subordinate into viewing herself through the master’s eyes #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 674
• The master’s self-certainty remains incomplete because the slave’s recognition is non-essential #corroborates (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 685
• Liberating the mystified slave requires external intervention to build consciousness #expands (0.80)
• Exploited consciousness becomes accomplice to its own subjection through passive interiority #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 572
• Believing one’s exteriority transparently reveals inner being subjects one to others’ gaze #expands (0.75)
• De-psychologization disarms the psychological steering that sustains domination #complicates (0.75) — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 181
• Enslaved people claimed the masters’ own ideals more seriously than their masters did #qualifies (0.72)
• Believing one is powerless in a system eliminates felt responsibility for actions #expands (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 324
• The authentic inner self is a structural illusion; feelings are trite repetitions #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1186