The rhetoric of shared sacrifice operates ideologically without requiring belief

Evidence

Individuals need not consciously “believe” in sacrifice for a sacrificial logic to be at work in citizenship remade by neoliberal rationality. Rather, the very notion of “shared sacrifice” interpellates and binds us as a citizenry — this is how the “sharing” works across extreme and obscene differences in how the sacrifice is experienced. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 726

Categorization

• SEED: A usable essay angle: how Althusserian interpellation survives the death of ideology in post-ideological liberal discourse — ‘shared sacrifice’ as a ritual that constitutes rather than describes a citizenry.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s published piece on sacrifice (‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses’) — this passage extends the sacrificial logic from ritual death to everyday austerity discourse. — connects to: Workers rejected wartime ‘equality of sacrifice’ rhetoric as hollow — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 201; Communitarian moral rhetoric masks a project of disciplining individuals; Liberal-rationalist rhetoric can normalize torture as a managed procedure — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 371 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Ideology functions as signification that attains societal validity and justification #expands (0.90) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 819
• Communitarian moral rhetoric masks a project of disciplining individuals #expands (0.88)
• Clash-of-civilizations rhetoric ideologically legitimized both foreign wars and domestic attacks #exemplifies (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 421
• Ideological unity forms through connotative condensation and an axial interpellation #expands (0.85)
• Neoliberal spontaneous-order rhetoric masks theorists’ Schmittian power to define state sovereignty #corroborates (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2196
• Moral rhetoric can reframe gun regulation opposition as patriotic duty and honor #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1175
• Liberal-rationalist rhetoric can normalize torture as a managed procedure #corroborates (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 371
• Ideological commitment requires willed moral blindness to human suffering #qualifies (0.72)