2023-07-28 23:56:53
The collective imaginary that defines the social meanings and organizes the way in which subjects think, see, project and represent themselves, conceives poverty as a sign of personal incapacity or moral inferiority.
Through complex symbolic devices, the ruling elites have managed to install a framework of meaning that depoliticizes poverty and social inequality. Framework of meaning that makes the poor person feel guilty of his poverty and projects his anger and his anger against himself, which obstructs the complaint and claim.
This imaginary is based on a narrative of the will articulated around the idea that each individual is a pure product of himself.
Effort, merit, guilt, and responsibility are the notions that organize the way in which poverty and social inequality are thought of, conceptualized, and symbolized.
These notions give shape to an imaginary that defines, based on simple phrases and simple sentences, a social legality that orders to admire the rich and make an effort, and that prohibits holding others responsible for one’s own “luck”. Wanting is power, it only depends on you, are some of those sentences, simple and simple.
Slogans as hopeful as they are guilty that structure the way in which inequality and poverty are thought and conceptualized.
This social legality also orders the way in which the poor relate to their poverty and the way in which they see the rich.
This framework of meaning presents poverty as a sign of incapacity, assigns full responsibility to the individual and shapes an explanation that refers to different aspects of subjectivity, such as the lack of aptitudes, skills or abilities, and the scarce willingness to effort
By becoming a sign of personal incapacity, poverty is shamefully experienced. It is concealed, it is hidden, it is only alluded to indoors. The problem thus becomes, effectively, a personal or family drama. The sufferings that poverty produces are not discussed, and do not give rise to complaints, because this has become an implicit confession of incapacity and subjective inferiority.
Wealth appears, instead, as the most obvious expression of capacity, cunning, skill.
The rich are admired, envied, in a more or less concealed way, but very rarely criticized. His place, his position, is legitimized by a narrative that sees wealth as a natural consequence of merit.
Meritocracy is tied, articulated with a culture of positivity, with a narrative of the will, which watches over, annuls and even denies the status of reality to restrictions, to impossibility.
In the society of positivity there is no place for antagonism, for contradiction, which is why wealth is no longer seen as the other face of poverty.
The original dispossession, which shaped the capitalist order, is thus rendered invisible. As the exploitation is veiled, the appropriation of the fruits of the work of others. Because property is presented as a consequence of merit. The rich are rich because they contributed a lot, because they generated a lot, not because they appropriated a lot.
In this way, the social character of production is blurred. That becomes a spectral reality, barely visible, opaque, almost impossible to perceive after the brilliant brilliance that emanates from the subjectivity of the heroic entrepreneur.
The denial of dispossession and exploitation is, therefore —at the same time— a denial of the capacities and wonders of the exploited. Because it implies the denial that it was he, with his work, who generated the wealth.
The narrative of merit and positivity masks and hides exploitation. And, furthermore, it attacks the dignity and subjectivity of the poor. The poor person does not know, he cannot, he is not capable, that is why he is poor. This hides the obvious fact that material poverty impedes, restricts, limits, constrains and makes —sometimes— impossible the development of capacities and even that of one’s own individuality.
The subjectivity of the poor is attacked by that guilty narrative that censors him for not being able to, when he could not be able to.
Added to this aggression is the one that generates poverty in an era of wealth, in a social ecosystem organized around consumption and that assigns ranks based on the relationship one has with objects. Within the framework of a society of abundance and consumption, in which access to enjoyment is —to a great extent— mediated and conditioned by the possibilities of acquiring, poverty generates an interdiction to pleasure, and therefore, intense frustration. .
This restriction of jouissance generates a tension, which, seeing any possibility of becoming a claim blocked, turns into anguish.
A part of the anger that is produced as a consequence of this prohibition, the poor person directs against himself, while he tends to see himself as the main person responsible for his poverty. Because the meritocratic narrative assigns individuals sole responsibility for their situation.
The positivity society is based, how could it be otherwise, on a set of denials: the existence of conditioning material frameworks; that of some differences in the starting points that outline and make the biographies predictable; that of the structural violence of the capitalist system; that of the original dispossession and that of exploitation.
These denials make it possible to structure a culture of will, merit and personal responsibility, which depoliticizes poverty and inequality, which closes off class disputes, because it denies the very existence of classes.
The culture of the will limits politics to the abstract and immaterial realm of rights, because a “liberated” subject will be able to do everything, but at the same time can also be held responsible for everything.
The one that remains thus, freed, effectively from all responsibility, from all interpellation, from all criticism, is the capitalist civilization.
The culture of the will legitimizes structural violence, dispossession and exploitation, and through complex symbolic mechanisms redirects the resulting tension to the sides or downwards.
This culture finds almost no answer, which explains why a blaming narrative of the poor and oppressed majority has become common sense.
This lack of response is, to a large extent, a consequence of the disciplining (through integration) of those to whom the oppressed majorities entrusted the task of representing them.
Appealing to pragmatism as a justification device, these representatives have strongly contributed to limiting politics to the mere field of management. The order, they say, not only cannot be replaced by another, but it cannot be substantially modified either.
This generates the non-existence of projects, of an alternative, of something with which to contrast what is given and judge it. And that is what sustains positivity, the negation of all negativity.
Taken from the blog Culture and resistance. Original source: Mateamargo
#depoliticization #poverty #Meritocracy #positivity #violence