The mask is a recognition of the universality that capitalist subjectivity must constantly deny. "I can no longer think of myself in isolation once I recognize the necessity of wearing the mask." This is an absolute banger. *chef's kiss* THANK YOU!!
I can't believe you have a RUclips (with only 1k subscribers! but only a month old). I found you when writing "Zizek In The Clinic" and I definitely have come to aspire to your clear writing style. Thank you for putting out content here!
Really impressive, keep up the good work But I am looking forward to reading the subtitles though Also there is a lecture by alaine de benoist linking the economic liberty (capitalism) with social liberalism by showing the common foundation that they both arise from
I really enjoy your critique of capitalism and how it is opposed to universality. However, I would like to hear more of your thoughts about the failures of neoliberalism on the left as well. For example, you mentioned economic crisis as a result of disaster. This economic depression will disproportionately affect the working class, and the middle class capital will be sacrificed for the wealthy to accumulate their losses. The neoliberal left wants us to say “we are all in this together,” but clearly, we are not. How do you reconcile these ideas? I love your work and look forward to more videos
There is a profound difference between the all and the universal. The all is the collection of particulars, which never becomes a totality because it necessitates someone being left out. So one might respond when liberals say that we're all in it together, "We're left outside so that you can all be in it together." Thanks so much for the great question.
When all this mask wearing antagonism kicked off the first thing I thought of was the conception of freedom offered at that libidinal economies event. It's a fascinating subject to explore in this context, faces are fun! Also I'm stealing that joke btw.
Great video Todd; I always love watching your stuff as a way to even somewhat counterbalance my analytic philosophy education. There's really only one thing that I think might poke a hole in your analysis. Sometimes contemporary capitalism is characterized as anonymizing, as taking people and abstracting them into ID numbers and data points, as removing as many human elements as possible. (You might wonder whether this is something that's attributable to capitalism itself or technocracy which can exist jointly with seemingly any macroeconomic system, but I'll put that point aside). If this is true, then particularity as you're using it in this video is sort of the opposite of the values of capitalism. The mask may, say, help one not feel bad when laying off 200 workers or judging that some medical issue isn't covered by the patient's insurance policy, specifically because it removes the humanity of the interaction. SO the reasons why the right hates masks, so goes this response, is not for psycho-capitalist reasons, but instead because maybe righties need to see faces to categorize the person they're interacting with and apply the socially sanctioned norm that accords with their group. I don't really buy into this characterization of contemporary capitalism nor that alt. explanation of why righties hate masks, and hence also the response to your video, but it's something worth considering I think.
First problem I see with this is that liberalism is talked about as being against control, but liberalism is also obsessed with control in the sense that each individual should take total control of their lives.
This is exactly the point. Liberalism takes the isolated individual as its starting point, which is why self-control is just fine but societal control is anathema. They do not function in the same way at all for the liberal.
Because the concept of protecting other people through collective action is in fundamental conflict with their selfish individualist ideology. It is really and truly that simple. It's also why these people don't use turn signals in their cars - because they don't benefit the driver, they benefit _other_ drivers.
I love the ideas you have laid out here, but it seems to me to be a partial explanation at best. If what you were saying is true, one would expect neo-liberals of the center-left to also reject the use of masks. If anything corporations have embraced the use of masks because it allows them to keep labor producing for them.
Interesting point. Liberals often accept things that theoretically undermine liberalism because the whole point of liberalism is to be open to everything. Likewise, capitalism sells what is antithetical to it. This is why bookstores can sell copies of Das Kapital without becoming anti-capitalist. This doesn't mean that Marx isn't really anti-capitalist.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Fair point. By the way, I have had the chance to listen to a lot of the podcasts and read a couple of your books. Learning a tremendous amount and really appreciate all the effort you put in to make your scholarship accessible.
One thing to remember though is that neoliberals favour utility as the highest priority in their hierarchy of values; if masks enable reentrance into the work-force and the publicization of shared space, i.e. the 'return to the machine' so to speak, then that alone will supersede everything else. The necessity of utility can be held as consequentially derivative from individualized allocation towards the economy--if mass-level phenomena occur, it is only because actors have commodified their relations in tandem with one another, yet if such relations are formed, they are taken to be fruitful to everyone's own interests (under the capitalistic presupposition). And so economic utilitarianism enmeshes itself into the sociopolitical realm, whereby participatory sociopolitics occurs as the latent function of utility. If this is the case, then once we understand how the utilitarian dynamic operates via the neoliberal lens, we can understand that there needn't be a sense of contradiction with regards to mask usage and neoliberal individualism. Analogously, it is a generalized expectation that everyone labours, but the particularities of the labourer abide another realm altogether (i.e. who you are and what you do, that is secondary still); what matters first and foremost in our categorization is the collective tendency towards labour--the shared responsibility *to work* appears universal, and this is seemingly contradictory, since it sounds collective, right? Yet no, this needn't be regarded as 'actually' collectivistic either; since, again: the personalized commodification of relations as tandemly self-beneficial is taken to be *constitutive of* the economy, rather than the other way around, and so utility wins out again, presenting itself not as the great sublation of the individual but instead as the aggregative expression of individual relations surfeited towards totalizing ends, as the calculative spirit of particular desires quantified en masse, known finally as *the market*.
The mask is a recognition of the universality that capitalist subjectivity must constantly deny.
"I can no longer think of myself in isolation once I recognize the necessity of wearing the mask."
This is an absolute banger.
*chef's kiss*
THANK YOU!!
I can't believe you have a RUclips (with only 1k subscribers! but only a month old). I found you when writing "Zizek In The Clinic" and I definitely have come to aspire to your clear writing style. Thank you for putting out content here!
"No one cared who I was [after] I put on the mask."
Capitalist Bane
Excellent stuff as always, thanks for taking the time to put these up
Really impressive, keep up the good work
But I am looking forward to reading the subtitles though
Also there is a lecture by alaine de benoist linking the economic liberty (capitalism) with social liberalism by showing the common foundation that they both arise from
I really enjoy your critique of capitalism and how it is opposed to universality. However, I would like to hear more of your thoughts about the failures of neoliberalism on the left as well. For example, you mentioned economic crisis as a result of disaster. This economic depression will disproportionately affect the working class, and the middle class capital will be sacrificed for the wealthy to accumulate their losses. The neoliberal left wants us to say “we are all in this together,” but clearly, we are not. How do you reconcile these ideas? I love your work and look forward to more videos
There is a profound difference between the all and the universal. The all is the collection of particulars, which never becomes a totality because it necessitates someone being left out. So one might respond when liberals say that we're all in it together, "We're left outside so that you can all be in it together." Thanks so much for the great question.
Todd McGowan That’s an excellent answer, thank you. The phrasing of that response sounds quite Zizekian although I hope you won’t mind that comparison
@@AlessioMorello As a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Žižek Studies, my guess is that he's okay with it :)
When all this mask wearing antagonism kicked off the first thing I thought of was the conception of freedom offered at that libidinal economies event. It's a fascinating subject to explore in this context, faces are fun! Also I'm stealing that joke btw.
Great video Todd; I always love watching your stuff as a way to even somewhat counterbalance my analytic philosophy education. There's really only one thing that I think might poke a hole in your analysis. Sometimes contemporary capitalism is characterized as anonymizing, as taking people and abstracting them into ID numbers and data points, as removing as many human elements as possible. (You might wonder whether this is something that's attributable to capitalism itself or technocracy which can exist jointly with seemingly any macroeconomic system, but I'll put that point aside). If this is true, then particularity as you're using it in this video is sort of the opposite of the values of capitalism. The mask may, say, help one not feel bad when laying off 200 workers or judging that some medical issue isn't covered by the patient's insurance policy, specifically because it removes the humanity of the interaction. SO the reasons why the right hates masks, so goes this response, is not for psycho-capitalist reasons, but instead because maybe righties need to see faces to categorize the person they're interacting with and apply the socially sanctioned norm that accords with their group. I don't really buy into this characterization of contemporary capitalism nor that alt. explanation of why righties hate masks, and hence also the response to your video, but it's something worth considering I think.
It's a great point and the basis of what I would call the Levinasian objection to masks.
By the way, a video about Sacrifice would be nice! Great ideas!
First problem I see with this is that liberalism is talked about as being against control, but liberalism is also obsessed with control in the sense that each individual should take total control of their lives.
This is exactly the point. Liberalism takes the isolated individual as its starting point, which is why self-control is just fine but societal control is anathema. They do not function in the same way at all for the liberal.
This is amazing! Thank you so much for putting out this content!
Because the concept of protecting other people through collective action is in fundamental conflict with their selfish individualist ideology. It is really and truly that simple. It's also why these people don't use turn signals in their cars - because they don't benefit the driver, they benefit _other_ drivers.
I love the ideas you have laid out here, but it seems to me to be a partial explanation at best. If what you were saying is true, one would expect neo-liberals of the center-left to also reject the use of masks. If anything corporations have embraced the use of masks because it allows them to keep labor producing for them.
Interesting point. Liberals often accept things that theoretically undermine liberalism because the whole point of liberalism is to be open to everything. Likewise, capitalism sells what is antithetical to it. This is why bookstores can sell copies of Das Kapital without becoming anti-capitalist. This doesn't mean that Marx isn't really anti-capitalist.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Fair point. By the way, I have had the chance to listen to a lot of the podcasts and read a couple of your books. Learning a tremendous amount and really appreciate all the effort you put in to make your scholarship accessible.
One thing to remember though is that neoliberals favour utility as the highest priority in their hierarchy of values; if masks enable reentrance into the work-force and the publicization of shared space, i.e. the 'return to the machine' so to speak, then that alone will supersede everything else. The necessity of utility can be held as consequentially derivative from individualized allocation towards the economy--if mass-level phenomena occur, it is only because actors have commodified their relations in tandem with one another, yet if such relations are formed, they are taken to be fruitful to everyone's own interests (under the capitalistic presupposition). And so economic utilitarianism enmeshes itself into the sociopolitical realm, whereby participatory sociopolitics occurs as the latent function of utility. If this is the case, then once we understand how the utilitarian dynamic operates via the neoliberal lens, we can understand that there needn't be a sense of contradiction with regards to mask usage and neoliberal individualism. Analogously, it is a generalized expectation that everyone labours, but the particularities of the labourer abide another realm altogether (i.e. who you are and what you do, that is secondary still); what matters first and foremost in our categorization is the collective tendency towards labour--the shared responsibility *to work* appears universal, and this is seemingly contradictory, since it sounds collective, right? Yet no, this needn't be regarded as 'actually' collectivistic either; since, again: the personalized commodification of relations as tandemly self-beneficial is taken to be *constitutive of* the economy, rather than the other way around, and so utility wins out again, presenting itself not as the great sublation of the individual but instead as the aggregative expression of individual relations surfeited towards totalizing ends, as the calculative spirit of particular desires quantified en masse, known finally as *the market*.
Substitute "equality" for "universality", and "individuality" for "particularity" and more viewers will get the point sooner.
Great videos! Thanks!
I learnt a lot from this, thank you
Really great insight
Ur channel is great, get a pfp and im sure it will expand
What is your opinion on illiberal capitalism?
Phallurst
omg
your take of Capitalism is historically skewed by a neoliberal educational system
omg
your failure to evince an alternative take is skewed by your enjoyment in a post refuting his claims without any further effort