Benjamin Britton > Recent Status Updates

“Even more bitter was the experience suffered between the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the populists, determined to “Go to the People” and help them establish cooperatives, but quickly forced to revise the idealized image they had of the Russian peasant.”

“While the opposition abided by the lesson of Lenin and the conspiratorial tradition of Bolshevism, weaving its plans in the shadows, this double game arouses the indignation of Soviet power, which identifies false friends as the most dangerous and slippery enemy: the tragedy is way of their outcome.”

And that is how Descartes reflects the whole past of his own philosophy, that is, all the confusion, all the error, that preceded him.

the essential theme of Lacan’s criticism can be put in the following way: if we reduce psychoanalysis to the typical structure of psychology, we no longer understand what the unconscious is.

What interests us is the theoretical question that we are raising: what is the relation, not factual, concrete, actual, but theoretical, the relation de jure—I return now to what I said at the outset—between psychoanalysis and the human sciences? To answer that question we have to define the essence of psychoanalysis.

“It’s not easy to see what theoretical difference can be defined between psychoanalysis and psychology, between psychoanalysis and psychotherapeutic medicine, between psychoanalysis and psychiatry, etc.”

But— and this is an extremely important consequence—this means that we can really find the object of psychoanalysis in society. If you read Sartre’s interpretations . . . you’ll see that this is the nodal point, because it’s where praxis, the individual project, is integrated into society.

“Historically, the insistence that Black deprivation is rooted in Black culture and in Black people has deflected attention away from the systemic roots of racism, compelling African Americans to look inward instead of making demands on the state and others.”

“Sanders is reluctant and almost uncomfortable discussing the specific ways that racism adds another burden onto the existing oppression Black workers and the poor face.”

“The Black Lives Matter movement, from Ferguson to today, has created a feeling of pride and combativeness among a generation that this country has tried to kill, imprison, and simply disappear.”

“The gravity of the crisis confronting Black communities, often stemming from these harmful encounters with the police, legitimizes the need for a more encompassing analysis. It allows people to generalize from police violence to the ways that public funding for police comes at the expense of other public institutions, and creates the space to then ask why.”

“In one fell swoop, Sharpton not only condemned the young people of Ferguson but invoked stereotypes to do so. It confirmed a sense among the new activists that Sharpton and those like him were out of step.”

“Garza described #BlackLivesMatter as “an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”

“The police function primarily as agents of social control in a society that is fundamentally unequal, which means that they largely operate in poor and working-class communities.”

“In some Southern states, convict leasing was critical to the economy. In 1898 almost 73 percent of total revenue in Alabama was derived from convict leasing in coal mines.”

“Complaining about sagging pants or characterizing low-income Black people as “thugs and criminals” during an uprising legitimizes the racialization and criminalization of Black people. It explains the hardships of African Americans in such a way as to rationalize the poor conditions and lack of resources that pervade working-class communities of color.”

“Most importantly, removing race and, ultimately, culpability for the conditions of the cities, meant there was no explanation for those conditions beyond the people living there. If culture was the issue, what was needed was personal transformation, not a robust public sector.

“The intractability of Black conditions becomes seen as natural as opposed to standing as an indictment of the system itself, while the hard times befalling ordinary whites are rendered almost invisible. For example, the majority of poor people in the United States are white, but the public face of American poverty is Black.”

“The intractability of Black conditions becomes seen as natural as opposed to standing as an indictment of the system itself, while the hard times befalling ordinary whites are rendered almost invisible. For example, the majority of poor people in the United States are white, but the public face of American poverty is Black.”

“This book explores why the movement marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter has emerged under the nation’s first Black president. Police brutality is not a new phenomenon; it has existed, in some form or other, since the abolition of slavery. Why has abusive policing created a breaking point in the age of Obama?”

“Without a credible and coherent alternative to capitalism, capitalist realism will continue to rule the political-economic unconscious.”

“Extrapolating a little from Brown’s arguments, we might hypothesize that what held the bizarre synthesis of neoconservatism and neoliberalism together was their shared objects of abomination: the so called Nanny State and its dependents.”

“Foucault famously observes there that there is no need for the place of surveillance to actually be occupied. The effect of not knowing whether you will be observed or not produces an introjection of the surveillance apparatus. You constantly act as if you are always about to be observed.”

“If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”

“Bono’s Product Red brand wanted to dispense even with the philanthropic intermediary. ‘Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands’, Bono proclaimed. ‘Red is more like punk rock, hip hop, this should feel like hard commerce’. The point was not to offer an alternative to capitalism – on the contrary... its realistic’ acceptance that capitalism is the only game in town.”

“no single man is fit to rule alone. It’s only right
that they rule themselves collectively. In such a way,
they control each other to prevent demonic outbursts
which can lead to catastrophe. Even if there are no gods
to help them, such a collective of equals
is bound by a holy spirit, a bond stronger than fate,
a bond that can defy all earthly powers
and maybe even some divine.”

“no single man is fit to rule alone. It’s only right
that they rule themselves collectively. In such a way,
they control each other to prevent demonic outbursts
which can lead to catastrophe. Even if there are no gods
to help them, such a collective of equals
is bound by a holy spirit, a bond stronger than fate,
a bond that can defy all earthly powers
and maybe even some divine.”

“Antigone:
By dread things I am compelled. I know that.
I see the trap closing. Now I know what I am.
But while life is in me I ask only one thing:
let me go mad in my own way. In this madness of mine
I will try to imagine how events could be unwound
even further back, to avoid this horror I’m in …”

“Antigone:
By dread things I am compelled. I know that.
I see the trap closing. Now I know what I am.
But while life is in me I ask only one thing:
let me go mad in my own way. In this madness of mine
I will try to imagine how events could be unwound
even further back, to avoid this horror I’m in …”

“My premise is that such a staging confronts us with a true Antigone for our times, ruthlessly abandoning our sympathy and compassion for the play’s heroine, making her part of the problem, and proposing a way out which shatters us in our humanitarian complacency.”