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- Convenor:
-
Mark Cravalho
(Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 6 April, -
Time zone: America/Chicago
Short Abstract:
Following in the footsteps of Strauss and Friedman (2018) and their collaborators and others, in this panel we examine various dimensions of political subjectivity, broadly conceived, and approached from several theoretical traditions.
Long Abstract:
Following in the footsteps of Strauss and Friedman (2018) and their collaborators and others, in this panel we examine various dimensions of political subjectivity, broadly conceived, and approached from several theoretical traditions, including foci on cultural models, psychodynamics, and ethnopsychology. We examine topics as diverse as the politics and poetics of waiting in Cuba (Gori); cultural meanings of corruption in Brazil (Cravalho, et al.); psychodynamic aspects of authoritarian ideology (Goulart); and the ethnopsychology of anxiety in Kazakhstan, considering discourses of anxiety as technologies of governance (Khan). The session addresses the 2021 Biennial's general theme of social inequality insofar as these topics involve the differential distribution of power, and by extension, the differential distribution of privileges and prestige as well.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 6 April, 2021, -Julia Khan (Seoul National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the socio-cultural discourses of anxiety disorder, historically situated against the Western ones. I describe how teachers in a post-Soviet Kazakhstan school deploy folk pedagogy to utilize the state of anxiousness to develop positive responses towards collective solidarity.
Paper long abstract:
The concept of anxiety embedded in widespread global practices of Western biomedical psychiatry is closely interlinked with the Eurocentric notions of emotion and person that emphasize individualism and the mind/body dichotomy. The physiological view of emotion is reflected in the definition of anxiety disorder that is believed to originate from an imbalance of the brain chemicals or genetic predisposition. The anxiety in this context is considered a negative emotional experience that prevents an individual to rationally control herself in society. In post-Soviet Kazakhstan, the introduction of the global boom of anxiety treatments tangles with already existing practices of folk concepts of "trevoga/trevozhnost" (anxiety/anxiousness). Unlike the concept of anxiety, the concept of trevozhnost' is not coupled with "disorder", and is not medicalized or individualized. On the contrary, it serves as an effective pedagogical tool to create social order. With psychology still being marginalized as a non-science, the school educators continue Soviet practices to deal with students' emotions that reflect the Marxist view of a person as "the sum total of social relationship". I describe how teachers deploy folk pedagogy to utilize the state of anxiousness to develop collective solidarity. This paper examines how collective socialist ethics embodied in the cultural discourse of anxiety is deployed to redress structural inequalities caused by postsocialist transition to a market society. Further, I discuss that despite both the (post) Soviet and Western discourses of anxiety have been historically situated against each other, they share similar origins as modern technologies of governance.
Mark Cravalho (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora) Fernando Henrique Guisso Matheus Vitorino Machado (IESP-UERJ) Everton Rangel (Ufrj) Daniela Amorim Lisboa (IESP-UERJ)
Paper short abstract:
We continue an analysis of semi-structured ethnographic interviews with Brazilians during 2020, begun as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Brazil, taking some initial steps towards examining the concept of corrupção (corruption) from a cultural models perspective, especially that espoused by Strauss (2012).
Paper long abstract:
Corruption in government should be a concern for those interested in the future of democracy and in a reduction of social inequality around the world. Political corruption has been a prominent theme in Brazilian political culture, and its importance as a problem and its prominence in political culture has been perduring, frequently as an attribute of political adversaries. The current far-right administration came to office with anti-corruption as an important theme of its platform, and it is high on the list of social problems which Brazilians can enumerate. It is especially prominent in right-wing discourse. In this paper, we continue an analysis of semi-structured ethnographic interviews with 97 Brazilians during 2020, interviews conducted as research contracted for a private public opinion research firm in support of an anti-corruption campaign. The field research began as the COVID-19 pandemic hit Brazil, with a corruption scandal emerging in the responses to the pandemic, and in a climate of extreme political polarization. Here, we take some initial steps towards examining the interview data from a cultural models perspective, especially that espoused by Strauss (2012). We consider explicit and tacit meanings of corrupção (corruption) and related metaphors. Initial hypotheses include the observation that corrupção is used as an “umbrella” term for much of what is undesirable about government and civic conduct, and that corruption is often understood by Brazilians themselves as an element of Brazilian national culture or national character.
Gabriela Varoto Mendes Goulart (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora)
Paper short abstract:
This paper seeks to investigate and analyze the mass psychological base of anti-democratic ideology, by exploring the relationship between the authoritarian personality, the culture industry, and broadcasting and mass communication technologies in the context of our time.
Paper long abstract:
This paper seeks to investigate and analyze the mass psychological base of anti-democratic ideology, and the psychosocial and psychocultural conditions that led to the observable rise and popularity of anti-democratic and neo-fascist ideology in the US and Brazil, by building on the studies conducted by the School of Frankfurt, namely Marcuse and Adorno, on the authoritarian personality, and the pattern of fascist propaganda. Marcuse's theory of "affirmative culture" and Adorno's definition of the culture industry as a form of "psychoanalysis in reverse" are essential to the understanding of this authoritarian personality and the gratification it gets out of participating and performing in the fascist ritual. Or in other words, these concepts are essential to understanding the psychological appeal of fascism in an attempt to demystify the Le Bonian cliché or reduction of the mass phenomenon to an inherent herd instinct that makes individuals susceptible to a leader's supposed enchantment when in a group, as Freud had already alerted in "Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego". Furthermore, the concept of "ideological surplus value", coined by the Venezuelan, Ludovico Silva, becomes paramount in the critique of the culture industry and its role in the rise of anti-democratic ideology, also taking into consideration here the modes or vias of cultural dissemination, that is; broadcasting and mass communication technologies — that in Freud's time corresponded to the radio, in Ludovico's time: the TV, and in our time: the internet filtered through the smartphone, or social media to be exact.
Yanina Gori (University of California Los Angeles (Ucla))
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the politics and the poetics of waiting in Cuba. Waiting is central to the making and unmaking of socialist subjectivity in time. Waiting may both forge innovation and creativity and destroy the people waiting, evoking affects as diverse as doubt, despair or hope
Paper long abstract:
My paper explores the politics and the poetics of waiting in Cuba. The politics of waiting refers to the structural and institutional conditions that compel people to wait. Waiting is a ‘technique of governance’ (Auyero 2012), an instrument to elicit particular forms of subjection and subjectivity. The poetics of waiting refers to the existential affordances of being placed in uncertain temporal intervals. People waiting deal with it differently. Waiting may both forge innovation and creativity and destroy the people waiting, evoking affects as diverse as doubt, despair or hope (Janeja and Bandak 2018). In post-soviet Cuba the act of waiting in line for bread, the bus, other scarce goods and services is one of the common characteristics of lived experience under state socialism (Frederick 2006, 171). As Cuban socialism was constitutionally updated in 2018-19, Cubans, particularly in the province, experienced an intensification of the ‘arrhythmic endless waiting’ characteristic of everyday life (Verdery 1999). Waiting with and for others is part of la luchita (the struggle) to keeping up with being socialist in a negative historical conjuncture. The intensification of social waiting was often experienced as a “psychological war.” Through a person-centered ethnography of Esperanza and Maga as they engage in multiple forms of waiting, I explore the psychological work of being placed in uncertain times.