The recent European discourse on blasphemy as applied to the behavior of Muslim immigrants in Europe serves, paradoxically, at once to confirm and to deny difference. Angry Muslim responses to the publication of the Danish cartoons are seen by secularists as attempting to reintroduce a category that was once a mea ms of oppression in... Continue Reading →
Man is not a ‘herd animal’ but a ‘horde animal’
W. Brown writes in Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire: Man is not a “herd animal” but a “horde animal,” Freud writes at the conclusion of his lengthy critical discussion of other theorists of group psychology. A herd animal has an instinctual affinity for closeness, primary gregariousness, while the horde animal... Continue Reading →
Politics Out of History / Wendy Brown
Moralism is the practice of moralizing, or the tendency to judge others' morality. So, although "moralism" sounds innocent because it seemingly has to do with ethics and morals, it could be considered as a plaster that censors political thought. And form my observations, this woeful case is very relevant today. Whenever people try to judge... Continue Reading →
Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire / Wendy Brown
"Tolerance is invoked in liberal democratic societies when a hegemonic norm can not colonize or incorporate its Other with ease, when that norm maintains or regroups its strength through a new technique of marginalization and regulation rather than through incorporation and direct relations of subordination."