Quotable 2 - A different look at stereotypes

pv-p (41)in #philosophy • 6 years ago

Today's quote comes from Raoul Vaneigem, a French Situationist. The Situationists were a group of mainly European thinkers from the late 1950s to early 1970s. They were trying to step beyond Marxism to understand how capitalism dominates not only economic and political spheres but also cultural spheres. A part of this process for Vaneigem is the construction of stereotypes.

‘Stereotypes are the dominant images of a period, the images of the dominant spectacle. The stereotype is the model of the role; the role is a model form of behaviour. The repetition of an attitude creates a role; the repetition of a role creates a stereotype. The stereotype is an objective form into which people are integrated by means of the role. […] Access to the role occurs by means of identification. The need to identify is more important to Power's stability than the models identified with. Identification is a pathological state, but only accidental identifications are officially classed as "mental illness”.’

Raoul Vaneigem (2012) The Revolution of Everyday Life, PM Press, Oakland, p. 114

I love this quote because its Marxist basis provides a radically different way of understanding what a stereotype is. They are not only conceptions we suffer but which we create and enter into ourselves. What this quote specifically describes is how stereotypes are formed from the social roles and positions society (capitalism and the state) offers us. We are therefore the ones who embrace these roles by acting them out – we are employees, parents, citizens, etc.

These roles are an ‘objective form’, something external to us, in the sense that they are delivered by the system under which we live. A stereotype is therefore a type of self-identification with a role. In acting them out we come to identify ourselves in relation to the system. Because they are external objects, however, they lack the properties which make people individuals. This is what reification refers to, the objectification of individuals. Through this process we alienate ourselves from ourselves since we become another identity, one created by capitalism.

What's your role?

This matters because it is not our values and aspirations which are lived when we act out these roles, it is those of the system from which they emerge. This is what creates the system’s power, we use our own power to create the system from the ground up, from our own social relations. It is in this sense that ‘identification is a pathological state’, we participate in a social structure which is to our own detriment. What role or stereotype we occupy does not matter for capital since it delivers them to us to sustain its own growth.

This quote has a relation to yesterday’s quote in that the proliferation of social movements and groups since the 1960s has been a result of a loss of identification with contemporary structures. These identities emerge as a reaction to societal conditions, but nonetheless end up being integrated and rationalised by the system. Any changes made to the system are superficial in terms of changing roles and erasing domination. Counter-culture and ‘alternative’ merely become new markets for capitalism. We see here how the power of capitalism resides in its adaptability, its power to absorb contradiction and make it a productive part of itself.