Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism by Jeremy Gilbert

Intrinsic - coming from the inside

hegemony - leadership/ dominance of one group over another

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alternatives to hegemonic culture of competitive individualism and conservative cumminatarianism.

analyses the current alternatives to neoliberal individualism ( how to develop new forms of community?) - collective creativity and participatory democracy ( post democratic since 70’s ) Radical?

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austerity - rigourosness, inflexibility, sharpness, strictness, grimness - ( political economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases (Strenge, Sparmaßnahmen)

Technocratic - control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts

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postdemocratic age ( “elections becoming increasingly empty procedures“ ) offering public the opportunity to validate programs whose contents they have no control over.

Fordism / Post Fordism - power and authority of centralising administrations ( governmental or corporate ) , early electrical grids, telegraphic networks, cinema in the age of studio system : all tended to facilitate central control over large territories and over high quantities of people, things and ideas on a global scale ( including fascist dictatorships and communist republics ) - this was the golden age of propaganda , increased government control over all aspects of finance and industrial investment - conditions of possibility for the totalitarian disasters of Stalinism and Nazism ( at its worst)

at its best drag America out of its depression in the 1930’s and British government attack on the roots of social inequality in the 1940’s

Crouch, Jessop 2002 and Jaques ( 1989) have pointed out, that governments ability to do such things has been shortened by the post Fordist (1970) technical assemblage ( fluidity, within a body the relationships of component parts are not stable or fixed , they can be displaced and replaced within and among other bodies - implication of the connection between specific concepts and that the arrangement of those concepts is what provides sense or meaning. )

Which has granted more freedom of movement to capital and has made it difficult for labour to defend it’s interests and for governments to act on any democratic consequences over the past few decades. - soviet communism to renew itself after the 60’s ( beginning of the decade , soviet union forefront of global modernisation

Gilbert traces the priority of individualism back to the belief of neoliberalism.

Individualism not primarily a moral or ethical category, but an ontological ( concerns claims of the nature of being and existence) , phenomenology ( study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience ) and epistemology ( theory of knowledge - with regards to its methods, validity - and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

the singular human being as the basic unit

individual - that which cannot be divided ( Williams, 1976)

not only the singular uniqueness of a person , but also implies that that uniqueness is dependent upon its invisible.

The concept implies both a constant simplicity and autarchy ( self sufficiency , political system that promotes individualism )

Deleuze ( 1994) : Individual is protean ( being able to change frequently or easily ) , divisible and multiple

Individuals are not product of social relations, social relations happen to individuals, rather than things , that actually define their identity

Freud : coherence of every group is the individual relationship of each member of the group with a single common point of cathexis ( emotional investment)

personalities composed of those entities :

id ( it, unconscious mind , domain of unconscious desires , primary process)

ego ( I, domain of conscious intention, desire planning , rational pleasure - seeking )

super - ego (super I, conscience , idea of what constitutes good and bad behaviour, objectives or feelings which the subjects has accumulated from their parents or hider culture - this tends to be experienced as a harassing force, constantly punishing the individual for failing to live up to its ideals.

Identification : subjectivity resemblance between subject and object into the subjects own personality - ego ideal - idealised version of the object as a standard

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego : any mutual identification between group members is only possible on the basis of their personal , individual relationship with a common object.

Hobbes : limiting individualism would limit the legitimisation of the political authority alternatives to neoliberal competitive individualism - ‘ meta - individualism ‘ ?

concept of multitude , infinity, relationally ( concerning the way in which 2 or more people or things are connected , connectedness)

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/51675/1/175-920-3-PB.pdf

Research: Phase 3

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