Growing Self Awareness

when the political is personal is political is personal.

Hypothesis: mid-twentieth century intellectuals were obsessed with locating the public story of politics in the private experience of self-formation, via the insights of psychoanalysis. Then, somewhere in the 1960s, everything flipped. Intellectuals began rooting private experiences of the self in larger political formations. Which is to say we went from The Authoritarian Personality to Foucault’s panopticon, from the externalization of private crises to the internalization of public power.

Theodor Adorno.
Michel Foucault.

 

 

1 thought on “Growing Self Awareness

  1. I tend to support this move since a lot of the psychoanalytic explanations were very mother-blaming.
    But here’s my question: where does the Twinkie defense fit into all this?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *