Revolutions in the Revolution: On Jaquet's Révolution Transclasses

Chantal Jaquet's first book on what she called "transclasses" took up the subject of non-reproduction, of people who move from the dominated to the dominant class, in part because she argued that such transformations were perhaps the only way to grasp the conditions and forces of social transformation in times that were bereft of revolutionary movements. "In the absence of change on a collective scale, questions of the causes, means, and limits of individual non-reproduction are crucial." The movement from class to class makes it possible to grasp the larger transformations that make revolutions possible.

The Affective Constitution of Knowledge: Or, What Bias Feels Like

We are told again and again that institutions like medicine, journalism, and the university have lost the trust of Americans, and must work to regain that trust. Of course the pundits and politicians that tells us this are more often than not the very ones who have undermined this trust. This is definitely the case with RFK, and, more importantly, it allows me to use one of my favorite memes from one of my favorite shows. However, a few weeks ago the New York Times ran a column by Lydia Polgreen, that offers a different account of at least one institution, journalism. 

Help Yourself: Work and Recognition in Send Help

 

As has often been mentioned, on this blog and elsewhere, Hegel's famous section on Lordship and Bondage begins with the assertion that "Self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness." This has often been interpreted to mean that self-consciousness needs to find itself in being recognized by another. We know ourselves by being recognized by others. Despite this assertion, thus familiar with the story, and it is a story, of the master and slave, know that the passage suggests that there is another way to know ourselves, we come to know ourselves through our work.