MAGA Kids and Progressive Scapegoating's Religious Undercurrent

This is a little bit of a ramble, but I figured that I'd throw this out there.

It’s been a few days since the now-infamous confrontation between a group of MAGA hat-bedecked Catholic school boys and a Native American elder in Washington, D.C. Since that day, news media, pundits, celebrities, and average folks alike had jumped upon a frenzied bandwagon suggesting that the kids were engaging in hateful and intolerant behaviour towards an Indigenous man, only to have the facts set more-or-less straight and forcing them to either abandon ship or double-down – depending on how committed to facts one is.

Well, Niigaan Sinclair certainly isn’t burdened by the desire to find and assess the facts, and has come out with a pithy little piece in the Globe and Mail dumping on the kids, and by overt expression, on North American society.

Just to give a quick rundown: a group students from an all-boys Catholic high school in Kentucky went to the US capital for a Pro-Life march. There they were met with protest by a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they're descendants of ancient Israelites. The Black Israelites taunted the students, calling them 'child molesters', stating that Trump is a 'fa**ot', and that the black students should depart from the group because 'ni**a, they're gonna steal your organs'. 

In an attempt to drown out the Black Israelites' taunts, or rather to taunt right back, the students began to engage in their high school cheers. During this, Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, was observing the commotion and decided to intervene in an attempt to 'diffuse the situation'. 

He walked up to the students whilst drumming and singing the American Indian Movement (AIM) song. The cadence of his drumming matched the cadence of the students' chants and they, apparently, thought that he was drumming to their chants. In accordance, they continued to chant in the cadence of his drumming. 

As Phillips walked into the crowd of students, they parted, and he continued to walk until he met Nick Sandmann, a student who stood in Phillips' way. Sandmann said he did so in order to demonstrate that he didn't want any trouble - figuring that if he stood still, he wouldn't be doing anything wrong. Sadly for Sandmann, he was wearing a MAGA hat, and as soon as the video hit social media, the shit hit the fan.

That's the scenario. That's what happened. 

Now, reading through Sinclair's terse and punchy piece, one gets the impression that he didn't engage in any due diligence in attempting to understand the event, instead relying on Nathan Phillips' narrative as fact. It reads as though Sinclair listened to a CNN segment wherein Phillips shared his take on the occurrence, and that was enough for Sinclair to consider this an open-and-shut case. Racist white boys versus noble Indigenous man. Bang the gavel: the kids are done. However, there is roughly two hours of audio-video footage detailing the somewhat chaotic event, and it is precisely this evidence that debunks Sinclair's claims.

Instead of investigating the issue, as a good scholar would, Sinclair engaged in the same lazy practice as his cohorts in the media: look at some footage that has been given to you, see if it suits you ideological positions, listen, believe, and pontificate. Oh, and scapegoated the kids. 

Sinclair quotes Phillips' description of the encounter with the students as 'hate unbridled... a storm', and 'dangerous'. And yet Phillips lives to tell the tale... Sinclair also strongly suggests that the kids were 'mocking', 'belittling', and 'demeaning', and that they displayed 'blatant racism, hatred and disrespect'.

Blatant racism? Hatred? Disrespect? Really? At worst I see irreverence. I see young boys being young boys who have found themselves in a bizarre and aggressive scenario that they don't fully grasp, and being immature in the process. I saw no malice - aside from the Black Israelites yelling profanities and insults at the kids, and there was an Indigenous man with Phillips who accosted the kids saying 'Go back to Europe! This isn't your land.' 

Now, folks will say that we're guilty of carrying our biases, and that these colour our perceptions, but if that is the case, then Sinclair et al. are seeing what they want to see, and what they see isn't a child, but an enemy.

Sinclair states that:

'The video of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Sandmann went viral. Some called it a 'face-off.'
I call it America.
North America'. 

Calling Nick Sandmann 'Mr. Sandmann' enables him to speak of Sandmann not as a child, but as an adult - with all of the expectations and lack of leniency for immaturity that comes with it. (Could this be because of editorial standards? Perhaps 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' are used to refer to subjects... If so, it's inconsistently applied by the Globe and Mail).

Nonetheless, Sinclair is able to say such things because he's not seeing the MAGA kids as children. He is seeing them as representatives of an ideology he hates. Or perhaps he sees them as repositories of ideas and ideologies he hates. He's seeing this event between individuals as a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic battle that's occurring at large.

That's Sinclair's take, but where is the undercurrent of religiosity in Progressivism?

Aside from the overt scapegoating, there is another element that I think is in play, here.

Now, I do take Niigaan Sinclair's piece to be in lockstep with many Left-wing and Progressive folks on this issue. Having read several articles, I do think that they align. Sinclair has a particularly interesting vantage point since he is an Indigenous man in Canada, but that aside, there is a remarkable amount of similarity between him and his non-Indigenous fellow travelers.

I've tried to put my finger on why this event exploded, and why the reaction was so visceral. My view, for what it is worth, is that one can see here, possibly, is a confrontation between two worlds: the ancient and resilient Indigenous world coming face-to-face with the new Era of Trump/Whiteness. To the folks who are so upset, the Indigenous people have suffered for hundreds of years at the hands of Europeans and their descendants in North America, and this is true, also these MAGA hat-wearing kids are viewed as the latest instantiation of a new generation of oppressors. They are a continuation of that hateful past they hope to get rid of. 

I interpret the event thusly: 

Nathan Phillips is the representative of his people, and the moral and spiritual weight of his traditions - the drumming and singing giving a sense of spiritual formalism to the whole thing. In his approach to the boys, drumming and singing in an attempt to diffuse the situation between the students and Black Israelites, he was bringing that weight, that profundity, to the boys. He was hoping to approach them, and pass through them with stoic reverence and song, and leave a lasting impression that would calm the situation. However, he was met by Sandmann who did not move. They met and stood, locking eyes with one another, unwilling to budge. Sandmann's unwillingness to move, and his smirk/grin (though from nervousness, perhaps, or maybe due to the ridiculousness of the whole scenario) was a sign of an abject repudiation of the moral and spiritual weight of Phillips' actions.

Now, I don't think this is what happened in the minds of the people involved. I think Sandmann was confused and nervous, but well-meaning. In fact, footage shows that he was, indeed, trying to diffuse the tension that was beginning to arise. I think Phillips was also trying to diffuse the tension between the students and the Black Israelites. What has happened is that this event occurred and people who were not there are foisting their political, racial, and social baggage onto it thereby making Phillips a hero and the kids the scapegoats.

All of this reminds me of something Richard Dawkins said in his book, The God Delusion.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

In, this our Current Year, children are not just children. They are Christians, Muslims, Trump supporters, racists, xenophobes, drag queens, et cetera. Children are being viewed as representatives of things that they don't understand, and certainly as responsible for things they had no part in making.

The worst people in this whole scenario have been the adults: the Black Israelites who have somehow gotten off scot free despite them being the 'blatant racists': calling the black kids in the groups (yes, they were present) n***gas, as well as calling Phillips an 'Uncle Tomahawk';  Nathan Phillips who has insinuated malice to the kids in subsequent interviews; the chaperones of the students for letting things get out of control; the 'Blue Checkmarks' on Twitter calling for these kids and their families to be harassed, doxxed or even attacked; and commentators such as Sinclair who are riding the crest of the wave in an opportunistic fashion trying to soak in the rays of attention.

We'd like to think that these kids, as well as others, would behave better, and be respectful instead of irreverent, calm instead of rambunctious, courteous instead of uncivil. But they're kids, and we can expect that. However, alongside the kids, what we have are adults who are criticising these kids whilst being all the things they're criticising the kids for being: hateful, bigoted, disrespectful, and, I think, racist. They've taken on the worst characteristics of their perceived enemies, and have even stooped to the level of taking children to be their enemies.

The APA's Flaccid Masculinity

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge... If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared... then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

The onslaught continues.

Like waves crashing on the edge of the sea.

Or perhaps more like the perpetual buzzing of insects.

Masculinity has been in the sights of radical feminist culture critics since the 1970's, and now their nonsense has seeped into the wider culture; being peddled as dogma by mainstream media outlets, scientific and technological organisations, as well as massive corporations. So much for the 'radical critique' - their heuristic has been fully adopted by the zeitgeist.

Having gorged themselves on the mistaken notion that masculinity is 'hegemonic' and socially constructed within their ivory tower, these self-anointed ushers of a new Era are regurgitating it into the public, and we're witnessing the fruits of their labour.

According to a recently published American Psychological Association (APA) document on the 'Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Men and Boys', masculinity is an ideology that forms and perpetuates a '...particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.'

The idea is that such masculinity then fosters attitudes that are aimed at the domination of women by men, and of men by superior men. It is inculcated in boys throughout their lives by societal pressures and interpersonal relationships, and unjustifiably constrains male behaviour into the narrow band of aforementioned tropes. This, in turn, leads to myriad mental, biological, and psychological health disparities.

There numerous issues, here, and below I will go through a few. Here are some following reasons for rejecting the APA's Guidelines. 

Circularity

The APA tumbled over the first hurdle when it adopted the concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' (HM) which begins by accepting as proven that which has yet to be investigated. This can be shown by using one of the APA's own examples: men delaying seeking medical care.

For instances wherein men delay seeking medical care, the Hegemon thinkers state that such delays are performed because visiting a doctor would (a) indicate weakness on the one hand, (b) constitute seeking help on the other, and these are no-no's when it comes to any attempt to embody the hegemonic male ideal.

From the APA, '[t]raditional masculinity ideology can be viewed as the dominant (referred to as "hegemonic") form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative.' Hegemonic Masculinity (HM) is defined, in part, as the eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and going to the doctor is an example of the appearance of weakness. So a hegemonically masculine man would be expected to delay going to the doctor, if at all. But, where does this eschewal of the appearance of weakness come from? It comes from men's preoccupations with hegemonic masculinity.

So, HM is offered as the explanation as to why men delay in seeking help, but also  it is suggested that such behaviour provides the evidence that men are attempting to align with the expectations of HM. Such an alignment becomes both the claimed explanation for the delay in consulting a doctor and the proposed outcome of the delay. 

Duplicity 

Throughout the APA's document, the authors make use of 'masculinities' insisting that 'the various conceptions of masculine gender roles associated with an intersection of multiple identities (e.g., rural, working-class, adult, White masculinities may take a different form than urban, teenage, Mexican American masculinities'. However this multiplicity of masculine identities seems to quickly coagulate into one hegemonic form since even though what 'counts' as masculine ebbs and flows over history and across cultures, there is a 'privileged' form that persists and predominates. The privileged form is associated with 'success, power and competition... restrictive emotionality... and restrictive affectionate behavior between men.'  Effectively, despite the gestures at the multiplicity of masculinity in particular, but gender more generally, what emerges from the discussion is a rather fixed and stable set of characteristics that are superficially augmented by socio-cultural inflections.

Hegemonic masculinity, it seems, is a way for the authors to speak substantively about masculinity, whilst preserving their fashionable reluctance (read: cowardice) to speak of gender identities as fixed or tied to sex. Unfortunately for the authors the use of HM does not allow them to perform the latter as the behaviours and characteristics they index with the term are very similar to the simplistic stereotypes that they'd caution us from using.

What we're left with an oscillation between two conflicting positions: (i) that masculinity is entirely contingent, and (ii) that there is one identifiable and dominant masculine identity. 

Arbitrariness & Bad Faith 

The use of the word 'constellation' is somewhat humourous since a constellation is 'a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or pattern...' These arbitrary symbols are made up of stars that are nowhere near one another, and have no effect on anything on earth. So, how much of the APA's definition is imaginary, arbitrary, or real?

This constellation could have been otherwise. It certainly could have been less bloated by moralism. We could have: Duty, Honour, Courage, Strength, Competence, and Industriousness instead of Anti-femininity, Achievement, Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness, Adventure, Risk, and Violence. This is a difference that makes a difference since the former stresses the productive, whereas the latter stresses the prohibitive. Even though 'achievement', 'adventure', and 'risk' are not, in-and-of themselves bad according to most folks, and 'violence' and 'emotional control' are also appropriate in cases, these characteristics are seen as being employed at the expense of something else - at the expense of one's physical and/or emotional health.

The APA also describes masculinity as a 'set of descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive of cognitions about boys and men [sic]', but it never tells us what elements are descriptive, prescriptive, and/or proscriptive. Is 'Violence' descriptive or prescriptive? Likewise with the 'Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness'. This sloppiness enables the APA to move goal-posts and be rather sloppy in its categorisations of masculine traits and their subsequent 'treatment'.

There is a tendency for hegemonic masculinity to be associated solely with negative characteristics that depict men as unemotional, self-reliant, aggressive, and dispassionate which are seen as causes of criminal behavior. Given this tendency, all the objectionable things done by men such as: assault, rape, environmental degradation, cut-throat business behaviour, hell, let's throw in dick pics, cat-calling, mansplaining, manspreading, using Axe body spray, et cetera - can be lumped into the bag of  'hegemonic masculinity'. And the more extreme this image becomes, the less accurately it portrays the majority of men.

One can look at men with good will or bad will. Given the emphasis on the negative aspects of masculinity as a system of dominance rather than as a code of conduct focused on developing and improving that which is regarded as appropriate and valuable for men to be, the APA and their ilk appear to be engaging in the latter. If one chooses to look at men with bad will, then one chooses to hate men. 

Ambiguity 

If hegemonic masculinity (HM) is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and it is also 'the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative', then how are we to assess forms of masculinity that are culturally dominant, and yet lack some characteristic or other of HM?

If:

1) HM is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and;

2) HM is the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative, then;

3) HM influences members of its culture to take anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence as normative.

Given this, how is one to identify a hegemonically masculine man? Is it the well-dressed aristocratic lawmaker or is the rough-around-the-edges dock worker who bare-knuckle boxes to make ends meet? Say a man is his family's breadwinner, his wife stays at home to look after the kids, he is a rock-climber for a hobby, and his career is that of a pediatrician: how masculine is he according to HM?

Is a man who is complicit in HM more or less masculine than one who resists HM?

I think these are bothersome questions for the HM idea because its theorists have taken effects and made them causes - but since their argument is circular anyway, they can just play around with it until it makes them feel better. 

Impotence 

Lastly, hegemonic masculinity is impotent in its attempts to explain the behaviours of individual men.

Related to the previous concern, though HM is what men are socialised into, '... [for] some men, this dominant ideology of masculinity has inherent conflicts', and that 'dominant masculinity is generally unattainable for most men'. This focus on the unachievable leads to the neglect of what men actually are doing, and how they 'navigate' and 'negotiate' the world around them.

The disconnect between the theory and practice illustrates the abstract nature of the intellectual pursuit. Theorists are imposing their constructions of masculinity on their male subjects, rather than attempting to understand them. At best, HM is a new theoretical framework for feminist-minded theorists to talk about men.

It is stated by '[the] endorsement of sexist male roles is related to men’s fear of intimacy and discomfort with physical affection with other men'. Intimacy is seen as feminine, and HM is anti-feminine. But is this really the case?

Male bonding surely exists but it takes on forms different from female bonding. Men bond through sports, the gym, barbershops, being in bands, playing video games, as well as hunting and fishing trips, to name a few. These are cases wherein masculinity finds its expression of intimacy, and yet HM theorists fail to recognise this. In fact, some HM theorists argue that such expressions of intimacy are 'simulated' since these practices are not really about intimacy but rather about 'control', 'dominance' and 'achievement'. After all, intimacy is feminine, and masculinity is anti-feminine. The very essentialism they purport to reject is operating in full force.

This is but another attempt by the elite to impose their manners on the masses. It's about re-educating, reshaping, and reforming conduct that they, at worst, disdain or, at best, don't understand.

Don't believe me? Well the APA argues that, 'awareness of privilege and the harmful impacts of beliefs and behaviors that maintain patriarchal power have been shown to reduce sexist attitudes in men... and have been linked to participation in social justice activities.'

                   Convenient.

Standpoint Epistemology's Cul-de-sac

Standpoint Epistemology (SE) is an increasingly popular feminist epistemological framework that argues that one's position in a social system, and it's resultant hierarchy, determines one's knowledge of the world. Additionally,  this claim is accompanied by the notion of 'strong objectivity' with states that marginalised people possess a standpoint that is more objective than those who possess the dominant standpoint because the marginalised can observe the dominant standpoint without possessing it themselves. They are said to have 'double-vision' that enables them to both see the world from their perspective whilst also seeing truths that the dominant standpoint holders are unable or unwilling to see. For example, bell hooks, an African-American feminist thinker writes: 

Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out...we understood both. 

This provides a challenge to the traditional account of knowledge (TAK) that attempts to provide 

abstract and universal descriptions of knowledge that are applicable to all.

TAK states that in order for one to have knowledge of a particular proposition three conditions must be satisfied: the proposition must be true, one must believe the proposition, and one must have justification for believing the proposition. In short, knowledge is justified true belief, and who you are, what era you are in, or where you are situated in the social hierarchy are all irrelevant to truth-value of one's knowledge claims.

SE rejects the claim that social and historical factors are irrelevant to questions of knowledge, and emphasise the empiricist commitments to experience and observation in the pursuit of knowledge. In addition, following Quine and his criticisms of analytic/synthetic distinction, they also stress that observation is theory-laden and that those theories themselves are artifacts of our making.

According to SE, there is no neutral vantage point from which one can 'get at' the world in an unbaised way. Given that bias is inherent to epistemology, the marginalised are said to be epistemically privileged since they are equipped with the aforementioned 'double-vision', and this privilege is said to accrue to those who exist at the margins of society - becoming something akin to 'expert testimony'. For instance, a middle-class Black man would see the world from a different standpoint than a middle-class White man, and a middle-class Black woman would see the world differently, still. Given that the Black woman is Black and a woman, and that black people and women are marginalised, the Black woman would be equipped with a more objective standpoint than her counterparts.

There are numerous criticisms of SE. First, it is claimed that it results in relativism of the worst sort since the political commitment to feminism, or femininity itself, is incompatible with scientific objectivity because the scientific enterprise is defined as masculine, rational, and unemotional. Relatedly, though SE attempts to thwart claims of essentialism, it, in fact, traffics in essentialism as it automatically groups women together under the rubric of 'strong objectivity' just because they are women. Finally, that the notions of non-neutral standpoints and epistemic privilege are in tension with one another. If there is no neutral standpoint, then one is left with a mish-mash of 'multiple and incompatible knowledge positions'.

There is another issue: ontological subjectivity.

SE makes the mistake of asserting that particular epistemological values accrue to particular ontological subjectivities. However, ontological subjectivity does not necessarily entail any particular epistemological value. This demarcation is illustrated in the following quote from John Searle in 'The Construction of Social Reality':

"I now have a pain in my lower back." That statement is completely objective in the sense that it is made true by the existence of an actual fact and is not dependent on any stance, attitudes, or opinions of observers. However, the phenomenon itself, the actual pain itself, has a subjective mode of existence, and it is in that sense which I am saying that consciousness is subjective.

In order for pain to exist, it must be someone's pain. This is because pain is a state of consciousness, and consciousness, by virtue of being ontologically subjective, is always a consciousness of something to someone.

The problem with SE's insistence on experience is that it has been known for centuries how experience, and our interpretations of it, can lead us astray and can be a rather unreliable vehicle in the search for truth. Just as one’s experiences with pain do not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the physiological, let alone the political or cultural aspects of the pain, one’s experiences of acting with a sort of 'double-vision' within an oppressive society does not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the political or cultural arrangements of that society. What it can provide is ontologically subjective knowledge with political import: identifying and making explicit the essence of a group's shared experience can raise consciousness, and validate one's socio-political project, however, this would rely on some form of essentialism (strategic or otherwise), and that bullet may just have to be bitten for the SE theorist or activist. 

At best, SE points out that myriad points of view ought to be considered in social and political analysis, but it is wrong when it mistakes such points of view as 'expert testimony' and holds that they're anything more than data points that must be further evaluated.

Statues, Legacy, and Sanitising the Public Square

In the summer of 2018, city councilors in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada voted 7-1 to remove a statue of John A. MacDonald -  Canada's first Prime Minister - from its city hall entrance. This has stirred up a certain amount controversy with progressives applauding the move towards full acknowledgment of plight and violence suffered by Indigenous peoples, and conservatives decrying 'political correctness run amok' and iconoclasm.

There is a growing list of controversial figures that ought to be removed from the public square, but not many arguments backed by principled stances. 

Below I'll outline two opposing positions. The position that argues for tearing down statues I'll deem the 'Removalist' (I'm sure there is a catchier name), and the contraposition, 'Preservationist'.

In both positions, statues are visible and tangible realities that are used to embody/represent some important figure/event/period or other. They serve as visible reminders of who/what is considered important by the community/society/country. 

There is a quality to the statue as it is [[[matter+shape]=statue]=memorial].

This is gives statues an ‘incarnational value’. Incarnation is a religious term - Christ was God incarnate, for instance - and though statues do not necessarily represent deities, they appear to represent the spirit of an age, and it’s the attitudes towards that representation that divides Removalists and Preservationists. 

The Case for Taking Down Statues

There are three common criticisms that are mobilised by the Removalist:

a) such statues lionise immoral and despicable behaviour by the dominant culture's ancestors,

b) such statues can sanitise past injustices committed against minority cultures, and;

c) such statues are painful reminders of past violence and injustice

These positions are utilised in the pursuit of some form of reparations for some past injustice or other, and by removing statues, one can express: 

a) a condemnation of the past injustice,

b) a repudiation of the past's underlying harmful rationale, and;

c) a commitment to preventing continuing harms in connection to the legacy represented by the statue

And we ought to be in the game of such reparations because the symbolic and material gains would significantly aid in the leveling of the playing field for the hitherto disadvantaged and marginalised peoples, as well as righting the wrongs of the past.

The Case Against Taking Down Statues

For the Preservationist, statues do represent people who may or may not have committed wrong acts or believed and expounded upon wrong beliefs, but the people of today interpret the statue via their own lights and the morals of the age.

The statues therefore provide:

a) a recognition of a community's/nation's shared history,

b) a recognition  of that lineage and tradition, and;
c) a possible challenge to a society's conception of (a) and (b)

One should be wary about removing controversial statues because:

a) The removal acts as a wiping out of history and the lessons that can be learnt from it,

b) It sets a dangerous precedent for removal, and;

c) It sanitises the public square.

On the Preservationist account, statues of historical figures act not only as an object of commemoration, and that commemoration is important, but they also act as a mechanism against the sanitising the public square.

Assessment

In all of the above cases, statues 'do' something. They are not merely objects; they are symbols, and they represent or express certain dominant ideas that are intended to be passed on from generation to generation. As such, individuals in society will often internalise the dominant discourse in the construction their own identity, and this process brings into existence an individual's 'subjectivity': how one experiences one's self in the larger scheme of society and its rules, stories, history, and destiny. This can give one a sense of superiority as one sees one's self as connected to the dominant culture and its ideas, or one can feel alienated from it.

It is crucial to note that a fundamental element in this issue is mental intermediation:  the process of psychological assessment that occurs in an audience member to an expression - be it speech or art works, which act as 'symbolic speech' - and that which leads to the mental element(s) of understanding, belief, attitude or intention which, in turn, can lead to further action.

This process can produce a harm if the mental element produced through it also produces harmful conduct. However, statues are seen as harmful in and of themselves, and so we see that as harms become less emotive, the scrutiny becomes more intense, and now harm can be produced through offense alone.

What the Removalist - as well as any censor - wants to do is erase the distinction between mental intermediation and the mental element, and draw a straight line from the 'message' of an expression to some harmful act or other. Which is why such people wish to emphasise the negative or harmful aspects of the object in question.

On this account, statues of immoral people impress upon the audience their immorality, and this can take the form of reviving the negative attitudes of the past, as well as causing trauma in others.

The former is unlikely since the operation of such a dynamic is only possible if people are convinced of the views expressed. How statues convince present-day people to adopt and exert the discriminatory views of the past goes unexplained, though it is stated that statues can function as 'reminders' of genocide, violence, and oppression. 

Such 'reminders', however, are not enough to promote racist or degrading attitudes, and to suggest that they can, even when the statues do not explicitly do so, is to say that such statues are being experienced in racist or degrading ways, and this suggestion comes from a view of how people are: racist. Such attitudes are hinted at in the contemporary moniker: 'Settler Canadian' or 'colonial' -  which attempts to reach back to the past and imbue today's European Canadians with the stain of generations long past. 

The latter seems more likely, and one should be aware of the trauma that gets passed from generation to generation (though this runs the risk of pathologising people), however, it is also said by the same people that 'we' need to learn the 'uncomfortable truths' about our history, and to learn 'what it really is'. Indeed, so why, then, should the statues come down? If 'we' are to learn of our complicated history, then having memorials of it better serves that purpose than not.

Related to this are two final issues: first if the public sphere becomes anti-sceptic, if it becomes parched, and barren of challenge, controversy, and confrontation, then one - let alone society - could lose touch with history in a generation or two.

Secondly, efforts to cleanse the public square of controversial or racist memorials can become unacceptably damaging to social cohesion and could ultimately frustrate the Removalist goals. Why? Because widespread removalism could draw attention to hitherto 'forgotten' monuments, confirm the suspicions of white separatists/nationalists that their history is being erased, and lend credence to the belief that national identity is inextricably based on white Europeans and their conquests. None of these are in the Removalist agenda, and if these are the unintended consequences of their actions, then they should really re-think their approach.

In closing, every people has its heroes, and these heroes are memorialised by any people who has developed material culture. Instead of removing controversial cultural heroes of the dominant culture, nations with racist histories could make efforts to memorialise cultural heroes of the historically oppressed groups - some of whom may be looked upon with spite much similar to that John A. MacDonald. After all, very few heroes are heroes to all.

A Quickie on Antipsychiatry

Bonnie Burstow is a professor at the University of Toronto's pit of vipers called 'Ontario Institute of Studies in Education' (OISE). She is prolific author, researcher, 'professional feminist psychotherapist', and is considered to be one of the world's leaning anti-psychiatry theorists - I suppose this bodes poorly for the plucky little discipline.  

This may seem like a odd thing to worry about. After all, anti-psychiatry isn't taken too seriously outside of Scientology, but... The University of Toronto has offered the first ever scholarship in Anti-psychiatry Studies up to $50,000, annually since 2016. This is funding of activism, and the fundamental assumptions of the activism are incoherent and flawed in numerous ways.

Burstow and her ilk partake in the dubious, though well-meaning enterprise of anti-psychiatric activism which took off in the 1960's with the work of Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz, among others. 

Following in the footsteps of such thinkers, Burstow attempts to problematise the medical concept of 'mental illness' by stating that 'illness' is a term denoting anomalous physicality, while mental denotes processes of the mind which are not physical. So, the mental, which is not physical, is being used as though it were physical, and this is incorrect; a ‘bizarre use of language’ - a metaphor. 

The criticism of linguistic sloppiness is fine and all, but I think the distinction being drawn between the mental and physical is too simplistic and, as such, results in a host of further issues.

While arguing that 'mental illness' is a mistaken term because the mental is non-physical and illnesses only affect the physical, Burstow will say that we ought to think of the mind as a verb. It is a verb that has been reified into an object, an object that is then studied by experts who impose their own morality on the individual possessing the mind under investigation. To Burstow, the mind is an activity of the brain. That's a fair position to hold, but if it is an activity of the brain, then why can there not be illnesses of the mind? I see no reason why not.

There is a spectrum of illnesses, diseases and disorders that there are recognised to have biological and psychological components – influenza and syphilis are but two examples. In fact, there is a lot of work going on regarding how to identify and address illness with some prominent researchers stating that mental disorders need to be addressed as disorders of distributed brain systems with symptoms forged by developmental and social experiences. It is also recognised that environment and social experiences play a large role in the development of a human being and these effect gene expression. So, there is a lot of intermixing of the brain and the mind, as it were. I think that a lot of the nuance is being left out here, and I think that has to do with a conception of strong dualism between the mind and body, a position that isn’t all that tenable now given the onslaught of scientific and philosophical arguments and evidence.

An other, and truly bizarre argument from Burstow and other is what I call 'the Argument from the Corpse'. In this argument, Burstow states that illnesses of the body have symptoms and effects that linger in the sufferer's body after death - when a person dies of cancer, the cancerous cells are still present, for instance. Since she knows this, she asks where does schizophrenia go when a schizophrenic dies? This is supposed to be some kind of refutation of the reality of mental illness since mental illness, if they were illnesses as she conceives of them, would remain in the body.

This is baffling because one can ask, 'OK, where does the mind go after death?' Is the absence of mentality after death a refutation of the existence of the mind? Even if she were to bite the bullet and go full epiphenomenalist - holding the position that the mind is non-physical and it exists, but doesn't do anything; like the heat coming off of a computer - then she’d still be in hot water because the barrier between the physical and mental would be obliterated, and thus mental illnesses would just be illnesses of the brain. Sure, but then she is just arguing semantics and it doesn't amount to a substantive criticism of psychiatry.

This is an affront to science, philosophy and the medical research into mental disorders. Science and philosophy are supposed to represent us at our epistemic best, and the activism of folks like Burstow are hardly up to the task of mounting a full-throated and detailed attack on the fundamentals and principles of the psychiatric disciplines. At best these arguments are committing the genetic fallacy and at worst are committing category errors. In either case, the scholarship is a disgrace and a sign of the anti-science Left's seeping into the academy ever the more so. 

Foucault and the Problem of Power

The problem of power. This sentence really has two meanings. The first, and perhaps more plain meaning is that power and systems of control and domination are problematic in that they can unfairly constrain action. The second: it is just difficult to adequately talk about power. What is it? How does it work? There has been a hot of hot air spoken about 'power', and it takes on almost an occult-like meaning (and Foucault is partly to blame for this). I do think, however, that one can make sense of power, specifically Foucault's use of the term, and speak more sensibly about it. However, in order to address the first problem of power, I must attend to the second, and I will do so now.

What exactly is 'power'? It is absolutely fundamental to Foucault's project, but its nature is not clearly stated. He states that 'power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere... power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society' (Foucault, 1990, p. 93), so in this sense is not merely agentic or structural. However, Foucault also states, 'power exists only when put into action' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 219). So, how are we to make sense of these seemingly irreconcilable statements? First, it would be erroneous to look at these statements ahistorically. There was a trajectory to Foucault's project and he changed his mind on certain points (for instance, the large breaks or discontinuities between different epistemes, or paradigms, was gradually replaced by a subtler continuity between epochs of thought). So, this apparent inconsistency between these two statements may indeed be only an illustration of Foucault changing his mind, however, I think there is more to it than that. I think that these two statements extend one another - they point to two different ways in which power is exercised and operates. This I will illustrate and explain through an exegesis and interpretation of Foucault's work on power.

Given these assertions that i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations', we have what appears to the beginnings of a formulation of an idea of 'power'. These three statements, I think, can be described as referring to three different ways in which power, as Foucault understood it, can be exercised. Respectively, (i) refers to society and its norms, (ii) refers to intentional action, and (iii) refers to discursive systems.

It is suggested by these statements that power can only be exercised in a state of relation. It gets put into action, and only then can its effects be made present. But the fact that power can only be exercised in relations presupposes that the ability to exercise power is already present prior to the relation. At this point, I think that it will prove useful to introduce some of the thoughts of John Searle that he explores in his books, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (2010), and Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power (2007). In doing so, I aim to augment this investigation of Foucault, since I see Searle as a contributor to this topic.

In these two books, Searle argues that the existence of power has to be separated from what is it usually confused with: its exercise. Power is an ability, a disposition or a force that is able to be exerted. However, that ability exists prior to its exercise, and it can exist without ever having been exercised (Searle, 2010, p. 145). 

What exactly is this ability? It can be any ability inherent to the entity that possesses it. For instance, one's car has the ability to be driven at top speed even if one never does so, and the Prime Minister has certain abilities that he may never exercise, ie dissolving parliament. So, the existence of power is to be separated from its exercise, and the existence of the ability is prior to its exercise

1) Existence of Power: the ability A that X has which enables X to do some particular action Y.

Though this general notion of power as 'ability to do something' can apply to a vast array of entities, the certain kind of power that is of concern here is social or political power - the power that human beings have over other human beings. This sort of power differs from that of the car engine in that human who exercise such power do so in order create possibilities and opportunities in order realise ulterior purposes. This sort of power is a specific form of social reality which forms much of our institutional reality. In order to see how this works, specifically regarding Foucauldian notions of power, a key term that must be explored: 'discourse'.

Discourse is a murky term in Foucault. In fact it is not until the near end of his Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) that he gives discourse something of a definition, namely '[it is] an entity of sequences of signs in that they are enouncements (statements)' and that '...[it can be described as] a certain way of speaking...'(Foucault, 2002A, p. 121, 213). This 'way of speaking' constitutes relations between signs and objects, subjects and other statements in a more or less formal way through the 'accepted concepts, legitimised subjects, taken-for-granted objects, and preferred strategies, which yield justified truth claims' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. xxiv).

At its core, this account states that institutional facts are products of speech acts that assign status functions to certain things (objects, or states of affairs). According to Foucault, the relationship between discourse and institutional reality is at times circular and constitutive. For instance, say a couple gets married in a church. At the end of the ceremony, the priest declares 'I now pronounce you man and wife'. This speech act uttered by the priest performs the function of marrying the couple, but not by itself. The speech act itself has its meanings but meaning alone is not enough to get people married. I, for instance, cannot walk down the street saying 'I now pronounce you husband and wife' to passersby and have them become thus married. Additionally, intentionality is not enough. I could sincerely want to have people get married every time I say, 'I now pronounce you husband and wife', but that will not work. This certain declarative speech act only has the power to function marry people, and thus create a social fact, if the right person says it, and for a person to be 'the right' person, they also must be recognised to be so. So, in the case of the priest, he can create the institutional fact of marriage because he was declared a priest when he was inaugurated by a bishop, and thus given the authority to perform such an exercise. The people participating in the marriage recognise the authority of the priest to perform such an act and assent to the proceedings.

This example illustrates the constitutive and circular nature of the relationship between discourse and institutions as certain statements are only 'constituted as serious by the current rules of a specific truth game in which they have a role' (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1983, p. 54). So, the discursive practices (such as speech acts, and ceremonies) can constitute institutional facts (like marriage), however, the continuing practice of the institution of marriage reinforces the already existing discursive practices (Foucault, 2002A, p. 120-124). This is can be formulated in the Searlean terms: X counts as Y in context C.

In the case of marriage, within the context C (a religious ceremony), the phenomenon X (the couple) has the symbolic status Y (being married). So, institutional and social facts are created via speech acts and these speech acts in embedded in certain discourses (ie: marriage, eligibility, religiosity, etc). But how does this relate to the exercise of power?

Power via discourse is not necessarily the enforcement of prohibitions but is also the expression of language and practices that obey certain rules which have been created by particular cultural conditions, rules and expectations that have been laid out by those very institutions. This has been demonstrated in the marriage example.

According to Foucault, discourses are formulated by our use of language, and we often fail to realise the ways in which our own language community constitutes what we talk about. Our language practices are arbitrary and yet have become second nature to us, and as such, without knowing it, we group similar objects, separate distinguishable ones, and thus constitute categories and its members (ie, race, gender, worker, et cetera).

An object is constituted by what Foucault calls, a 'unity of discourse'. The unity of discourse on a particular object 'would be the interplay of rules that define the transformation of these objects, their non-identity through time, the break produced in them, the internal discontinuity that suspends their permanence' (Foucault, 2002A, p. 36). To make sense out of this idea, let's take 'madness'. 

For instance, we constitute the object of 'madness' by a set of rules that allows us to say that one is 'mad' (or not) together with the interplay of rules that defines the madness as dissolved (cures, treatment, rehabilitation). The key point that Foucault is making here is that the unity of discourses on madness, for instance, would not be based upon the existence of the object 'madness' itself; it is not something that was waiting 'out there' in the world for us to discover it, but rather it would be the resultant categorisation of the rules and practices that make possible the appearance of objects during a given period of time and the practices that obey and constitute such rules. To elaborate further, Foucault thinks that discourses play the role of 'legitimating' power by emphasising the construction of current 'truths' and they are maintained by what power relations they carry with them. The objects that have been constituted by the unity of discourse embody the ideas of the discourse, and the reflection of those ideas within the object perpetuate the discourse.

[For instance, a] factory is not an inert pile of bricks, wood, and metal. It incorporates or actualizes schemas....The factory gate, the punching-in station, the design of the assembly line: all of these features of the factory teach and validate the rules of the capitalist labor contract...In short, if resources are instantiations or embodiments of schemas, they therefore inculcate and justify the schemas as well...Sets of schemas and resources may properly be said to constitute structures only when they mutually imply and sustain each other over time (Sewell, 1992 in Haslanger, 2011, p. 194).

The surprising conclusion that Foucault arrived at was that individuals, like objects, are so constituted. Individuals, like objects, are constituted by discourses because individuals in language communities are categorised and shaped, but unlike objects, behave, according to the background assumptions generated by the discourses.

The idea behind Foucault's account is that for someone to be 'mad', for instance, that person must be in a community wherein people have a concept of 'madness' and also regard that person as falling within the bounds of that concept. As stated above, people are divided by the concepts of their language community, but they are not divided by the concept, per se. There must be individuals who use the concept to divide (Root, 2002, p. S632, fn.5).

This can be formulated as such:

(2) Discursive Division: Category K divides people iff they divide themselves by K. Furthermore, madness M is a K iff it is used to divide people at a site S. A person is M at site S iff M is used by people to divide people at site S.

Categories that are used to divide people can imbue those people with certain abilities that can be enacted in certain ways. This is not meant to sound mysterious. If, at site S, in context C, a person Y satisfies the constraints needed to fulfill a category K, which is used to divide people.    

According to Foucault, this is an exercise of power and it is not something that can be owned, but rather something that is manifested in a certain way:

Power must be analyzed as something which circulates, or as something which only functions in the form of a chain . . . Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organization . . . Individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application (Foucault, 2003, p. 29). 

I’d augment this above quote slightly to read, ‘Individuals are the vehicles of power, not [only] its points of application’. This provides some added clarity by removing the occult-like suggestiveness and bridges the gap between individual exercises of power and the aggregate discursive practices.

With all the above facets in mind, it appears that a Foucauldian understanding of Power is a capacity or force, and it is exercised in various ways in order for one person or persons to make another person or persons do something. Power relations are the strategies that individuals use to control the conduct of others (Foucault, 1997, p. 298). Given this, the formulation is as follows:  

(3) Exercise of Power: A exercises power over B if A affects B in a significant manner (ie, making B do/want something that B would not have otherwise done/wanted) in context C. 

For example, a parent A exercises power over his or her child B when A orders/scolds/rewards B in order that the child behave in a way that is appreciated by the parent. It is important to note that A can exercise power over B even if A is not successful in achieving their goal. For instance, a parent can still exercise power over their child even if the child does not comply with the requests, orders, or scolding by the parent. This is because A can exercise power over B under one description, and then that exercise of power can have unintended consequences. Those unintended effects of the initial exercise of power can be acted upon, and perpetrated, and thus power is being exercised unintentionally with regards to that effect.

As stated at the outset, there are three rather mysterious Foucauldian statements: i) 'power comes from everywhere...', ii) 'power exists only when put into action', and iii) 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Given what has been stated thus far, I think that it is now the case that certain formulations of Foucauldian notions of power can be made to address each of these claims.

The most mysterious one is (i) 'power comes from everywhere...' How are we to make sense of this? It cannot literally mean that power, and specifically social/political power, the power that people have to make others do something comes from all things and all spaces. I think that this rather mysterious sentence is referring to something like 'social pressure'. This pressure to conform to the norms of society is exercised constantly so that one conforms to the norms. And even if one does not wish to transgress the norms of society, one will still feel the force of that power. The power that would be exercised against a transgressor lies dormant - this is because if power is the ability to get someone to do something whether or not they want to do it, and one has that ability whether or not they ever use it, then it is latent. This dormancy, or latency is, seemingly, a part of its very ability to affect others – it acts as a threat (Searle, 2010, p. 156-158). For instance, if I wished to walk down the street naked, I would immediately experience the social sanctions that would be thrust upon me as a result of my transgression against the 'wearing clothes in public' norm. However, perhaps if we were not pressured to conform to such a norm, as some people do (nudists, and 'naturalists'), then, perhaps, we would not do what we currently do, which is abide by the norm.

The second statement 'power exists only when put into action'. This sentence can be interpreted as referring to the exercise of power. Power is an ability, but the exercise of power is having that ability be manifested. This may seem at odds with the above notion of dormant social pressure, however, as stated previously, power can be exercised under one description, however, that exercise can have unintended effects. So, power exists when it is put into action, however, it can be put into action unconsciously.

Thirdly, 'power is... [a] cluster of relations'. Power is 'integrated into a disparate  field  of possibilities brought to bear upon permanent structures' (Foucault, 1983, p. 219). Power cannot be exercised in isolation. There have to be two actors that form a network for power to be exercised. These relations form a web into which we are locked. Our lives are infused in invisible systems of power. These systems are formed through combinations of discourses, institutions, common practices, shared backgrounds and understandings, et cetera. It is through this sort of web of institutions, meanings, practices et cetera that humans can exercise power over other humans.

References:


Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 1983.

Foucault, Michel. An Introduction. Vol. 1 of History Sexuality. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1990.

_____________. Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002A.

_____________. Society Must Be Defended. Edited by David Macey. Translated by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Lectures at the Collège de France 1975-1976. New York, NY: Picador, 2003.

Haslanger, Sally. "Ideology, Generics, and Common Ground." In Feminist Metaphysics: Explorations in the Ontology of Sex, Gender and the Self, edited by Charlotte Witt, 179-207. New York, NY: Springer, 2011.

Searle, John. Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007.

___________ Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.