This has been bothering me all day and I cannot remember the word. I thought Marx discussed it, but I can’t find it. I think it’s a fallacy.
It’s where you try to oppose a system, but because your efforts are restricted to the system itself you only end up reinforcing it. Like how a mold can be the exact opposite of what it creates, but both can recreate each other. Or like walking a path in the opposite direction in an attempt to destroy the ruts.
Edit: Something like: Legitimizing through opposition.
Edit 2: Not recuperation. It’s something passive which happens unintentionally.
Edit 3: I think it was a type of dialectic? Or perhaps it makes something dialectic.
It’s an aspect of contradictions. Contradictions are coexistent diametrical links between two forces. They cannot exist without each other, and thus they reinforce the existence of the opposing force. Contradictions are solved when the forces struggling itself creates new relations that make the old relations obsolete. In class struggle, the bourgeoisie and proletariat cannot exist without the other, but through the socialization of production the proletariat becomes more and more equipped to run society itself, collectivizing production and ending the existence of both the bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The process of struggle produces the new conditions which erase the basis of the contradiction, but often the struggle reinforces the existence of the other. Attack and defense form a contradiction, defense increases as attack increases, and so forth.
I think it was a Disco Elysium reference…
Capital has the ability to subsume all criticisms into itself… even those who would critic capital end up reinforcing it instead.Something pretty similar is in Society of the Spectacle as well, which I think DE was referencing.
ah, idk, haven’t played the game or read the book. 😅i thought it was a mark fisher reference
Joyce is one of the best characters in DE, but this statement kind of always sat wrong with me. She will be the first to admit that behind structures there’s people, and there is intentionality. But here she just seems to say as if capital just does that, as if there isn’t an inherent benefit for a specific group of people and as if those people didn’t actively seek to reinforce capital by subsuming criticism.
Capital controls the capitalist, never the other way around
Capitalism as a self-reinforcing feedback loop, or Capitalism as a Real God: https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capital-as-a-real-god-2/
While that is a really interesting quote, that’s not it. It’s a word, or a term.
Recuperation is the term for capital absorbing all critiques of itself and commodifying them if that is what you’re thinking. Otherwise I got nothin.
Yeah, it’s not recuperation, but it’s similar. Thanks though.
This doesn’t answer your question but it seems at least tangentially related to the concept you’re describing and is a good read nonetheless.
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/audre-lorde-the-master-s-tools-will-never-dismantle-the-master-s-house)
Exactly! This is exactly it, but I need the word for it
Reverse psychology on a personal level, co-option at a more general one?
Not exactly. Because it’s not something done to you, it’s something which occurs unconsciously through rebellion against a system because your rebellion is still based on the system.
An example might be claiming that all are of a certain race are intelligent to combat the stereotype that all members of that race are unintelligent. You end up reinforcing the thing in the opposite direction. Like overcorrecting.
Aufhebung, aber ich weiß nicht, wie man das auf Englisch sagt.
Well I guess not really because it specifically means to negating something while simultaneously preserving what’s valuable in it and raising it to a higher stage. It’s Hegelian. Is it Sublation in English?
Yes Sublation is the word in English, but I only know of one other real life person who has heard of that term let alone used it accurately in a sentence.
Sublate is a good word. More people should use it. Also sublimate is another good word (though not really relevant here).
All these english dialectic terms are so fucked up
That’s so close, but also the opposite. Maybe there isn’t a word for this yet, despite it being such a common thing in decolonial theory.
Recuperation?
no, I’m thinking of something more passive
I’m pretty sure Fisher talks about this in Capitalist Realism
I’ll check
I’m just going off my memory, but I believe he talks about capitalism’s ability to subsume and sell back to us everything, including anticapitalist ideas. Primarily this is done through media, where even movies that clearly show negative outcomes of capitalism (wall-e, eg) end up reinforcing capitalism by having society in the film be capitalist. These critiques of capitalism also take the wind out of the sails of some who would otherwise organize against capitalism, by having them feel like something is being done.
i want to say i’ve seen “reification” used like that, but looking up the definition again i’m not sure that’s what you’re looking for
I kept thinking that too. I think it sounded similar to reification.
Reincorporation?
That doesn’t seem to be it
hypostatize?
dang, I really thought it was gonna be “reify”
That’s what’s so frustrating, it is reify, but it’s specific enough that reify doesn’t properly explain it. If that makes sense.
A form of reification through opposition.
Reification is used more to describe the action of turning abstract labor power into real productivity/fixed capital/profit.
It’s the term used to describe what happens to labor in a capitalist wage system.
Legitimizing?
That’s the closest so far, but it was more specific. Legitimizing through opposition or something
Lol, it’s gonna bug me now!
Unity of opposites?
‘Polarize’ and ‘retrenchment’ are sometimes used in that sort of situation, but they don’t denote it exactly. I believe daoism and various martial arts have terms for this kind of thing too.
I think retrenchment is right. That describes the action of inner defence. Or specifically defending when a greater position is lost.
False antithesis?
Huh, I don’t know, but the rabbit hole this comment sent me down makes me wonder if I’m even asking the right question… I’m not high enough for this level of philosophy
Talked about it with a friend of mine last night, try sublated-opposition or hormesis. That second one is more of a biological term but it’s kind of related.
It’s hard to put into words, but those are both exactly right, but the complete opposite.
Imagine hormesis, but inverted. A small dose is poisonous, a large dose is healthy.
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