By LUIZ MARQUES*
To break the habit and superstition inherent in servility, it is enough to rebel instead of consenting.
The theme of “subjection” is present in Etiénne de La Boétie, in Voluntary servitude (1577). Written in Latin and later in French, the study dates back to the author who was then 18 years old; after the people's defeat against the new tax on salt. It aimed to understand why and how a tiny nucleus of people prevails over the majority to establish a relationship of domination and subordination. It is a denunciation of tyranny, with a recipe for emancipation. To break the habit and superstition inherent in servility, it is enough to rebel instead of consenting.Soyez donc résolus à ne plus serve et vous serez libres” (“Be therefore resolved to serve no more, and you will be free”).
In our time, servitude presupposes public (state institutions) and private (political parties, churches, unions, movements) ideological control. Corporate media, cybernetic social networks and social media algorithms Big Tech direct consumption and electoral choices. In turn, the worldview of the economic elites cements the blockade against moral and intellectual formation with an egalitarian bias. The social reproduction of the privileged is closed in an iron circle to guarantee the perpetuation of status quo, with wealth in the hands of the hegemonic classes.
The wealthy enroll their children in a Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. confessional network. Transcendental blessings entrench the top of the hierarchy, which prays for the interests of capital in society. It was up to the civil-military dictatorship to promote the dismantling of a right and replace it with a paid service with the dual purpose of: (a) absorbing the demand of young people with an umbilical cord linked to segments supporting authoritarianism and; (b) legitimizing an elitist and segregating perspective with formal education. After all, in capitalism it is better to be a capitalist.
Research shows that the difference between public schools in the outskirts of the city and private schools in upscale areas does not lie in the content, but in the values adopted in class. The former emphasize discipline and obedience; they prepare students to respect the time clock and the boss by accepting alienation. It is not the teachers' fault, whose commitment comes up against material obstacles; protests for better working conditions are repressed.
The second encourages initiative and creativity in classrooms (startups, preferably), for the exercise of command in managerial and business functions. The response to the pedagogy of the oppressed is the totalitarianism of the oppressor.
The commodification of knowledge now continues with the privatization of the administrative management of public schools in states of the federation. “The education crisis is a project,” according to anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, creator of the Xingu Indigenous Park and first rector of the University of Brasília (UnB), conceived in partnership with educator Anísio Teixeira – without ownership of the chairs.
Psychic life of power
For feminist thinker Judith Butler, in The physical life of power (1997) (The psychic life of power), the “subjection” of being at the mercy of a higher authority arises at birth with external tutelage. “We are accustomed to thinking of power as something that pressures the subject from outside, subjugating and relegating him to a lower order”. The fact that power performs the subject escapes us: “it determines the very condition of his existence and the trajectory of his desire”. In childhood, we internalize it.
Subjection consists in the dependence on a discourse that we do not choose and that, paradoxically, initiates and supports our action. Initiation as a subject is traversed by primary submission. In this way, the theory of power goes hand in hand with the theory of the psyche. Its psychic form is marked – either by the image of the return to the founding topological moment (nostalgia), or by the movement of liberation to refer to what does not yet exist (the future). Regression condemns emancipatory impulses and justifies the restoration of stability with the use of force. Progression activates the beacon of freedom.
No one becomes a subject without the sieve of “subjectivation” (subjection, in French). The power that initiates the subject loses continuity with the power that is the action of the subject. This ambivalence contrasts what acts upon him with what is put into action by him. Appearances hide the previous operation, giving the impression that action is always opposed to power. “Today is what yesterday is for”, to evoke a satire on time. Decolonization condenses an effort of affective dissociation to configure an autonomous identity, worthy of advances and achievements beyond traditions.
In the country, the attack on republican institutions is a component of the strategy of vassalage to an exceptional regime. The endorsement is in the social body's tolerance of crimes of genocide, corruption and violence against the democratic system. The appeal of the “myth” to the government militarily equivalent to the elbow of the coach in the line of illusion. In necropolitics, the subject is sectarian. He simply repeats the position of the pieces on the chessboard, without imagining alternatives to the rigged game. The Lampedusa political reaction arms the rebels in favor, by “changing everything so that everything stays the same”. Life goes on.
Reactionism re-actualizes modalities inherited from slavery – the precariousness of work, outsourcing – to naturalize inequities. The coup-impeachment, the subsequent imprisonment of the absolute leader in the voters' voting intentions and the four-year militia period bind voluntary servitude to the will of the powerful. A consensual mechanism is urgently needed to facilitate the integral development of the collective-national will, in the sense of modern civilization. With diversity, equality and the militant spirit to overcome the dialectic of domination and subordination - “imagination to power”.
About collective actions
The ambiguity is inscribed in the “yellow-greenism” that followed the agrarian and extractive activities, between Independence and the disappearance of the Old Republic. The idea was never to compete with the central countries, but rather to fill the economic gaps in the international division of labor with the export of commodities, emphasizes philosopher Marilena Chaui, in Brazil: Founding myth and authoritarian society (2007). Agribusiness is the spear of ideology that carnivalizes the colors of civic spirit to deliver fake nationalism to the designs of US imperialism. “Our flag will never be red.” Let it be American. The patriotic mongrels on duty cheer.
Without roots in country culture, sertanejo music serves as a soundtrack to the lack of sovereignty. The triad of Jair Bolsonaro (fascism), Paulo Guedes (neoliberalism) and Silas Malafaia (conservatism) attacks national developmentalism, with participation, and sustainable reindustrialization. With vulgar language, they embrace hostile gestures. Insults and “Bolsonaro-style” swear words harm plural conviviality and democracy. In the absence of critical thinking, the rhetoric of hate and cognitive dissonance prevail, fueled by fake news, while sociopathic clowns sprout on the asphalt. The terrorist bombs in Brasilia, on the eve of the G-20 meeting, signal the error of not cutting off the head of the evil serpent.
The far right wants a return to original authority. It yearns for the return of the sound of boots. It rehearsed putschs on September 7 and December 12, 2022, and on January 8, 2023. The subject of backwardness is one-dimensional, market-oriented, and resistant to regulations. It reaps the foolish certainties that run parallel to the ruins of common sense. It rejects institutional solidarity with women, black people, LGBTQIA+ groups, and the poor. It dehumanizes, dedemocratizes, and becomes the resentment and rage of the watchdog of social barbarism and ecocide. As if terror planted the seeds of harmony.
A society with thousands of homeless workers, confined to squares and parks, does not represent a generalizable life expectancy. Ultimately, there would be no more squares and parks. The increasing reduction of jobs due to artificial intelligence is threatening a rupture between people and sub-people, and therefore, inevitable social insecurity. The climate crisis and the ineffectiveness of the United Nations (UN) in preventing chaos require radical corrective measures. The left and President Lula's government must address the population's fear of imaginary windmills, so that those responsible for the apocalypse – which is already underway – can come to light.
Despite the exaltation of the entrepreneurship of the “I”, structural change is a task for the “us”. The commons need the virtue for the reconstitution of the subject of transformation with a political program of hope and struggle. Love is the favorite companion of the morning star. “Utopia is there on the horizon. I take two steps closer, it takes two steps away. I walk ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps away. What is utopia for? So that I don’t stop walking”, teaches us the filmmaker Fernando Birri, quoted by Eduardo Galeano, in The walking words (2001)
* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.
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