chronological posts

first issue of new zine series, packed with amusements n clip art, available below:

computer reading version

printer version  be sure to print double sided short edge flip

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excerpt on “collective personality” from “the fall of public man” by richard sennet

a sense of political community can be built [when] you look for details of behavior among the person espousing one view or another to decide which best corresponds with the sense of yourself… as ideology becomes measured as to whether it is believable or not through these details of behavior, political struggle itself becomes more personal. political language becomes miniaturized, little  moments or events seeming of immense importance, because through these details you are learning who is fighting, and therefore, on which side you belong.

people seeking for others to disclose themselves in order to know where to belong, and the acts of disclosure consist of the details which symbolize who believes what, rather than what should be believed. baring of a self becomes the hidden agenda of political life. and when, in fantasy, these details revealing who is fighting are then blown to stand for a collective person, political community becomes moralistic rather than ideological in tone.

a society with a very low level of interaction between its members, dominated by ideas of individual, unstable personality, is likely to give birth through fantasy to enormously destructive collective personalities… this collective figure goes out of focus, in part because of its abstractness, in part because the very modes of perceiving personality destabilize the personality perceived. and finally, once formed, collective action for the community is difficult because people’s constant worry is who belongs and who is to be excluded from this grandiose, unstable identity….

– richard sennet, “the fall of public man”, pt. 4 ‘the intimate society’, ch. 10, 1974