#while his strongest defenders can seize upon the bullshit about stuart restoration and preach against the evils of demotism:

[mourning-again-in-america]

This embezzlement is latent in the fact that a group as a whole can be represented, in the various meanings of the word, by a subgroup, clearly delimited and perfectly visible to all, known to all, and recognized by all, that of the nobiles, the ‘people who are known,’ the paradigm of whom is the nobility, and who may speak on behalf of the whole group, represent the whole group, and exercise authority in the name of the whole group. The noble is the group personified. He bears the name of the group to which he gives his name (the metonymy which links the noble to his group is clearly seen when Shakespeare calls Cleopatra ‘Egypt’ or the King of France ‘France,’ just as Racine calls Pyrrhus ‘Epirus’). It is by him, his name, the difference it proclaims, that the members of his group, the liegemen, and also the land and castles, are known and recognized. Similarly, phenomena such as the ‘personality cult’ or the identification of parties, trade unions, or movements with their leader are latent in the very logic of representation. Everything combines to cause the signifier to take the place of the signified, the spokesmen that of the group he is supposed to express, not least because his distinction, his ‘outstandingness,’ his visibility constitute the essential part, if not the essence, of this power, which, being entirely set within the logic of knowledge and acknowledgment, is fundamentally a symbolic power; but also because the representative, the sign, the emblem, may be, and create, the whole reality of groups which receive effective social existence only in and through representation.

on the existence or non-existence of a caliph of Rationality

#bourdieu #the forms of capital (1986) #the best part is where your spokesmen are imputed upon you by your enemies #moldbug turns this into a kind of judo move where any weak defenders of him are stuck in the brutal swamps of comparing statistics #from the victorian era #while his strongest defenders can seize upon the bullshit about stuart restoration and preach against the evils of demotism: #the evils of Dissenters of habeas of the confirmation of the advisors to the executive by the legislature etc.