false consciousness

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 24 2003 - 10:42:43 PST


Dear Mike and everybody-

Mike raised an interesting issue about the nature of so-called "false
consciousness" or why and how people willingly choose what is "obviously"
bad for them thinking that it is good for them. The issue is complex and
here is my bite on that.

1. People sometimes act guided by projective, virtual reality (back to the
issue of role-taking play). I remember that in social psychology they made
an experiment in the late 60s giving working class people two rather obvious
political choices: one was benefiting rich at expense of poor and the other
was benefiting poor by getting a bite from rich. To a big surprise of the
researchers, many working class people chose the first option. They
explained that they expect themselves to become rich in future and voted out
of this projected future interest. (Can anybody provide reference to this
study, please?)

2. Cultural models that are widely available to people through media,
school, and institutions are essentially middle- and upper-class. "American
dream" is very much middle-class ideology. People can't invent their own
cultural models - thinking tools - each time on individual basis. However,
publicly available cultural models are colonized by those who are in power.

3. Although oppression is socially divided but it is also distributed. I
just want to give a personal example of distributed oppression. My
stock-based pension fund designed by my university is based on exploitation
of workers. My lifestyle and my place in the world is enmeshed in
exploitation and oppression of other people. This is what is visible for me
but how much is invisible... These schizophrenic oppressor-oppressed
relations that go through people help to screw up people's thinking.

What did I miss?

Another issue is when people are guided by "false consciousness" and when
not and why... Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn reported on study in their
book "A cognitive theory of cultural meaning" (1997) where working people
switched from "false consciousness" to "true consciousness" depending on
whether their judgment was about people they do not know ("false
consciousness") or about people they do personally know ("true
consciousness").

What do you think?

Eugene

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cole [mailto:mcole@weber.ucsd.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 12:35 PM
> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> Subject: RE: Mead, Honneth and role-taking play
>
> I agree, Eugene. The Gee book is interesting in just the ways you
indicate.
> It is symptomatic that such interactive gaming is surpassing movies as THE
> medium of entertainment in this country.
>
> One of the issues Gee raises is what it means to engage in games that
> have content one finds dangerous and hateful. Rascist, sexist, violent
> games, for example. He reminds me here of an essay by Kenneth Burke
> called "Literature as equipment for living" which we use in teaching
> in my department. Burke, too, worries about the choice of media of
> interaction and their affordances.
>
> In my state people voted a movie star who embodies self righteous,
violent,
> action as a mode of being. He is literally proposing policies which will
> directly harm the poor and disenfranchised. 40% of the Latino voters in
the
> state voted for him. On average, Latinos in California are a
disenfrancised,
> relatively poor social group with highets dropout rate of any ethnic
> group in the state, presaging lower incomes in the coming generation. In
> fact, well being of immigrant families DECREASES in the secone and third
> generation. I don't pretend to know all the dynamics here, but it is
difficult
> not to think that people have confused medium and message, and in fact
> are displaying false consciousness, a term I deeply distrust.
>
> What do others on the list think?
> mike



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