Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 2
Normalize difference until there is no space between self and other.
Phil Hessler
Normalization
It is reported to be ugly but normal. When any city is seated below an industrial firmament, there is a black dust/film that covers buildings, everything - a fine obscuring layer that is also a form of reassurance that its factories are habitually cranking things out.
The current U.S. city is now, in a sorry second act of reassurance, trying to convince itself that this is a post-industrial age; which is to say industrialization/pollution is happening elsewhere at the beck and call of global capital. After getting slapped by the invisible hand of the market, let the sting cause a little wince. This is normal.
Normalization is also like that subtle pollution descending from above, accruing like a familiar barrier that settles on things and goes primarily unnoticed to the occupants of that space. Incongruous, this barrier does not exist to separate, but its effect is to exert a tonal evenness. The color and specifics of the world become more ineffable. Unsettle this layer to reveal the differences. Just as pollution seems necessary to those invested in production, so does a pressure to normalize grease the social gears of the self-reproducing (but not self-actualized) institutions of education and art. Dust off a copy of Hegel- it becomes clearer why all of this is the case.
The architectonics of the Hegelian system are often trod out in discussions like this that look at the concept of ‘difference.’ This is so because the dialectic has internal workings set up to address the idea of how difference originates. This is an historical moment in which it is sensible to advance these ideas again, and to untie the rope that holds them in check.
In Hegelian logic, each idea carries the seed of its own destruction as it conflicts with itself and then gathers into a synthesis. It is not the suppression and coercion of internal conflict that makes a new synthesis. Accordingly, this model is often used to provide a very apt look at political revolution, but it can also be a model for emergent political properties that have potential for stability. It is possible to advocate for a system that is stratified and dynamic, without embracing the current system of stratification along lines of economic inequality or the dynamism of a cultish advocacy of individualist difference – both of which run through normative political philosophy. 1.
Dialectical materialists bear the burden that many think this method of critique does not supply an adequate or feasible substitute to the existing world order. This is an order that is, after all, a fact of existence at the moment that is resilient in its ways to the point of normalcy. An idea of resistance that is feasible in the current system is not an antithesis but just another reform that acts in the interest of preserving the current system’s image/functionality. Feasible is an insult, adequate is anathema, and both are normal. It is reported to be normal but ugly.
1. For a withering look at normative political philosophy, complete with viable alternatives, see Resources of Critique, Alex Callinicos, Wiley 2006.
Volume 1, Issue 2
Normalize difference until there is no space between self and other.
Phil Hessler
Normalization
It is reported to be ugly but normal. When any city is seated below an industrial firmament, there is a black dust/film that covers buildings, everything - a fine obscuring layer that is also a form of reassurance that its factories are habitually cranking things out.
The current U.S. city is now, in a sorry second act of reassurance, trying to convince itself that this is a post-industrial age; which is to say industrialization/pollution is happening elsewhere at the beck and call of global capital. After getting slapped by the invisible hand of the market, let the sting cause a little wince. This is normal.
Normalization is also like that subtle pollution descending from above, accruing like a familiar barrier that settles on things and goes primarily unnoticed to the occupants of that space. Incongruous, this barrier does not exist to separate, but its effect is to exert a tonal evenness. The color and specifics of the world become more ineffable. Unsettle this layer to reveal the differences. Just as pollution seems necessary to those invested in production, so does a pressure to normalize grease the social gears of the self-reproducing (but not self-actualized) institutions of education and art. Dust off a copy of Hegel- it becomes clearer why all of this is the case.
The architectonics of the Hegelian system are often trod out in discussions like this that look at the concept of ‘difference.’ This is so because the dialectic has internal workings set up to address the idea of how difference originates. This is an historical moment in which it is sensible to advance these ideas again, and to untie the rope that holds them in check.
In Hegelian logic, each idea carries the seed of its own destruction as it conflicts with itself and then gathers into a synthesis. It is not the suppression and coercion of internal conflict that makes a new synthesis. Accordingly, this model is often used to provide a very apt look at political revolution, but it can also be a model for emergent political properties that have potential for stability. It is possible to advocate for a system that is stratified and dynamic, without embracing the current system of stratification along lines of economic inequality or the dynamism of a cultish advocacy of individualist difference – both of which run through normative political philosophy. 1.
Dialectical materialists bear the burden that many think this method of critique does not supply an adequate or feasible substitute to the existing world order. This is an order that is, after all, a fact of existence at the moment that is resilient in its ways to the point of normalcy. An idea of resistance that is feasible in the current system is not an antithesis but just another reform that acts in the interest of preserving the current system’s image/functionality. Feasible is an insult, adequate is anathema, and both are normal. It is reported to be normal but ugly.
1. For a withering look at normative political philosophy, complete with viable alternatives, see Resources of Critique, Alex Callinicos, Wiley 2006.
