7 Ideological Harm
Iyana Fulp
In this paper, I intend to dissect the very way that we engage theories and other nuanced ideological endeavors as human beings – an engagement that I believe sheds light on something far more important and of note, this being our conception of the world and the way in which we and things are situated within.
Human conception of the world in which we live – especially that which is influenced by ideology – lends itself to two areas of interest: an understanding regarding the lens with which we view ourselves (and by extension, other human beings) as well as an understanding of why we commit or allow certain types of harm.
If it is true that commitment to an ideology has the ability to subvert human relation to the greater world through the creation of another, then I believe we may be able to identify the harms committed in devotion to such ideology as ideological harms.
This paper will first explore in more detail my understanding of the concept of ideology as world-building and the connected concept of ideological harm. Secondly, I will use a sample ideology, capitalism, with which to build on and highlight my analysis of the world-building nature of ideology and how people may subscribe to theoretical ecology. Thirdly, I will do an analysis of national capitalism in practice to understand connections between the theoretical ecology found in theory and ideology in practice. Lastly, I will demonstrate the metric potential of ideological harm and utilize my critique of capitalism to illustrate the capabilities of my introduced metric.
I. Introduction
My academic journey so far has been marked by a particular interest in context, framing, and notions of understanding. I like understanding how things work – their composition, their function – the context surrounding their formation and how they have been utilized – whether this follows intended function or new manipulation.
I am most familiar with study regarding law, government, and politics but as I have furthered an interest in social and political philosophy, I have found myself wanting to better understand ideology as a mental litmus test. This feels incredibly relevant in the midst of conversations around media bias, socio-political bias, and how people are forming their opinions in the era of mass media and internet.
In this paper I intend to discuss how we engage complex belief systems such as ideologies and how an understanding of their composition and function may allow us to become better moral agents.
I will first introduce my understanding of ideology as a sort of world-building and the connected concept of ideological harm. Secondly, l will illustrate how theoretical principles are utilized to create ideological structures using capitalism as my example. Thirdly, I will analyze national capitalism (as is practiced in the United States) to demonstrate a live example of theory transformed into ideology and put in practice. Lastly, I will introduce a metric to better understand the relationships and identities of people living within national capitalism (as is practiced in the United States).
II. Ideology and Ideological Harm
My first task is to provide an understanding of ideology and then clearly introduce the concept of ideological harm. I will begin by exploring ideology’s definition, then speak to how ideologies function, and lastly introduce the concept of ideological harm.
How is ideology composed? What makes something an ideology? I believe these questions are best understood by contrasting theory and ideology.
Theory is defined as ‘a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained’. As can be surmised from the above, scientific definition of theory – theory is a proposed explanation of a phenomena. It is composed of a series of propositions in order to attempt to answer an inquiry and through its function serves as a hypothesis. The theory becomes scientific should one continue to tweak and work the hypothesis so as to become testable and furthered to see if it is true. But even informal theorizing centers users – those who interact with it – to support an open feedback loop between themselves, the environment, and sentient companions.
Ideology by contrast I have found best defined by Michael Freeden in his article titled Ideology in which he defined it as “a set of ideas, beliefs and attitudes, consciously or unconsciously held, which reflects or shapes understandings or misconceptions of the social and political world … “h) and that “serves to recommend, justify or endorse collective action aimed at preserving or changing political practices and institutions.”[2) Freeden’s definition came closest to my understanding of ideology than any other offered definition.
Responding directly to Mr. Freeden’s definition of ideology being “a set of ideas, beliefs and attitudes, consciously or unconsciously held”, my understanding of ideology begins as a prescription of explicit and implicit propositions. I take ideologies to be prescriptions because they suggest a lens through which to interpret an institution, situation, and at their greatest – the world. These prescriptions are both explicit and implicit because the implications of the explicit prescriptions reveal implicit logic regarding the scope and lens of the ideology as well as any logical consequences of the ideology’s propositions.
Mr. Freeden continues, defining ideology as that “which reflects or shapes understandings or misconceptions of the social and political world”. I agree with Mr. Freeden here for the most part but think that this element of his definition could be grown upon. Ideology does reflect and/or shape understanding or misconceptions – as mentioned before, ideology acts as a lens with which to interpret an institution or situation but the scope of that lens and the implicit prescriptions of the ideology’s propositions can have global implications.
Take for example the ancient Greek ideology of cynicism. Cynicism can be understood with the following premises and conclusion:
A. The purpose of life is to live virtuously.
B. To live virtuously is to live in agreement with nature.
C. Desire for wealth, power, fame and (some) social conventions are unvirtuous.
D. Therefore, to live in agreement with nature is to live humbly and without possessions.
While these explicit propositions may come off innocuous, on an implicit level an individual is left to interpret what is meant in reference to the phrase “agreement with nature”. What does it mean within this ideology to “live in agreement with nature”? One could accept the ancient Greek term “φυσις” (pronounced: physis or phusis) which was understood in connection with its root term to mean that which physically grows or becomes in reference to plants and that which is of the Earth. However, there are other interpretations. As found in the work of Professor Gerard Naddaf of York University, the Pre-Socratic understanding of “φυσις” was as “the nature of a thing as it is realized with all of its properties from beginning to end, or the whole process of growth of a thing from birth to maturity”[3]. He goes on to demonstrate that other Greek philosophers used “φυσις” in reference to the concept of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water) which were heavily associated with and understood to compose much of what we recognize as of nature or natural. This lies distinct from the concept of ‘laws of nature’ or ‘natural law’ which refers to attempts to describe the spectrum of natural phenomena. This leaves us with a bit of a conundrum – if the understanding of ‘nature’ is strict and defined then we are dealing with an implicitly proposed ecology within this ideology, and if ‘nature’ is a loose term (which I suspect it is not) then it makes for a very flimsy ideology.
[1] (Freeden, 1998)
[2] Ibid.
[3] (Naddaf, 2005)
Looking to noted Greek Cynics such as Antisthenes who undertook strict asceticism, the legendary Diogenes who embraced poverty as virtuous, and the couple Crates of Thebes and Hipparchia of Maroneia who each rejected wealthy inheritances in dedication to the Cynic tenets, it is hard to believe that the original Cynics each interpreted ‘nature’ in a loose manner or self-defined the concept. If we accept that their definition of ‘nature’ was strict and the consistency of Cynics choosing to reject creature comforts falls in line with an understanding of nature as that which is connected directly with the Earth or that incorporates little to no manipulation through human activity, then we can understand clearly that Cynics not only bonded over a philosophy regarding moral reasoning but an ecology regarding relation to the Earth and situatedness.
While Cynicism was limited in its impact, implicit prescriptions can similarly be understood across broader ideological projects. Examining nationalism, regardless of sub-grouping it remains consistent that where the ideology is taken up, the basis of statehood is based around the cultivation of a polity and asserting that polity’s political right to political liberty and chosen government. In explicit premises and conclusion, we understand nationalism as claiming that:
A. If the state is the most legitimate form of political autonomy;
B. And states may be created through the unification of a polity – defined as a nation;
C. Then the unified polity (a nation) is the most legitimate manifestation of a state.
However, implicitly such a proposition – if taken to be true – gives way to a variety of tensions. We are left wondering how to synthesize competing claims between collective identities regarding lands with multiple claims of belonging and conflict remains with the historical reality of diasporic populations. Are we to believe that if a polity cannot form and maintain political autonomy then it is illegitimate and unworthy of political standing? A questionable notion in the face of global indigenous populations that have survived colonization and genocide and yet continue to fight for political representation and consideration such as the American Indigenous community, the people of Tibet, and the Mayan population throughout Central America. As I’ve mentioned before, we recognize that ideologically we are being offered a lens with which to compute and interpret the world as well as situatedness within the world and these lenses may not be consistently universally applicable despite demonstrating some benefit. I believe this lens is in the form of an ecology and is best encapsulated as an ideological ecology.
The creation of an ecology is integral to my understanding of ideology because I don’t believe this facet of ideology is coincidental or unintentional. This brings us further in trying to define not just how ideology is composed but the way that ideology functions – ideologies, as I have defined them so far, being:
1. Prescriptions of explicit and implicit propositions that respond to social, political, or economic institutions or events and;
2. Whose propositions connect to an ideological ecology.
We return to Freeden, who closes his definition of ideology, stating that ideology “serves to recommend, justify or endorse collective action aimed at preserving or changing political practices and institutions” and once more I find myself partially both satisfied and finding room for amendment. While I agree that ideology “serves to recommend, justify or endorse collective action”, I again forward that ideologies are not strictly political even if political power is highly desired – they can be economic or social (including the cultural or religious) as well. Again, looping in ideological ecology, I agree that ideologies rise in challenge to or to defend a practice or institution but the way in which they do so is by creating or integrating a perspective regarding situatedness in the world and/or how the world functions.
But how does this connect to the way in which ideologies function? By creating an independent logical framework as a counter to a situationally grounded rationality. All people are ultimately informed by where they are from, the present concerns of the time in which they are developing, and the beliefs of those around them. However, a growing division has formed between community-grounded cultures and those that are capitalcentered. As capitalist economics has traversed and dominated the globe, it seems that the world sits along an axis of nations in which people whose lives is dominated by work and those who include working in the experience of living – an experience that is uniquely impacted by familial structure and how connected one feels to the greater community. In the wake of phenomenon such as the Japanese hikikomori[1] and the introduction of concepts such as “workism”[2] and “quiet quitting”[3l in the United States to respond to increasing individual isolation in fastpaced and economically driven cultures, it seems we are in desperate need of the language to better address how we live as human beings and why we live in such ways.
[1] (R.ooksby, McLeod and Furuhashi, 2020)
[2] (Thompson, 2019)
[3] (Ellis and Yang, 2022)
If my proposed definition of ideology holds true, then I believe it follows that we may better recognize and understand ideologies and the moral consequences associated with them by recognizing ideologies as incredibly complex ideological structures. Furthermore, we can recognize the harm that results from the institutionalization or growth of an ideology as ideological harm.
While I am continuing to develop the concept, at its most elementary I understand this violation as situations in which ideologies as a collection of proposals regarding the nature of a phenomenon subvert the human spirit, reorient the relationship between the theoretical and natural, and erode the notion of choice. Within this understanding of harm, I have identified three types that I believe occur: abstraction, extraction, and coercion. However, in this paper I will be focusing primarily on abstraction.
Ideological abstraction refers to the process in which the tenets or function of an ideology attempt to ‘flatten’ the complexities of the sentient experience. This ‘flattening’ attempts to over-rationalize and assign quantifiable value to that which transcends quantifiability. When sentient qualities or values are diminished to functionality, present desire, or perceived value instead of a holistic, intrinsic value, I believe that connections can be made to a diminished sentient experience and the rationalization of exploitation and conscious oppression. Abstraction, as it occurs to human beings can be understood as a form of targeted depersonalization.
Ideological extraction refers to the process in which the tenets or function of an ideology actively or passively orient value as existing external to the sentient experience. The externalization of value – and very specifically, the externalization of value so as to posit sentient existence as expendable – can similarly be connected to a diminished sentient experience as well as conscious exploitation and oppression.
Ideological coercion refers to the process in which the tenets or function of an ideology actively or passively manipulate autonomous sentient individuals in ways that eliminate voluntary participation with the ideology, actively punish or stigmatize resistance, or otherwise consciously diminish the sentient experience of others when such conditions are avoidable or unequally enforced.
In the following sections I will analyze capitalism as a relevant ideology of the United States whose realization has moral consequences in both the national and international spheres.
III. National Capitalism – Theory in Practice
In acknowledging capitalism as an ideology as previously defined, I look immediately to the ecology connected to it and generate my questions:
If capitalist ecology projects a reality, what does such a reality look like? How do we distinguish it from any other? What lies behind such a projection·? How do we know that a capitalist ecology has come to manipulate the world we inhabit?
I believe many of the answers can be understood through the very way we live and how we interact with our world.
In the United States, there exists a version of reality within which tangible structures and bodies are forced to conform. Through the prioritization of the economy over other institutions there exists less a national body than a consumer body (which l formally label consumer populace or consumer population).
Whereas a national body refers to the number of persons who self-identify with a nation or nationality or, alternatively, those who are politically granted agency within a socio-political contract, capitalism demands a consumer populace within its economic-political contract. Capitalism enlists those with access to resources and capital as primary beneficiaries of its entitlements while those employed, ensnared, or enslaved to the extraction and creation of products are retained as cogs in the capitalist apparatus. Capitalism bundles privilege and domination for the prioritization of product creation. This is not to suggest that those who participate in resource acquisition and guarding prioritize product creation. They may not. As feudal history and the current era of billionaires has demonstrated, those that profit most from resource acquisition and guarding are rewarded in convenience – through the ease in which they may acquire the means of survival and participate in leisure. However, those who do not find ways in which to monopolize something of value – a skill, resource, etc. – are left at the mercy of those who embrace capitalism’s spirit of conquest.
Yet, I digress. Consumers end up being those who interact with or rely upon the products materialized through the mechanisms of capitalism. All persons within the economic-political contract of capitalism are consumers, but only those who own resources and assert control of these resources are regarded as contractors. The consumer population of this equation is intentionally isolated from the gross prosperity of capitalism as the enforcement (read: a coercive element) of the economic-political contract with which the ideology relies nor is any person, regardless of their status of contractor or non-contractor, free from the abstraction that occurs within capitalism.
Owners are valued only in connection to that over which they can assert their ownership status. The employed retain value in relation to whom they work for and the nature of the work that they do. The ensnared become only as valuable as their productivity and are judged negatively when they do not desire to embody the values associated with valued labor. The enslaved are obscured, considered antiquated or remote, nearly forgotten as faceless martyrs in the sourcing and creation of products. As people are but mere functionary elements within a capitalist ecology, holding no intrinsic value, value is continuously derived in conjunction with products or associated with their production. A capitalist ecology values product above all else and relies on the human relationship to products to justify itself.
There exist countless examples of abstraction within capitalism – the act of depersonalization through the capitalist funnel for the purpose of being able to assign numerical value to an element of identity and make it a tangible commodity. I will explore the phenomena of abstraction as it occurs across four identity categories: national identity, political identity, gender and sexual identity, and socio-economic identity.
National identity refers to self-identification as it relates to socio-political association – this can take the form of where one is politically enfranchised, the physical location an individual or community claims as their sociopolitical homeland, or a geographic location to which an individual or community has historical ties.
The United States has its own national identity while also being the home to communities who have resettled here from abroad or have embraced the nation when conflict or threat of violence forces them to relocate for their own security. The United States – like all nations – has a blend of both regional, state, and national levels of identification. On the national level, notions of what constitutes Americana have transformed from founding ideology and iconography, national monuments, and small-town communal spots (barbershops, diners, ice cream or candy shops, etc.) to brand association. In the contemporary imagination, American identity has been abstracted so that association is made primarily with brands and products and not necessarily cultural and social institutions. The global expansion and identification with brands like McDonalds, Apple, Inc., Disney, Amazon, and Wal mart speak to these phenomena.
Political Identity refers to self-identification as it relates to political parties, causes, or the amalgam of thoughts that comprise one’s beliefs regarding social organization and policy.
Political identity in the United States is incredibly complex as the contemporary standing of political parties varies greatly from the origins of political parties in the nation. The Democratic and Republican parties have worked to absorb smaller parties with similar platforming or essential beliefs, acting as major political houses under which political visions and membership are managed. In turn, individuals, regardless of more diverse or complicated feelings regarding leading issues and policy, expect representatives under the platforms issued by the two major political houses.
Through the abstraction of political parties to similarly incorporate marketing to appeal to a wider (and more diverse) range of voters (as a type of consumer) the understanding of what makes one a ‘democrat’ or ‘republican’ has been abstracted to a point of becoming arbitrary. Big tent parties house members and assign categorical labels ranging from radical (or progressive), to central and conservative. These identifiers attempt to measure social, economic, and foreign policy positions amongst members but does not necessarily correlate with public understanding of these issues or their associated metrics.
Even the imagery of the Democratic Party as represented by the donkey and the Republican party as being represented by an elephant has lost its cultural significance and relevance, becoming no more than trivia in the cultural consciousness. At its most abstract, the very colors blue and red are contextualized as representing membership within either party (just as green represents the green party and yellow is said to represent libertarians) and yet I question the connection that party colors have as indicators of understanding of ideology and policy.’
Many Americans identify more with the leadership or leading figures championing political stances or legacy politics in which community or familial voting patterns are upheld in place of individual commitment or conviction for a political platform. This personal identification with a communal (or familial) value set or inspiration from impassioned political actors speaks volumes regarding the dissonance between big-tent politics and true political engagement.
Gender and sexual identity refers to how self-identification regarding socially relevant sex identifiers and to whom someone is (or is not) romantically and sexually attracted.
In the United States specifically, queer demonstrations and movements have gained traction since the late-196os, internally and externally developing in their language, expression, representation, and demands. The contemporary queer populace includes the voices of intersex, transgender, non-binary, asexual (and aromantic), demisexual (and demiromantic) and many other individuals alongside gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. This has led to the production of a variety of products marketed towards queer people, the integration of capital into queer programming such as Pride events and queer proms, and the slow proliferation of queer stories in media.
Despite the representational incorporation of queer people into entertainment, much of queer storytelling does not include diverse depictions of members beyond gay men and white lesbians or their needs. In the continued collapse of the bar (and social) industry, queer bar owners find themselves having to cater to non-queer parties to survive while queer patrons lose safe spaces due to the occupation of queer spaces by non-queer women as queer bars are seen as havens away from fetishization, toxic masculinity, and rape culture. Still in recovery from the ravaging of the HIV pandemic and the continued discrimination that occurs to queer youth, the queer community has been abstracted both physically and visually.
Represented visually by the rainbow, the rainbow flag’s origins have also become akin to trivia in the cultural consciousness. Equated with the notion of inclusivity, the community has struggled in the conversation with nonqueer communities regarding continued fetishization, tokenization, and stereotyping in and out of media. There has also been continued criticism from intersectional areas of the queer community regarding the volume of commercialization that has occurred to the queer community in the face of significant economic, racial, and gender disparities between sections of the community and while the queer community continues to struggle in maintaining inter-generational legacy and capital.
Gender critics have similarly argued that prioritization of representation and commercialization has detracted from conversations regarding the equitable treatment of trans and intersex individuals as well as furthered fractured unity as intersections of the community find themselves underrepresented or continuing to be ignored in the greater market.
A burgeoning example of the distance between queer bodies and marketing is the long-time affiliation between alcohol producers and the queer community. Anyone who watches RuPaul’s Drag Race will be particularly familiar with the show’s proud sponsorship by Absolute Vodka. Bud Light has attracted media attention multiple times for the release of Pride month campaigns showcasing rainbow-clad beer cans[1] and beer bottles[2]. Despite both brands being multi-decade long affiliates with queer organizations like GLAAD, this has not stopped parent companies like that of Bud Light from using the money made from queer business to contribute to the political campaigns of queer-hostile politicians. Just last year in 2021, the owners of the Stonewall Inn announced they would be pouring out cans of Bud Light and discontinuing the sales of liquors sold by manufacturer AnheuserBusch Companies, LLC after the company was found to have “contributed more than $35,000 to 29 legislators it described as anti-LGBTQ+ between 2015 and 2020.”[3] Despite advertised support for the community, the political and economic objectives of Anheuser-Busch seem to come before their social investments. According to research done by research organization OpenSecrets, Anheuser-Busch InBev (the parent company of the American manufacturer) was the top beer, wine, and liquor distributor to contribute to federal political candidates, parties, and outside groups during the 2021-2022 election cycle with a total of $1,436,386 spent[4]. Of the $1,167, 640 that was paid to candidates and parties, 14.9% were Democrats and 85.1% were Republicans[5]. It doesn’t seem that the objections of the queer community have deterred the spending of the company or that Anheuser-Busch InBev is particularly worried about the moral incompatibility of contributing to the campaigns of political candidates who threaten the welfare of the queer community.
[1] (Bright Marketing Solutions, 2021)
[2] (Prior, 2019)
[3] (Associated Press in New York, 2021)
[4] (Open Secrets, 2021)
[5] lbid.
Social and economic identity refer to self-identity as it relates to relevant cultural and social groupings as well as how one’s economic status influences their social movement and affiliation.
Social identity can include ethnicity, religious affiliation, social background, socio-economic class, or political affiliation and overlap with gender and sexual identity. Social identity has been utilized across communities to shift conversations regarding capitalism to center representation and visibility over systemic alternatives. For ethnic groups, this has taken the form of catered entertainment and the creation of channels and networks dedicated to targeted programming. Religious groups have similarly utilized marketing practices to spread information, sell merchandise, and share platforming. The Christian Coalition of America, founded over 30 years ago by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, continues to organize amongst conservative Christians using advertising, social media, protests, and rallies for the support of their political platform.
Anti-capitalist sentiments have been printed on products and sold, the notions of ‘poor culture’ and ‘work culture’ amongst college-age young adults and those critical of national capitalism being abstracted so as to sell ‘relatable’ merchandise. Economic identity has likewise been abstracted so that for those with significant capital identity hinges on access, representations of one’s access, and weaponizing exclusivity. It is often said that to be rich does not equate with having taste, a judgement that is validated when one considers wealth as a demanding, performative identity. For those without significant capital, performance is still highlighted in the visual desire and mental endeavor to appear affluent and stay cognizant of popular culture and references.
An easily distinguishable example of the commodification of social identity has been that of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, shortened as WASP. One might hesitate, asking what is WASP culture? And yet it permeates the media and many of America’s cultural references. From the cult classic films such as Heathers and Clueless, to shows like Desperate Housewives and Gossip Girl, and the glossy, preppie-oriented marketing ads of Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. Despite their title and infamy, the identity of those within WASP culture is blurred considerably – in referencing those with generational wealth and an allegiance to certain socio-economic politics, manners, and social rituals Samuel Goldman writes, “The term WASP was never quite accurate. This strand of the American elite was uniformly white, but not Anglo; Dutch, French, and sometimes more exotic blood flowed through its veins. Its members were mostly Protestants, but some were not. And the vast majority of American Protestants did not belong to the Episcopalian churches W ASPs favored.”[1] And despite the post-war disparagement of the ‘old money’, decades of television, film, and literature have immortalized the personal and communal aesthetics as well as the social conditioning of WASP culture. For every person continuing to strive towards the proverbial ‘house with a white picket fence’, you have the W ASPs to thank for that contribution to the post-WWII American dream. WASP culture, while arguably dead in many ways, continues to live aesthetically as brands such as Gucci, Vineyard Vines, and off-shoots of preppy and polo culture find newer, younger audiences with little cultural connection and greater nostalgia.
[1] (Goldman, 2021)
IV. Ideological Harm’s Metric potential
It is at this point that I introduce a metric to begin the exploration of how existence within a capitalist ecology has eroded the human experience. Within this metric, the consumer populace is split between those who are considered profitable and unprofitable.
These terms, profitable and unprofitable, I will explore as they relate to our understanding of identity – how we understand ourselves, ascertain value, and choose to associate. As the faculty of capitalism is its ability to abstract that which belongs to the natural world, we get an ethical feel for its effects by investigating the relationship between the self, one’s peers, and the greater community when identity begins to be abstracted for the purpose of commodification.
A profitable identity within national capitalism is defined by its ability to be abstracted from those to which it initially belongs – the depersonalization of traits, characteristics, cultural items, and socio-political statements and identifiers for the purpose of mass marketing and accessibility.
Unprofitable identities can be defined in opposition – traits, identifiers, characteristics, and cultural items that prove harder or unsuitable to abstract for mass consumption, being left for niche or individual engagement and consumption.
Profitable identities exist in polarity – to be sanitized or sensationalized, utilized and packaged in any way to be sold to as many as will take it. In the process of that polarization, the nuances of the human experience are flattened to create a caricature of those it tries to depict. In order to pull humans out of the natural world and into the theoretical world, humans must be stripped of their complexity to become precise and formulaic. In the theoretical world – the world in which theories and ideologies maintain leverage – one can never be more than two-dimensional as multitude, inconsistency, and variability are characteristics of the natural world.
People become abstract in the market world because the capitalist ecology – as an imposed and fictitious reality – relies on systemization and categorization for the rules with which it works to remain applicable. In order to sustain itself as an ideology, it must exert itself by absorbing and making sense of human variability without invalidating itself. But within lies the rub – within capitalism, everything must be become quantifiable. Things are no longer things, they become products – products that must be validated by demand. For everything and everyone that exists on the planet there must be someone interested in purchase, utilization, and consumption. If there isn’t, it’s simply because the product has not been marketed and advertised correctly or to the right audience.
Complex identities and experiences are routinely selected and filtered to be packaged and marketed as measured by theoretical standards and algorithms. Despite the storied connection between kink and queer communities, you’ll most likely only see cheap representations of leather and fetish gear sold as party costumes or as simplified, trendy accessories in the mass market. Regardless of the ability to buy shirts depicting or normalizing having same-sex parents, little will be seen throughout media regarding the complexities of identification within or beyond the gender binary – nor has the industry en masse addressed the desires of queer people for the degendering of clothing.
You will continue to see the real and perceived dangers of sex work as plot points in tv shows and films while selfemployed sex workers demanding protection for themselves and their livelihoods remain nameless and faceless. You’ll continue to see weight loss ads and tv shows in the aftermath of the pandemic while plus-size people continue to be shadow-banned on social media platforms, alienated from the physical shopping experience, and made to feel dysphoric in their bodies until they develop their socially encouraged ‘revenge body’. Shirts will be sold with the names of Black people murdered by police and the politics addressing their economic and social oppression will remain stagnant as their stories become ratings-fodder for a book, television, or film venture.
It is not simply about being represented in the capitalist marketplace but the flattening that occurs as the result of abstraction – the act of being picked apart, scavenged for ‘interesting’ or ‘desirable’ bits.
Similarly, the idea of being marketed to bears no relation to the social nature of what it means to be human and live. We are constantly being fed back our scavenged, commodified identities. This might look like the inclusion of diverse identities in a piece of media, the diversification of on-screen or leading roles in media, and the visual presentation of more commodities for a wider audience but is ultimately still hindered by the illusionary properties of genre variety, the accessibility barrier whether that be language, social identity, or financial capacity, how items are made available and the ability to find them in market spaces, and the ability (or inability) to engage regarding the commodities we consume.
The identifiers we are born into, live with, choose, and discard are deeply personal and their value is created by us and determined in conjunction with our experiences and the act of thinking through and processing what they mean to us and the people that we want to be. Identity is not developed just through representative elements -being shown representations of oneself or one’s capabilities – but through social support and reinforcement of who one is and what one can do.
There is something to be said about how representation has been pushed as primary as if to replace the role of the social system – a change that I fundamentally disagree with. When individuals are relating more to or utilizing products, specifically media products, to supplement a social system or social reinforcement of their identity, I believe that is evidence of systemic failure. This failure is not necessarily on the individuals of such a community but points to a deeper issue regarding what is occurring within that community that the social needs of its members cannot be attended to regularly and that it would be supplemented by fictional portrayals of community.
While I do not object to the suggestion that the national capitalist system filters notions of culture and reconstitutes culture within itself, I do object to the suggestion that national capitalism intentionally runs in opposition to ‘authentic culture’. In fact, I believe that national capitalism as it exists in the 21st century (and has for some time before that), has reconstituted itself to utilize authentic culture creation and diversity throughout American culture as a means to better extract and abstract that which it understands as desirable.
Take for instance the contemporary development and incorporation of research teams in the marketing sector as a response to anti-marketing sentiments observed by major brands towards their products. In the wake of attitude shifts towards branding and mass marketing attempting to relate to and engage the teen market in the 90s, brands such as Sprite and many large entertainment companies like Viacom invested millions of dollars in market research and the utilization of professionals called ‘cool-hunters’ to better understand how to market to the teen and young adult audiences as a major financial demographic. These ‘cool hunters’ frequented events and spaces that attracted individuals in their late teens to early twenties and would search for individuals amongst these crowds who seemed ahead of the trends and who intentionally altered their taste and style so as not to fit in amongst others. Having taken pictures of these individuals to analyze how they dressed and collecting surveys from their encounters to assess elements of their personalities and their interaction with other media products (entertainers, magazines, tv shows, films, etc.) they would then put together profiles and data to be sold to companies looking to appeal to the teen and young adult market by staying abreast the notion of ‘cool’. From the 90s to the zooos, cool was media currency. Cool, as it occurred in the marketing formula, correlated with engagement and purchasing. A product, modified by its association with ‘coolness’, and multiplied through its engagement equaled multiple millions and billions of dollars and it was all made possible by abstracting the qualities of certain individuals in order to apply it to tangible products and market them as desirable and attainable but above all – necessary if one desires to be ‘cool’.
So, let’s look back at these unique individuals from whom the concept of ‘cool’ was given a name and abstracted. It’s interesting that unlike their peers, industry researchers took interest in those resisting and modifying market products as factors in how to keep up with the teen young adult market.
Interviewing Todd Cunningham, at the time the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Planning for MTV, he revealed to Frontline the process of researching teen and young adult demographics – a process that included over “200 focus groups a year”[!], many of which were done in public locations specific to youth, and an annual ethnography study that took researchers directly into the homes of teens to “rifle through kids’ closets and go through their music collections.”[2] The nature of market research has become more intimate, evolving from the mascot and logo led marketing of yesteryear to infiltrating the homes of its targets – no longer strictly measuring engagement with products through recognition and familiarity but by quite literally keeping their finger upon the pulse of the youth.
Mr. Cunningham explained the methods of MTV as one of maintaining relevancy in the industry but again, I draw our attention back to those teens and young adults who intentionally buck the industry suggestion in favor of their own personal stylistic compass. Despite potentially having no desire to be marketed to or be reflected in marketing considerations, members of the consumer populace are still considered as having abstractable qualities and are actively investigated as potential trend-setters.
This leads me to expand my metric so as to account for identities that are considered profitable but that do not aspire for industry reflection and interaction. I formally label these distinctions as aspiring and unaspiring states. This is reflected in my metric as the following labels: aspiring profitable (AP), unaspiring profitable (UP), aspiring unprofitable (AU), unaspiring unprofitable (UU).
Aspiring and Unaspiring states refer to the desire within various populations to be marketed to and have their interests reflected through or served by the capitalist market. Within my proposed metric, consumers could be measured on one line by whether or not they are considered as possessing abstractable characteristics or qualities (profitable or unprofitable designation) and on another line by the desire to be marketed to and/or have their identity reflected in market considerations (aspiring or unaspiring designation). Through this addition to the metric, we are now able to properly assess outliers within the capitalist paradigm. This is particularly helpful in assessing those who identify with the alter-globalization and anti-capitalist movements that have gained considerable strength following the publishing of Naomi Klein’s No Logo and in the aftermath of the Occupy movement.
[1] (Cunningham, 2001)
[2] Ibid.
The inclusion of potential unaspiring unprofitable identities and validation of aspiring unprofitable, unprofitable profitable, and aspiring profitable identities allows us to look closer at the extractive nature of capitalist ideology – a picture being painted in how representation becomes a political cornerstone for individuals and communities that believe that visibility and market catering equates to social progress and political accommodation. Important questions arise regarding what it means to exist or not exist within capitalism and intersects meaningfully with social movements that have embraced ‘cord-cutting’, do-it-yourself ethics, and survival by going ‘off-the-grid’ or by advocating ‘simple living’.
V. Ending Commentary
The mechanizations of national capitalist ideology leave us as individuals and collectives hollow and in consistent turmoil as our sense of identity remains insecure. With our identity base shifted from relying upon social engagement and enforcement to representation and reflection, those who rely upon media for identity validation find themselves either affirmed as they are catered to, in flux as they attempt to stay abreast with available programming, or nostalgic (and potentially alienated) when they do not identify with nor engage programming. We are also left to ask ourselves how much of capitalist extraction constitutes product creation versus product curation – the implications of which would give us significantly different understandings of how national capitalism as it exists functions and continues to engage us as consumers, especially in the wake of nostalgia-specific programming and the identification of ‘reboot culture’.
A capitalist ecology destabilizes the human need for socialization and community, reengineering the human spirit, and reinterpreting human situatedeness within the universe so as to make humans purely theoretical. This extractive relationship can be explored through the labeling of ideologies that exhibit such behavior as extractive ideologies. The conversion from actual to theoretical reconstitutes humans, making us secondary alongside ethical or moral considerations so that ideologies can become primary in our stead. It abstractifies the real and realizes the abstract, completely bending the actual relationship between the natural and theoretical worlds so as to situate itself as the fundamental pivot from which we derive universal law and existential considerations. We ask not what humans are for but how we serve the dominating ideology. Extractive ideology, and by extension, capitalist ecology constitutes an ethical violation.
Extractive ideologies seek to fully subvert metaphysics – a challenge that if sustained collapses the human sciences and renders them null. It places humans and the natural world as contingent to the rules and whims of the dominant ideology, even those that are morally contemptible. While the abstraction of human beings results in our simplification so as to be formulized, ethics would become arbitrary to the point of futility.
Even with the maintenance of our existing ethical frameworks extractive ideology presents urgent ethical implications. Continuing to examine the nature of capitalist abstraction, identity extraction as it is presently occurring within and beyond the borders of the United States poses questions as to how we justify and define exploitation and coercion.
If the metric I have provided can be further developed through research and actively utilized, applications investigating connections between capitalism and coercive poverty, tokenization of minority populations, exotification of indigenous people, tourism economies, and sex tourism (among other subjects) as phenomenon could yield incredibly important data as to the infinitely problematic nature of ideologies that rely upon inequity and dehumanization for function. This could also have implications within political theory regarding the legitimacy of capitalism as utilizing an economic contract that enfranchises only those who participate in resource acquisition and ownership maintenance.
Furthermore, the notion of performative wealth or affluence and the ways in which survival has become dependent upon acquiring capital, social legitimacy as earned by association with wealth, and legal considerations used to protect ownership and property rights in opposition to centering human value and experience could have implications regarding the nature of poverty and homelessness, how capitalism interacts with democracy (and whether our government is indeed a democracy), and speak to an obstacle in the fight for more nations to recognize and codify human rights as a part of legal code. Needless to say, the evaluation of the human experience as it occurs under ideology is not new, but the evolution of our language and development of tools to better discuss ideological phenomena is critical to understanding the dynamic nature of human life and the connected systems under which we live.
Iyana is an undergraduate senior currently majoring in Philosophy with a specialization in Public Policy. Born in Baltimore and raised throughout Baltimore County, they have spent the last seven years studying local, state and national political processes, movements, and policies. Their current philosophical interests revolve around understanding morality as it relates to physical and theoretical institutions and systems.