An Essay on Self-Enslavement: The Pathology of Power and Control

Andrew Blasko

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.15.2.13

Authors

Andrew Blasko

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.15.2.13

Keywords:

Double Consciousness, One Dimensionality, Nouveau Colonialism, Submission

Abstract

This article discusses certain parallels between Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness, Fanon’s discussion of the neurotic inter-relationship between the colonial master and the native, and Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensionality in order to draw an analogy between enslavement and the status of citizen in advanced Western-style societies today. The aim is to explore the exercise of power within these societies and cast light upon the manner in which the discourse of freedom both constitutes and masks submission to power. The argument is made that submission has come to be regarded as the fulfillment of human potential insofar as we have learned to look at ourselves through the eyes of those who exercise power over us, having lost the ability to imagine that the situation in which we live could, and should, be different than it is. The conception of symbolic interaction as it is now typically employed is drawn into question for the difficulties it faces in addressing unbalanced interaction in the power-submission relationship. The concept of nouveau colonialism is developed in order to capture how the relations that once obtained between a metropole and its overseas colonial possessions have in a sense been replicated between those who exercise power and those subject to power within one and the same community.

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Author Biography

Andrew Blasko

Andrew Blasko is a Professor of Philosophy with a specialization in European Values and Culture whose present institutional affiliation is the Institute of Population and Human Studies at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He defended his doctoral dissertation at Sofia University under the direction of Asen Davidov on the question of how Sartre’s conception of the progressive-regressive method, particularly as it is employed in the second volume of Critique de la raison dialectique, casts light on historical development as a process of totalization that does not have a totalizer. His publications have discussed a range of theoretical and empirical questions arising from the ongoing social and cultural changes that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe during the last three decades. He has also recently co-edited Jane Addams and the Spirit of Social Entrepreneurship (2018). Blasko currently serves as a member of the board of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and is Secretary-Treasurer of Research Committee 36 on Alienation theory and Research at the International Sociological Association.

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