The third and last part (until later) in this weeks series on examining intersubjectivity in cultural entities. The trio of divide racing, pop music and politics is nicely eclectic.
From the NY Times:
Tea Party anger is, at bottom, metaphysical, not political: what has been undone by the economic crisis is the belief that each individual is metaphysically self-sufficient, that one’s very standing and being as a rational agent owes nothing to other individuals or institutions. The opposing metaphysical claim, the one I take to be true, is that the very idea of the autonomous subject is an institution, an artifact created by the practices of modern life: the intimate family, the market economy, the liberal state. Each of these social arrangements articulate and express the value and the authority of the individual; they give to the individual a standing she would not have without them.
I like how Bernstein brings Hegel’s ideas about love into the debate. That’s been one of my guiding ideas for ways forward for a while now.
I also agree first that there is a crisis brewing in American culture that will likely be seen, a century from now, as equal in magnitude to other major events in our history (the Civil War consolidating American identity, WWII defining American economic superiority). The national myth of individual exceptionalism we’ve created is being assaulted by our inevitable fall from superpower grace, and while I doubt too many people see it as such, the “populist angst” is directed towards that national decline. I also think President Obama is smart enough to recognize this state of affairs, which is why he’s been viewed with suspicion for so long.
Perhaps most interesting is the extent to which this myth of individualism has been our most sucessful and popular export. Other countries will be dealing with it long after we’ve sorted through this particular national pathology.
Bedrock & Paradox 
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