The Inescapable Political Individual

Understanding our Unavoidable Stature as Political Beings (Vol 4; Issue 46)

Whether celebrating, raging, or weeping at Trump’s election, any fantasies of withdrawing from the political realm will fail. There is nowhere to hide because:

The individual exists embedded in the political, and the political impacts the individual.

Philosophers from ancient to contemporary times find the individual-society merger inescapable. Plato (430BCE/2007), for example, thought personal virtues directly affect societies. And, the reverse is also true. Well-functioning communities nurture their citizens who are then motivated to comply with social norms. The symbiotic individual-society relationship need not restrict the individual. A female landowner may wish to dig an oil well and has the right to express her desires. An ideal society would weigh her interests against the community’s.

Side point:

The self, by itself, exists embedded in the social and political. Identities are formed through initial interactions with caregivers, family members, friends, and later by the culture itself (which Jacques Lacan calls “the Big Other” [Evans, 1996, p. 133]). Whoever you may think you are came from others. Whether identifying yourself by gender, religion, political party, profession or personal history, these are concepts that require the other. No other, no self. I know, it can make you insane. On that note, I return to the main show.

The 20th century philosopher, Michel Foucault (1976), emphasizes the power dynamics involved in the self-society dichotomy. He believes nations exert “biopower” (p. 140) over citizens, referring to the ways they control populations. How governments provide water, electricity, trash collection, and other services affecting physical welfare illustrates biopower. Russian attacks on Ukraine show biopower at work: Missiles hitting crucial infrastructure disempowers the Ukrainian people. The US recently allowed Ukraine to hurl missiles deeper into Russian territory, enabling Ukraine to exert the same biopower. These are, of course, tragic illustrations of the concept.

Operating as a counter-force, individual persons also hold the power to alter societies. Foucault believes that, with the rise of democratic governments, politics became more of an individual, moral concern. The self, in his view, has become the “battlefield” of contemporary politics. By prioritizing themselves over communities, individuals can instigate communal change. The most important personal struggle, in Foucault’s view, is against subjection. No mature person wants to submit themselves to others. Further, he believes, individual-created political change begins with a struggle against one’s “inner enemy,” a concept eliciting the question:

What inner enemy?