Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Karl Jaspers coined the term “Axial Age” to describe a widespread, fundamental shift in ethical values that occurred in a number of societies in the mid-1st millennium BCE. It included the rise of Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and the prophetic movement of…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology James Scott describes the general phenomenon as “symbolic jiujitsu.” Prophetic rebellious movements in non-state spaces “appropriate the power, magic, regalia, and institutional charisma of the valley state in a kind of symbolic jiujitsu in order to attack it.” [145] And symbolic jiujitsu…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Scott argues that the popular religion—or “folk Catholicism”—of Christian Europe, far from serving ruling interests, was practiced and interpreted in ways that often defended peasant property rights, contested large differences in wealth, and even provided something of a millennial ideology with revolutionary import….
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Scott does not go far enough, however. He goes too far in stressing the dependence of ideologies of resistance on recuperated content from ideologies of domination, and then neglects the reverse. By definition, we have made the public transcript of domination ontologically…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology Stepping back again and taking a more panoramic view, the religious case is part of an even larger phenomenon: the recuperation of the symbols and values of the ruling class’s legitimizing ideology, and the inversion of the dominant ideology as a weapon against…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology This paper considers, more specifically, liberatory or nonstate ideology as a weapon against power and exploitation. As described by Scott, Zomian religion frequently borrows from the same pool of myths and cultural themes as the dominant religion in state spaces. But it…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology [PDF] The Icelandic Commonwealth, settled disproportionately by small holders fleeing the growing impositions of the king and nobility, was a Zomian population many libertarians are familiar with. The Icelandic settlements recounted in the Sagas took place at a time when kings on the Scandinavian mainland “were…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology For some time it has been the consensus among historians of early Israel that the thoroughgoing conquest of Canaan and resulting tribal domains described in the Book Joshua was anachronistic—a projection onto the past of a geographical state of affairs that existed…
Download: Destroying the Master’s House With the Master’s Tools: Some Notes on the Libertarian Theory of Ideology [PDF] We commonly look at ideology from the perspective of the ruling class, as a legitimizing tool. But ideology serves the purposes of the ruled, as well—as a guide to action in their class interest. The respective ideologies of rulers and…
