The “personal” being potentially “political”: Sexuality and gender, power issues within a family or a relationship, etc.
(See e.g. here for a simple explanation of the phrase’s context.)
A kind of the “current discourse” that I mean, then, would be a community and a way of life that would insistently and pervasively tell you how there’s nothing political about coming out as queer, or feeling trapped in your marriage, or being mocked for your psychological issue—it’s an entirely personal problem of you being a “freak”, and you’d better change yourself because you aren’t even allowed the language of changing the system. (One of the first steps in such language being the categorization of the entire sphere as pertaining to the “political”, and needing complete ideological reevaluation.)
This is where the New Left is usually insightful in its criticism of “structural oppression” and other such paranoid-sounding things, IMO.
(Sorry for dropping such a brief and cryptic phrase, really. That would’ve sounded almost trite and obvious in feminist circles—e.g. TimS instantly understood what I meant by it, see below—but I can see how it might look obscure to a general audience.)
I’m still not seeing a point. Obviously the political situation influences personal situations of people, and sufficiently widespread systematic changes in people’s behavior influence aspects of the political situation. (What is the particular relevance for this point of the examples you chose?) The micropolitics you allude to is more about game theory than the global politics that’s usually meant by the word. With this understood, what is the thesis worth making, or the “empirical claim” you’ve referred to?
The “personal” being potentially “political”: Sexuality and gender, power issues within a family or a relationship, etc.
(See e.g. here for a simple explanation of the phrase’s context.)
A kind of the “current discourse” that I mean, then, would be a community and a way of life that would insistently and pervasively tell you how there’s nothing political about coming out as queer, or feeling trapped in your marriage, or being mocked for your psychological issue—it’s an entirely personal problem of you being a “freak”, and you’d better change yourself because you aren’t even allowed the language of changing the system. (One of the first steps in such language being the categorization of the entire sphere as pertaining to the “political”, and needing complete ideological reevaluation.)
This is where the New Left is usually insightful in its criticism of “structural oppression” and other such paranoid-sounding things, IMO.
(Sorry for dropping such a brief and cryptic phrase, really. That would’ve sounded almost trite and obvious in feminist circles—e.g. TimS instantly understood what I meant by it, see below—but I can see how it might look obscure to a general audience.)
I’m still not seeing a point. Obviously the political situation influences personal situations of people, and sufficiently widespread systematic changes in people’s behavior influence aspects of the political situation. (What is the particular relevance for this point of the examples you chose?) The micropolitics you allude to is more about game theory than the global politics that’s usually meant by the word. With this understood, what is the thesis worth making, or the “empirical claim” you’ve referred to?