7.2213 | Let "us" recapitulate, and insist on distinctions that define this story—and its politics. To begin with, there is subjectivity, that is, diversity, dialogue, confrontation, multiplicity of patterns, manifold. Not a peaceful, relaxed confrontation, but one in which every party uses all the strength it has available to impose itself on the others, to cancel them, to be more conspicuous than they are. Then there surface (at least) three other matters: privacy (the disconnecting, isolating of subjectivity as a means of defending established structures from its potential violence), consciousness (a prying, malevolent eye that exposes some of the workings of subjectivity, denies some others, and in general tries to fashion—to tie up—subjectivity into a coherent story, into a secondary elaboration that is now supposed to be living "my" life), and mind (the impertinent erection of subjectivity into an object of overwhelming importance, on a par with all that is not mind—which is to say, with all that is). Each of these matters can serve opposite interests, even at the same time: can be a tool of revolution or tyranny, or (most likely) both. Specific situations will have to be studied one at a time, to bring out the specific balance of forces each of them instantiates. But you want to be clear concerning how the various tools function, and how differently they can (each) function. Then you will see that, say, the consistent story into which "my" consciousness is trying to lock me (that is, lock the subject I am) can be used to confer credibility on the provocative, irritating claim that I—the very negation of objects, of objectivity—am an object, so that the claim might continue to exercise its provocation a while longer, might buy time for its terrorist activity. Or, conversely, that that same story can be turned to making "room" for me in a world of objects, to making me perfectly comfortable with an objective, thinglike view of myself: I am such and such, I can expect such and such from myself, if you press such and such a button in me you will have such and such a response. And you will see the strategic significance of talking casually, matter-of-factly, about "my conscious mind," as if "my," "conscious," and "mind" belonged to a single (complex, but still original—and originally integrated) reality: you will see that phrase (and the identity it intimates, with deceptive naturalness) as a weapon (of disinformation, |