Fragments and Quotes
Various Authors
Identity is a chewing bone they throw at you before they peel you down to your bare skin.
— Boris Buden, Iz rata se ništa korisno ne može naučiti
Identity is an ideology that rules the modern world without competition.
— Boris Buden, Postkomunistička tranzicija ideološka je zamka
Enter memetic tribes. We define a memetic tribe as a group of agents with a meme complex, or memeplex, that directly or indirectly seeks to impose its distinct map of reality — along with its moral imperatives — on others. These tribes are on active duty in the new culture war. They possess a multiplicity of competing claims, interests, goals, and organizations. While the red and blue tribes were certainly far from monolithic, any claim to unity between memetic tribes is laughable. An establishment leftist who squabbles with the right must contend with mockery from the Dirtbag Left. Meanwhile, the Dirtbag Left endures critiques from Social Justice Activists (SJA), who in turn are criticized by the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW). The trench warfare of the old culture war has become an all-out brawl.
— Peter N. Limberg & Conor Barnes, The Memetic Tribes of Culture War 2.0
It is interesting that the Congress of the United States recently passed an act making it a very serious offence to burn the American flag. They passed this act with many patriotic speeches and rhetoric and much reciting of poems. This is the most fantastic example of a confusion between symbol and reality, between menu and meal, because this same Congress is directly or indirectly responsible for burning up what the flag stands for, namely the geographical United States and its people. By but not really doing much about the devastation of our forests, the pollution of our water and atmosphere, the reckless waste of our natural resources, and resorting to a form of economy which under any sane circumstances would be termed sheer lunacy. Obviously they cannot distinguish between the symbol and the reality, because we are all hypnotized with words and symbols. And so, when the flag is more precious than the country, we are insane.
— Alan Watts, serija javnih predavanja
More generally, the theory of performative identity offers exactly what subjects of the global parochial village (an idealized consumer community) hear every day and want to hear again and again: that they are free, that they can play with their identity as much as they like, that they can choose what they are and what they will be, because everything, after all, is a mask and a performance. (...) Paradoxically for a theoretical system that denies any metaphysics, within that system freedom can only be realized if the subject is idealistically elevated to the position of the absolute, that is, the absolute consumer who makes a free choice of identity. In practice, things are somewhat different. The subject is forced to realize his freedom by being cunning about the apparent choice: by pretending to choose what has already been chosen. The subject actually agrees in order to invest in the spirit of parochialism. (The Philosophy of Parochialism, p. 25.) In order to exist at all as a subject in the discourse of the global village, the subject must consume one of the identities offered by the discourse.
— Vladimir Tasić, Capitalist Realism and the Philosophy of Global Parochialism