The Rational Consumer: Bad for Business and Politics

B. Nyamnjoh

Description

This book discusses the seminal role played by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, in the founding of American-style public relations � persuasive communication through manipulation of symbols � and his huge (and cynical) impact on the American economic and political scene. It provides a substantiated and convincing explanation for what is happening today in Donald Trump�s America. In the form of a history of ideas, the book makes clear that the present Trumpian manipulation of democracy and what it means to be American has a long pre-history and continues to go through different phases, involving the cultivation and institutionalisation of strong bonds between business and politics. The book shows how this is intimately linked with a science, intellectualism and practice informed by a series of binary oppositions in human action and interaction (e.g. rationality and irrationality, reason and emotion, mind and body, brain and heart, insider and outsider, us and them) and how unpredictable human nature really is. It makes a convincing argument that being human depends on how successfully we are able to negotiate such apparently contradictory binaries with the intricacies and dynamism of human agency. It is rich and thought provoking and very timely, given the exclusionary politics of fear, anger, hate and nativism we see unfolding not only in the USA but all over the world.

Sujets

• Politique

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 07 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9789956550746
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net
Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookcollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-550-14-0 ISBN-13: 978-9956-550-14-2
© Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher
Table of Contents
Foreword
Pierre Englebert
1. Introduction
2. Captured by Subterranean Forces
3. Freud Adopted and Adapted for Consumerism by Edward Bernays
4. The Rational Consumer: Bad for Business and Politics
5. Freedom at Last or Wolves of Repression in Sheepskin?
6. Conclusion: Beyond Impoverishing Dichotomies
Endnotes
References
Afterword
Jean-Pierre Warnier
Index
Foreword
Pierre Englebert
It is a credit to Francis Nyamnjoh’s open-mindedness and tolerance (or is it his recklessness?) that he asked me to write a foreword to The Rational Consumer: Bad for Business and Politics – Democracy at the Crossroads of Nature and Culture , his latest volume in an already long and rich publication list. The request left me much flattered but also puzzled and – paradoxically for a book largely on reason – questioning his own rationality. Truth be told, I am an ignoramus next to him and largely incompetent in the matters the book addresses. I cannot comment on the Freudian and post-Freudian psychology that sits at the core of the argument with even an ounce of proficiency, nor do I know much about public relations theory. And while I live in the middle of the American mayhem he discusses, I do not study it and have little insightful to say about it, save for sharing the grief I experience like many of us.
And yet, I feel I can maybe contribute something the reader might find useful, for Francis’s book left me inspired, provoked in the best sense of the word and full of reactions, like an eager student in a first-year seminar. Yes, whatever context or discipline one comes from, there is much to learn from this book, which is erudite but in no way inaccessible. Its beautiful prose – as always with Francis – is hospitable to the reader. Even if post-Freudian psychology is not your cup of tea, you will not regret going along for the ride because democracy, liberalism and what makes our humanity (individually and socially) are the real topics of this book, and they certainly are everyone’s concerns.
Subjectively, a few points among many struck me and might whet others’ appetites for reading. The first is the question that buttresses the book: What is the individual freedom to vote if it is based on emotional manipulation? How free are we? One cannot but be left very uncomfortable and forced to introspection at Francis’s words: “democracy becomes exaggeratedly little more than suspending rationality and relentlessly pandering to the hidden, complex, layered and ever-multiplying desires of the elusive individual who seeks freedoms without many responsibilities in return” (p.78).
Second is Francis’s pointed questioning of the origin of the belief that democracy is only compatible with capitalism. For sure, there are strong philosophical foundations to this claim that predate Freud and the empirical evidence – notwithstanding measurement problems that might be self-fulfilling – of the relationship between the two, over time and space, appear robust. Yet, Francis suggests that it is also the result of purposeful and methodical manipulation based on the insights of Freudian analysis, a sort of Gramscian hegemonic thinking that leaves us largely unable to look more critically into it. As someone who studied Economics in American academia, I can confirm that a discipline that vaunts its own rationality and empiricism largely takes its own assumptions as articles of faith.
The reader who, like me, tends to think of herself as somewhat rational cannot help but feel provoked. Going even further, Francis asks to what extent rational liberal individualism, a system so many of us still cherish, might actually be the genetic ancestor of the untruth system that has dominated American politics these last few years.
Francis Nyamnjoh has a gift for the salutary intellectual provocation. His recent text on Rhodes Must Fall , in which he challenged South African xenophobia for its Rhodesian reproduction, was a powerful case in point. His notion that Rhodes did not fall but was merely taking a stroll around the neighbourhood brought up Francis’s formidable sense of humour, his analytical perceptiveness and a call for humility in the face of our certainties. In a different context, The Rational Consumer furthers this intellectual agenda.
In the United States of America, we are fond of using social sciences, our material development and our rationality, as foundations to study other societies. We often find their democracies and their modernisation wanting, short of some standard inspired by an idealised version of ourselves and of where we stand. In this compelling book, Francis Nyamnjoh turns the mirror back on us. It is an unsettling experience, but one that has the potential to enlighten.
Claremont, California 2 July 2018
1
Introduction
A certain age-old, stubborn question about human nature is in no hurry to leave us. Put quite simply, the question is to what extent the human being, at the state of nature, should be credited with a sense of morality. A second question is, how much can that human nature be transformed (corrected or corrupted) by belonging to a society (ideal or real) with a clear set of values, a practised sense of direction, a well-oiled morality and an ethics of mutuality? Is the state of nature to be cultivated and domesticated in the interest of a status quo (contrived or consensual, negotiated or assumed) or kept away from the purportedly corrupting influences of established society and taken-for-granted albeit problematic orders of things?
Put differently, the tension between a human being acting in pursuit of personal interests in full autonomy (motivated or not by reason, emotion or both), and a human being acting in solidarity with other human beings in pursuit of common goals and shared interests undergirded by shared principles and values remains largely unresolved, even as it has fired up many a social engineer with sleepless nights throughout the history of humankind as active agents.
When the need to cultivate nature is emphasised in the interest of one collectivist, societal or civilisational objective or another, it has not always been easy to establish just how much cultivation of nature is necessary, desirable or even possible. Often, the tendency has been to make or stake a claim and act in tune with it until a contradiction surfaces, forcing one to concede that human nature is complex, and that to cultivate or to socialise is to make choices about group membership, belongingness and value systems in conversation with nature, human and environmental. Thus, sending one back to the drawing board to explore alternative relationships and configurations between nature and culture, freedom and subjection, autonomy and collective consciousness and action, independence and dependence, individual and society, particularism and universalism, us and them, self and other, me and you.
This notwithstanding, much of the thinking on human nature and relationships is perplexingly dichotomous. It leaves little room for an accommodating and nuanced perspective informed by an appreciation of the complexity of being human in a nonzero-sum manner and in contexts of Ubuntu-ism , where being called upon to choose amounts to a challenge to seek to include as much and as many as one possibly can (Nyamnjoh 2015; 2017[2015]b).
Equally dichotomous and pitched in terms of binary oppositions has been the debate about the place and power of rationality and irrationality, reason and emotion, mind and body, brain and heart, in human action and interaction. People are presented as either rational or irrational, thoughtful or passionate, active or passive in disposition. The dominant scholarly attitude and approach is perplexingly one of giving up even before making an effort at putting together what at face value nature or its (omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent) creator might have put asunder. Not factored in at all or factored in only sparingly is the possibility that in real life circumstances, in the pursuit of individual or collective self-interest, people are both rational and irrational, thoughtful and passionate, active and passive, depending on the context, the relationship in question and the issues at stake. If rational behaviour is that which serves to maximise the self-interest of an individual, a group or a society, why should one exclude a priori behaviour and action driven by emotions that yield maximum outcome for the self-interest of the individual, group or society concerned? A blind and stubborn insistence on the purity and sanctity of apparent divisions or chasms between reason and emotion (and all that are associated with either) ought really to be seen as an excuse to control through claims and denials of social visibility as a technology of power, status and privilege. Thus, for example, just by accusing an individual of being overly emotional and of being governed more by the heart than by the mind is reason enough to deny that individual the social visibility and status that makes possible claims to power and privilege, or to ha