The Bolshevik project of re-engineering people so subjectivity is perfectly identified with History; writers and intellectuals serve as "engineers of human souls."
Moses waits forty years in the desert for the generation with a slave mentality to die out before a new generation can enter the promised land.
The image Shore uses for it, in our paraphrase.
In lecture order, as Marci Shore presents each view. The time opens that minute of the lecture on YouTube.
Revolutionaries build the new order with "hands still withered by the cross of despotism": formed by the old regime, its makers can never be pure.
Put simply Robespierre: revolutionaries build the new order with "hands still withered by the cross of despotism". Shaped by the old regime, the people building the new one can never be pure.
Shore reads the Bolshevik project as Enlightenment perfectibility taken literally: engineer new human beings whose consciousness merges so completely with History that no separate subjectivity remains.
Put simply Shore: the Bolsheviks took literally the Enlightenment belief that people can be perfected. They tried to engineer new humans whose minds merged so fully with History's march that no separate self remained.
What stays metaphysical in Hegel, the "I that is a We," the Soviets tried to realize as literally as they could: any subjectivity diverging from the collective must be purged.
Put simply Shore: Hegel's "I that is a We," the self merged with the community, stays abstract in his philosophy. The Soviets tried to make it literally real: any inner life differing from the collective had to be purged.
A line in Zamyatin's dystopia We runs "We comes from God, I comes from the devil": the I is to be overcome and swallowed by the collective.
Links from these claims to others in the course. Each shows the earlier claim, then the later one that answers it. “Our inference” marks a link Shore does not state outright.
ShoreWhat stays metaphysical in Hegel, the "I that is a We," the Soviets tried to realize as literally as they could: any subjectivity diverging from the collective must be purged. L9 · 7:27
FreudFreud's self is a structure whose parts only make sense together: two vertical layers, unconscious beneath conscious, cut across by three horizontal parts, id, ego and superego. L9 · 30:55
Shore: Freud inverts the Bolshevik I/we model, starting from the first-person singular rather than the collective.
ShoreShore reads the Bolshevik project as Enlightenment perfectibility taken literally: engineer new human beings whose consciousness merges so completely with History that no separate subjectivity remains. L9 · 6:11
FreudWe can never fully know ourselves: what is most basic in us sits in the unconscious, so the self stays opaque to itself and permanently at odds with itself. L9 · 48:02
Freud's never-transparent self makes the Bolshevik goal of transparent identification with History impossible.Our inference
Terms that appear in the same claims.