Sunwall on Political Bondings

Here is the audio of today’s brown-bag lecture presented by Mark R. Sunwall of University of Hyogo. The topic is “The Authoritarian Personality: Myth or Mistheorization”--somewhat unusual for this venue but enormously interesting. He was dealing with the fascinating area of the anthropology of political obedience: or, why do people go along with tyranny and under what conditions? In his view, the traditional explanation of the “authoritarian personality” offered by Theodor Adorno and others doesn’t work because it is so inherently partisan. Sunwall instead builds on the work of Renaissance thinkers Machiavelli, La Boetie, and, particularly, Giordano Bruno to put together a theory that strives to be both universal and non-partisan. Without attempting to lay it all out here, Sunwall believes that the tendency to accept malevolent despotism extends from the praiseworthy and essential phenomenon of what G. Bruno referred to as “bonding,” which are the attachments that we development toward others from the earliest to the last years of our life. These bondings are inevitable, essential, and can be based on love and affection or fear and discipline. The error of despotism is in extending personal bonds into the civic realm, which can happen when the bond itself is regarded as more important than any other value, including human freedom, morality, rationality, etc. Here is his matrix, offered here with no further explanation.

------- These concepts of permissive and restrictive forms of civil despotism seem to roughly parrallel with what we are offered in the US in the great contest between red-state fascism and blue-state socialism. Sunwall promised to send us the working paper when it is ready for comment. In the meantime, you will enjoy his lecture.