Sublime

In other words, in politics, where enemies do exist, one role of the organization, whatever that may be, is to control, indeed to destroy, the consequences of hatred.

An unending sequence of military interventions had to be represented “as an unexceptional part of the state’s external political life” in order to ensure the docility of domestic populations.

almost all these ‘classic’ theoretical formulations of the last century started off from exactly this assumption: that any large and complex society necessarily required a state. The real bone of contention was, why?

In a well-functioning democracy, institutions reduce the risks that accompany conformity, in part because they ensure that conformists will see and learn from dissenters, and hence increase the likelihood that more information will emerge, to the benefit of all. A high-level official during World War II attributed the successes of the Allies, and t

We live in a time where, in the words of social theorist Roberto Unger, we are governed by people who ‘confuse conformism with realism’.6

As long as social difference or any other form of differentiation is present to channel mimetic desire, its conflictual dimension remains contained.

The bureaucratic approach, as we define it, seeks to minimize error and loss, and it prizes consensus above all else.