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there is a considerable gap between what folk might undserstand and assume as their personal responsibility and how the term "personal resposibility" functions are a political trope---like kierkegaard said, the former is mostly an inward thing, where the latter is ironic, in that there is necessarily a gap between what it ostenibly refers to and what its signifieds come to be.
politically, the notion of "personal responsibility" is a favorite amongst those who, often against their own interests, argue for privatization, for example. it is an empty term that functions in opposition to a series of equally empty terms that "designate" the effects of state functions like the redistribution of wealth.
the function of this set of empty terms is to operate as a figleaf behind which the contraction fo the state can occur and be legitimated---a reduction that is about reducing the political risks for the state in a period of considerable uncertainty. and nothing other than that.
for example, you have a reconfiguration of the requirements corporations would impose on the labor pool--requirements in terms of training say, which there is no coherent plan to address, because along with that comes the question of what to do with entire segments of the population that once might have been understood as working class in a context where the functions they used to fulfill have been either eliminated through technological development or shipped away to lower-pay more repressive locations (o those pesky unions and their unreasoable demands that workers be paid enough to live)....
having no idea of how to react, and faced with a political problem on top of it that makes considerations impossible to voice publically, the best route is retreat.
and if you can figure out a way to misdirect people by floating false oppositions and empty terminologies to cover that retreat even further, then doing so can seem almost reasonable.
none of this has anything to do with any ethical committments people might have, that they apply to themselves and to those around them--assuming that the category of ethics makes sense apart from the political (a different matter).
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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