Conclusions of Three Indicators: Fitting Narcoculture in Somatic Dignity Model
To recap the analysis of this case study, by abstracting from these illustrative qualities of Narcoculture, we generalize the source of this movement of conflict in two ways. The first is from a traditional environmental or circumstantial analysis, which could certainly be applied to discourses of psychology and sociology, but is much more grounded in the particulars than a philosophical narrative. The second, through this conceptual ‘practical philosophy,’ as demonstrated by this series of articles’ application of a Somatic Dignity framework, is through the lens of broader questions about the tendencies of human nature and its interaction with institutional forces. Alberto-Sánchez, a philosopher himself, supports a sort of synthesis of the two, demonstrating how policy analysis and historical inquiry can collaborate with philosophy for a directly applicable use of its narratives to generate meaningful change. He notes that “the history of narcoculture is wrapped up with the history of America’s War on Drugs…the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914, which regulated the sale and distribution of opiates and coca products and continues to do so to this day…[and] American (or US) intervention in the dismantling of the Colombian drug-trafficking infrastructure- namely, with the fall of Pablo Escobar in 1993. More impactful to its continual survival and evolution is its reactionary relationship with US antidrug (and border) policy, a relationship that forces narco-culture to continuously change, morph, and evolve with every new regulation US lawmakers invent to curb or combat the sale, consumption, and trafficking of illegal or illicit drugs. As drug use and sales are further criminalized in the US, thereby pushing consumers and producers alike further an further past the periphery of legality, Mexico narco-culture flourishes and becomes mainstream, turning ‘Mexico at the dawn of the twenty-first century into a bloodbath that has shocked the world.’” (Alberto- Sánchez, 2020, 2-3).
And yet, Alberto-Sánchez simultaneously describes how “As a historical event and social fact, narco-culture and the violence that frames it reveal a human crisis.” Seeing his utilitarianly motivated responsibility to employ philosophy, he notes that this is a question about violence and death, and thus, best understood through the methodology of phenomenology and existentialism, connecting the “violent terrorism,” of narco-culture with the same phenomena we have seen in Naziism and fascism, which as we know, parallel just as simply Enlightenment vs. Religious violence as Hegel observed in the French Revolution. For Alberto-Sánchez, and certainly historicist philosophers comprising the foundation of my Somatic Dignity theory, these iterative, violent identity-based conflicts cannot be understood from the perspective of the individual. Rather, “Within the violent terrorism of narco-culture, moreover, the ‘individual’s impotence’ is, in fact, absolute; individuals are swallowed up by the culture of violence itself, defined in their identity by a cultural ethos, by an ideology that is greater than themselves- so much so that they can no longer think beyond the immediacy of their station and believe themselves impotently tied to their circumstances,” (Alberto-Sánchez, 2020, 4). He agrees, then, that it is philosophy which is uniquely equipped to breakthrough these particulars of the situational crisis and place them within larger frameworks to understand the propaganda and violence, or the true sources of the seeming absurdity of the terror (Alberto-Sánchez, 2020, 4-5). This is what we see demonstrated through not only his own work, but the application of Somatic Dignity here.
Somatic Practices as Alternative to Mastery: Case Study of Marisela Escobedo’s movement against Narcoculture’s Femicide
Seeing that narco-culture phenomenologically overlaps strongly with Hegel’s framework of cultural mastery, and therefore, the character of a historical crisis over a deprivation of the recognition of dignity, it follows that there might be promise in the Somatic Dignity framework of providing a solution to this and related conflicts. Returning to the original proposal of Somatic Dignity, we must then consider if mastery is the harmful psychological response, how can we scale the transcendentally powerful habits of the slavish consciousness, who performs embodied work, and thus, learns to transform his own character alongside that of the world around him? By searching for parallels between the Somatic Dignity proposals and the movement of Escobedo in the documentary as well as Alberto-Sanchez’s practical philosophical solution, this series of articles will both provide an extended defense of the previous proposal, and demonstrate how it can and has been successfully applied to an acute case example. As such, it will provide a foundation for the original argument that we have an ethical responsibility toward practical philosophy particularly with regard for these historical iterative identity-based conflicts, due to its unique capacity for human-nature/institutional analysis, not simply because of the destructive degree of conflicts.
By responding to the death of her daughter by engaging in the imagination and construction of a social movement to raise consciousness around femicide and make a call for justice, Marisela Escobedo embodies something akin to this Hegelian slavish consciousness. We can call the death of Escobedo’s daughter the initial existential crisis, or instilling of existential fear that melts away the slave’s stability of identity or perception of the world. This existential crisis or fear is renewed with each threat posed to Escobedo or her family in her efforts, which were frequent and serious. Following the moment of threat, Escobedo dropped her usual activities within her family, or her former “social role” within the Family as a mere being for herself, and entered a more dynamic shared role of Family/Citizen in her public engagement so as to achieve justice for her daughter. This hybrid social role, or challenging of the usual Hegelian borders of ethical institutions suggests the creation of an already more fluid space as a result of the adoption of this transcendentally powered consciousness.
Now having all of the norms of her previous life shattered through the existential crisis, Marisela Escobeda began to engage in a process of imagination, trying to analyze the roots of injustice so as to imagine a better future and chart a path of tangible, working steps to actualize that vision. This ability to imagine and create a new future is a clear example of transcendental consciousness. At first, Escobedo tried standard institutions; searching for her daughter’s remains and the answer to what happened to her by hand, and then pursuing the legal/court system, and appealing to the government. She went to the streets and asked other people for answers, put clues together, and dug through landfills examining bones. She learned the law around the case, gathered and presented evidence, and experienced the emotional toil of expressing all of this at the mercy of a higher authority obsessed only with maintaining their mastery, which involves the cartels and normalization of femicide. She is, in other words, performing embodied, physical work at the will of the consuming, cultural mastery.
In doing so, that melting down process of all norms and stability of her identity recurs as each institution fails to grant Escobedo justice. This fluidity is what allows her to see the world through new eyes, and set different priorities as to what must be done about it, as seen in her switching ethical roles in the Hegelian system, dropping previous activities, and launching a broader movement. Laws no longer mean anything to her, nor respect for or trust in political authority, so she is forced to come to a new understanding of this subversive, systemic mastery and what power really is. She does not, however, want to be like the Masters, as looking upon narco-culture from the slavish perspective, she can see it is not fulfilling. She can see the perpetrator constantly on the run, and now stuck in that violent life- alive, with power, but not really living for himself. She chooses, thusly, to not share the desire for Mastery, but rather, to transform the world for a higher purpose.
When constructing the movement to raise consciousness around femicide, Escobedo included several key aspects that align with the Somatic Dignity model. First, she channeled person-based narratives through mass media, such that she was not spreading an abstract ideology, but an embodied story that connects with a broader problem, that hinges on an empathetic resonance to have power. Second, she undid the dignity deprivation that occurred for victims of femicide by seeking honor for her daughter and, with others who had lost particular individuals, performed rituals of honor such as holding vigils, leaving flowers and holding faces up so as to give these women a being-for-themselves again within their families, but also meaning within a collective somatic consciousness that is rooted in an emotional, dynamic recognition of the dignity of persons, rather than an abstract notion. She observed that this dignity was intrinsic, but also failing to be recognized by institutions, and through the process of consciousness raising, worked to help individuals and small groups engaging generate empathy and pressure institutional change/ shatter faith and expose corruption of institutions such that there was hope for shifting the historical needle of recognition for women in a positive direction, rather than focusing on her own particular actions.
This follows the Critical Theorist tradition of generating movements, as seen in Martin Luther King Jr.’s influence on the Civil Rights Movement, where it is clear a particular embodied, engaged consciousness has to develop within individuals to allow for imagination, innovative collective action and institutional reform that is responsible rather than a complete overhaul taken by violent force. This is different than an antagonistic use of nonviolence, which aims still to make an impact through some show of force that puts pressure on existing institutions, as Judith Butler points out can be a typical social foundation of movements of non-violence, as in the case of Ghandi (Butler, 2020). It puts a heavier emphasis on cultivating an embodied, transcendental recognition of an individual’s own dignity within themselves which they will then scale in an ethical responsibility to preserve the now perceptible dignity of others. This does not pit two opposing forces, but simply breaks down prior norms and opens someone’s capacity for empathy on a revolutionary scale which will be reflected in accordingly shifted institutions as a result of such a movement. This organically scales because it is dignity deprivation which is the mistaken root of binary, polarized social tensions in these moments of conflict, or to put more simply, that leads to two abstract forces, old institutions and new, fighting by force in the mastery dialectic. As such, fulfilling recognition of dignity will be something, when presented with, many will be thirsty for and receptive of.
In fact, it is Butler’s central claim that to pursue nonviolence “plainly” to solve these problems, or in other words, to understand “non-violence” as a “dialectical opposite to ‘violence,’” as they are often mistaken by our institutions, is often more detrimental. As put by Saswat Samay Das and Dhriti Shankar, two reviewers of Butler’s latest book, when the institution sets up a rigid non-negotiable categorical divide between what it calls violence and nonviolence rather than treating them as divergent yet overlapping processes arising out of expressing and affecting each other, it lays the scope for their partisan manipulation and exploitation for “the purposes of concealing and extending violent aims and practices” (Samay Das, Sawat, Shankar, Dhriti, 2021, 102; Butler, 2020, 5). To instead pursue this transcendental formulation of embodied consciousness of dignity is to move out of the binary polarized space into a dynamic engagement with others to carefully imagine gradual institutional reform according to a particular issue, not the force of an ideological “side” claiming to deem a person holistically good or evil through their loyalty to it.
For Butler, nonviolence with integrity is founded on a radical acknowledgement of the social relatedness of the subject. She views the supreme act of nonviolence as the act of registering the “grievability” of certain lives. Unlike the Masters of Narcoculture or the Reign of Terror, who inflict unimaginable brutality so as to dehumanize, nonviolence is Escobedo, again, giving those who lost their lives to femicide dignity, or value for their lives within themselves, through the practice of grieving together. It is this grieving together that builds an engaged movement to reconstruct their world as one of greater justice and recognition of dignity that can translate into institutional shifts without force in the way of abstract revolution (Samay Das, Sawat, Shankar, Dhriti, 2021, 103; Butler, 2020, Chapter 1).
Limitations in Impacting Institutional Shifts: The Individual vs. Historical Narrative, and a Return to the Ethical Responsibility towards ‘Practical Philosophy’
The biggest limitation of the Somatic Dignity approach which should be noted is rooted in the inherent dynamic of individuals versus institutions in cultivating a shift of the historical needle. Embedded in the larger movement of German Idealism, Hegel grapples with this question head on. However, we can also see it illustrated in Marisela Escobedo’s efforts to counter the historical movement of narcoculture, and related feminist or social justice movements. Through a brief synthesis of these two frameworks in the spirit of the Somatic Dignity proposal, we will examine how important those limitations are in discouraging the push for institutional spreading of Somatic Dignity, and in some ways, other efforts of ‘Practical Philosophy.’
Beginning with Hegel’s interaction with German Idealism, the large movement of German Idealism ventured to fill a logical gap Kant’s framework of transcendental philosophy, such that Kant’s project would not only provide an explanation for how it is we can have knowledge of how we can have knowledge, but be self-explanatory, and explicate how it is we can have knowledge of how it is we can have knowledge. In doing so, they have to understand how it is the self can both be a universal, self-determining thing which possesses freedom, and therefore dignity, but that same self can also posit itself as a finite being which is therefore limited, rather than fully free, by other beings via moral law. In this way, the construction or conception of the self and dignity is directly related to the source and content of ethical obligations.
The first major thinker to take up this project following Kant was Fichte, who asserted that we ought to understand the self as a paradox between this universal, Absolute self, which could fully determine itself, and the finite self posited by the absolute self, this being the tangible, particular being in the world (Fichte, 1994). He understands freedom to be the mechanism by which individual selves are able to fulfill their moral obligations. However, he also argues that freedom is something which we can never fully attain or understand, but only move towards asymptotically across the course of history, thus creating a massive limitation for individual selves in generating historical change or ever fully recognizing dignity.
Schelling, the next major contributor to the Idealist project, critiques Fichte for practicing a “one-sided Idealism,” and argues that the self cannot be understood without its relationship to the objective, or independent unconscious world- Nature (Schelling 1800). Schelling instead understands Nature and the Self to be united under an shared telos or end purpose- this being the fulfillment of moral duty. Nature, he argues, is self-determining insofar as it determines itself so as to allow for conscious selves to have and be able to exercise freedom, and freedom, or the self-determination of the conscious subject is the mechanism by which to fulfill moral duty. In this way, they are individually self-determining but unified concepts that limit each other due to their subordination to an ultimate cause. Because the exercising of freedom can only happen when the self-determining subject is manifested as a tangible, finite being on Earth, Nature self-determines the self as a finite being, answering Fichte’s question without the contradiction.
Schelling believes, however, that this conception of the self and freedom, and therefore dignity, can only be uncovered through the philosophy of art, rather than formal discursive logic, or precise formulation (Schelling, 1800). Art, he believes, epitomizes the relationship between the conscious self-determining self, and the unconscious self-determination of Nature unified in one task. The artist, in creating a piece, exercises conscious intent in the subject matter and its representation, thereby contributing meaning. The natural materials they work with, however, such as the paint, canvas and so forth, also contribute unconsciously to the meaning of the final product. As such, philosophizing about their unification, he believes, is one way of understanding the relationship between the self and Nature so as to learn about the historical process of fulfilling moral vocation. This is, again, exceptionally limiting for individuals trying to understand freedom so as to exercise their moral duty, as it is ultimately imperfect.
Hegel, then, agrees with Schelling’s latest contribution that such a project cannot fall into a one-sided idealism as Fichte proposed, as this does not consider Nature, or an objective sphere that exists independently and determines itself separately from Subjectivity, nor the proper relationship between Subjectivity and Objectivity (Hegel, 2010). He also maintains Schelling’s argument that in order to evade this trap, transcendental philosophy must focus on the Absolute, or what exists prior to the subject vs. object distinction, and thus acts as a source for each. Hegel provides a critique, however, of Schelling’s assertion that the Absolute cannot be understood through consciousness or discursive thought, (this being understanding the Absolute through logic or language), and instead can only be grasped through art, and the philosophy of art. This happens particularly through a critique of Schelling’s claim that the Absolute is the ‘absolute indifference point’ in the System of Transcendental Idealism.’
According to Hegel, the Absolute cannot be something which exists prior to any difference, the most fundamental being Subjectivity and Objectivity, because to think any concept of the Absolute, including a particular unity between these through the teleological orientation of both towards moral vocation, involves generating a negation between the two things so as to make them cognizable, (this thing is what it is because it is not this other thing) and therefore, includes difference. Instead, the Absolute, Hegel believes, must be an identity of identity and difference themselves, because this is the most abstract indeterminate point, and it is indeterminacy which allows us to affirm concepts without negation. Hegel proves this indeterminacy point as a resolution to the contradiction still present in Schelling’s account through the framework of the Dasein, or the finite, conscious, determinate being, which is able to offer a determinate negation of Being that allows Being and Nothing, which Hegel argues are the most indeterminate and therefore legitimate starting point of the task of understanding the Absolute, to be understood as distinct things, and therefore not be contradictory to one another but provide a solid starting concept with no internal difference.
In other words, for Hegel, there is a pathway by which we can formally understand the nature of our freedom or dignity. However, it is not through discrete, or brute facts about dignity. Rather, it is through the logical movement of resolving contradictions between finite beings and their absolute, eternal character (complete freedom or dignity). Fichte and Schelling both try to resolve contradictions in the self through discrete logic. Hegel says that instead, logic has infinite movement through a finite pattern, and that pattern of movement, a dialectical pattern, is what reveals the character of dignity. Individuals, then, may make certain resolutions of contradictions of their own historical circumstances, which move institutional change in favor of wider recognition forward, but ultimately this is a broader historical task, as outlined in the intro to Somatic Dignity.
In this way, the individual is a necessary mechanism for historical change in favor of fulfilling our moral duty, and widening dignity recognition. However, particular individuals will never fulfill that full vocation on their own. In this way, historically scaled change, or institutional impact that shapes the habits and prejudices of all individuals is the most important form of moral engagement, and it starts with the movement of the individual’s psychology out of the tendency for mastery and into the dynamic, transcendentally powered slavish consciousness. Movements which help to cultivate those psychological shifts and use them to civically engage in movements that spread these habits are the most equipped for fulfilling ethical obligations.
Because philosophy, as demonstrated through the case study of Somatic Dignity theory as applied to narcoculture, is the most equipped, and uniquely so, to understand this relationship of the individual to history, and this moral vocation is the broad telos of the human species, it is not a mere discrete utilitarian ethical obligation to participate in practical philosophy, or applying these patterns to the contradictions and conflicts of our time, but a deeper responsibility. Without it, we have no framework by which to determine what movements for historical change are constructed with a positive benefit, and which will land us in another contradiction and spiral of immeasurably brutal violence. We need philosophy to see the transcendental power and importance of movements like Escobedo’s and the broader way in which those habits apply to other global conflicts, if we are to move the needle in our own time, and not go back into the same easy misunderstandings of our past. As Butler points out, it is easy to label a cause with something everyone can agree is good, as well as with a moral quality like “non-violence,” and in fact foster more aggression and dehumanization. Philosophy offers a sophisticated historical analysis of psychology that allows us to move into a truly impactful shift of our own habits, and ultimately, our historical condition of recognition such that we can live truly more fulfilled lives, rather than delusions of mastery.