March 11, 2006: On Contradiction: Three Forms of Displacement
I would like to propose that there are three distinct, but interrelated, ways in which social contradictions arising in capitalist society can be displaced. Let's call these temporal, spatial, and scale forms of displacement. Consider an example of how these forms interact: global climate change.
The dominant ideology has framed global climate change as a problem only for future generations to worry about. This is temporal displacement at work. One is supposed to believe that "in the long run, we're all dead, anyway."
Moreover, according to this perspective, global climate change will geographically most likely affect the developing world and the poor. The affluent and those who live in the developed world need not worry--at least not now. ("We'll take of ourselves, and they should do likewise.") Here we find a spatial displacement supplementing the temporal displacement.
Finally, there occurs what I would call a scale displacement, the shifting of a contradiction from society to individual. In the case of global climate change, each of us is supposed to think that he or she is personally at fault. The problem of ecologically unsustainable production has been transformed into a "simple" matter of how to engage in more responsible consumption. Yet isolated consumers can hardly solve a problem of this magnitude and complexity. The result of such scale displacement, then, is quite often apathy or despair.
The moral? Social contradictions like global climate change can only adequately be resolved by addressing simultaneously the three forms of displacement through collective action here and now.
