From blasé attitude to senses apathy: a reflection on the authoritarian potentiality of urban personality

Abstract

We  conduct  in  this  article  an  effort  of  critical  and  non  essentializing interpretation of the blasé phenomenon, taking it as a still valid archetype to think about urban subjectivity on contemporaneity. Without rejecting its usual reading as a reaction of the self absorption of spirit – reserve – in  front of stimuli excess from the metropolis – that if it would not pass through a radical process of selection would lead to a mental life collapse –, we seek to emphasize the social and psychical conditionings that take the blasé as antipathetic rather than indifferent, a subjectivity where the incapability to deal with alterity, and the hatred for the other are in state of latency. Dialoguing with Richard Sennett we seek to demonstrate a relation between social segregation process and the passive body conformation process so related to the blasé phenomenon. In another way, we argue with the critical theory and the psychoanalysis establishing theoretical affinities between the blasé and the authoritarian personality. The relevance of the theoretical debate earns a clear justification on a socioeconomic context of crisis, where the authoritarian latency of urban personality tends to manifest itself over multiple forms of xenophobia, religious intolerance and class hate.