Isms

Abstract

This essay is the relic of a projected history of ‘individualism in politics’. That enterprise – the reasons for abandoning it will be transparent from what follows – prompted some reflections which may be of more general interest. For no habit is better established in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in political speech, than that of constituting a subject-matter for oneself by means of an -ism. And while there may be instances where the context makes this practice unproblematic, a survey of the past and contemporary record of -isms gives grounds for suspicion and reservations.

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