{"id":43182,"date":"2018-10-14T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=43182"},"modified":"2018-09-24T08:57:20","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T12:57:20","slug":"qotd-variant-forms-of-kafkatrapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/10\/14\/qotd-variant-forms-of-kafkatrapping\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Variant forms of Kafkatrapping"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the kafkatrap is presented in less direct forms. A common variant, which I\u2019ll call the Model C, is to assert something like this: \u201cEven if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression, \u2026}, you are guilty because you have benefited from the {sinful, racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive, \u2026} behavior of others in the system.\u201d The aim of the Model C is to induce the subject to self-condemnation not on the basis of anything the individual subject has actually done, but on the basis of choices by others which the subject typically had no power to affect. The subject must at all costs be prevented from noticing that it is not ultimately possible to be responsible for the behavior of other free human beings.<\/p>\n

A close variant of the model C is the model P: \u201cEven if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression, \u2026}, you are guilty because you have a privileged position in the {sinful, racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive, \u2026} system.\u201d For the model P to work, the subject must be prevented from noticing that the demand to self-condemn is not based on the subject\u2019s own actions or choices or feelings, but rather on an in-group identification ascribed by the operator of the kafkatrap<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It is essential to the operation of all three of the variants of the kafkatrap so far described that the subject\u2019s attention be deflected away from the fact that no wrongdoing by the subject<\/em>, about which the subject need feel personally guilty, has actually been specified. The kafkatrapper\u2019s objective is to hook into chronic self-doubt in the subject and inflate it, in much the same way an emotional abuser convinces a victim that the abuse is deserved \u2013 in fact, the mechanism is identical. Thus kafkatrapping tends to work best on weak and emotionally vulnerable personalities, and poorly on personalities with a strong internalized ethos.<\/p>\n

In addition, the success of a model P kafkatrap depends on the subject not realizing that the group ascription pinned on by the operator can be rejected. The subject must be prevented from asserting his or her individuality and individual agency; better, the subject must be convinced that asserting individuality is yet another demonstration of denial and guilt. Need it be pointed out how ironic this is, given that kafkatrappers (other than old-fashioned religious authoritarians) generally claim to be against group stereotyping?<\/p>\n

There are, of course, other variants. Consider the model S: \u201cSkepticism about any particular anecdotal account of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression, \u2026}, or any attempt to deny that the particular anecdote implies a systemic problem in which you are one of the guilty parties, is itself sufficient to establish your guilt.\u201d Again, the common theme here is that questioning the discourse that condemns you, condemns you. This variant differs from the model A and model P in that a specific crime against an actual person usually is in fact alleged. The operator of the kafkatrap relies on the subject\u2019s emotional revulsion against the crime to sweep away all questions of representativeness and the basic fact that the subject didn\u2019t do it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Eric S. Raymond, “Kafkatrapping”, Armed and Dangerous<\/em><\/a>, 2010-07-18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes the kafkatrap is presented in less direct forms. A common variant, which I\u2019ll call the Model C, is to assert something like this: \u201cEven if you do not feel yourself to be guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression, \u2026}, you are guilty because you have benefited from the {sinful, racist, sexist, homophobic, oppressive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41],"tags":[1235,589,912,139,417],"class_list":["post-43182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-esr","tag-kafka","tag-privilege","tag-psychology","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-beu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43182"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45043,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43182\/revisions\/45043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}