The fitness and propriety of subaltern groups

Lilienthal, Gary I. and Ahmad, Muhamad Hassan (2023) The fitness and propriety of subaltern groups. In: Regulation of the Professions in East Asia. Social Issues, Justice and Status . NOVA Science Publishers, New York, USA, pp. 123-163. ISBN 979-8-88697-409-6

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Abstract

Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage demonstrates a kind of alterity, occurring during early childhood development. The mirror stage conjures an original image or reflection the "ego ideal", which becomes the child's imaginary self, as he or she tries in vain to reconnect with the ego ideal. In Lacanian terms, this formation of the subject, as a child, sees a splitting of the self into "self" and "other". In the light of the significance of this struggle for the ego ideal, for propriety of the self, the objective of this research is to examine critically the underlying operation of alterity within the conjunctive conception of fitness and propriety. The research question asks how the alterity, that is inherent in the “fit and proper test”, might generate the subaltern groups of fit and proper professions, clients and others. Argument seeks to sustain the view that the fit and proper professions are priestly enterprises of manipulated public memory, by commanding descending chains of the meanings of technical terms, so that the subaltern groups of clients and the general public are somehow morally obliged, inferring a duty, to the institutions of the professions. The research is doctrinal research, based on library research, working with evidentiary sources from the best available analyses of the scholarship. Thus, the research is set out in the structure of five identifiable key themes, in the structure of a legal narrative analysis. The outcomes of the research will conclude that the mysterium tremendum, as a great or profound protean mystery, provides an opportunity for public manipulation of reality. There is therefore an inferred non-priestly subaltern mass of assumed religious adherents, whose reality is controlled by public practices of forced remembrance, but with operative alterity really having existed prior to the commanding group’s cognizing its own apparent moral superiority. If emerging language placed alterity into a structure of existence, then there must have been a second level of alterity, where the one level forever corrected the other, with the first other imagining it had a right from birth to correct the second “fallen” other by altering the canonization of the meaning of words. In this way, Luther had used gospels to replace, and alter at will, the deity itself, rendering the deity protean, suggesting the construction of a descending chain of meanings between the deity and the gospels. This implies a subaltern group is somehow morally obliged to the commanding social group through the commanders’ moral altitude. To stabilize this social paradigm, women are structured as unifying signifiers, subject at any time to command alteration of the doxa within their significations, to bind together both alterity and the confected religious institution version of the ancient custom of matrimony, in order to command the entire human project of propriety.

Item Type:	Book Chapter
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Alterity, Otherness, Fitness and Propriety, Subaltern Groups, Priestly Enterprises, Protean Deity.
Subjects:	K Law > K1701 Labor Law
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws > Department of Civil Law
Depositing User:	Dr. Muhamad Hassan Ahmad
Date Deposited:	09 Mar 2023 17:24
Last Modified:	10 Mar 2023 15:03
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/103913

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