#MassDandyism

[peripatetico]

Mass dandyism wagers that an aristocrat who descends from his court to live with the peasantry, and who might speak for the peasantry, is generally less interesting than a peasant who poses as an aristocrat or who strives, despite the obstacles—sometimes unsurpassable—to become one. The former is powerful enough to renounce what has been his since birth. The aristocrat-turned-peasant does exercise a type of freedom: he has the chance to live as an aristocrat but decides not to. It is true freedom, in that freedom to do what one is supposed or expected to do is not true or actual, but merely apparent. But his freedom to live as a peasant is unmerited and apolitical. He did not have to act to secure it, as it was given to him at birth and secured by his belonging to a family. The peasant who aims at the aristocrat's manners, however, had to dispute the state of the situation in which they initially were. They had to acquire and secure this freedom—a freedom to act differently than one is supposed to—by their own hands. By doing so, they challenged the original distribution of power and reconfigured it. The peasant who behaves as an aristocrat is in this sense more aristocratic than the aristocrat by birthright, who has never dealt reflexively with his social position. He is able to say something more meaningful about the aristocracy than the aristocrat by birthright.