The Single Source of Moral and Intellectual Innovation
Sacrificial as generalization, nominalism as lowering the threshold. I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's interesting (and I suppose implicit in my post). Nominalism in general wouldn't mean lowering the threshold (looking at the beginning of this sentence leads me to wonder whether you could look at nominalism nominalistically)--It's the new naming, against the sacrificial background, that does the lowering. Here, I'm thinking about "sacrificial" as the division of the object--you can only proceed to the division of the object once you have driven out the source of the asymmetry. So, stereotyping allots a portion to all along with preparing in advance a schedule of victims. But this assumes a general economy of stereotyping--so, the lower form of sacrificial thinking would be generalization for thee, but not for me--I'm normal and natural, you're the aberration. (I see plenty of discussions of Jews that fit one model or the other.) If there's a schedule of victims, there's room for deferral.
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Or maybe we're all a bit Jew and a bit Nazi, but never completely one or the other and, potentially, at least, no one ever so much one or the other as to leave no more space for additional complexity (maybe we don't like Jews "in general" but I'm ready to look for the just ones, however few they may be). (Knowledge may be sacrificial, then, but thinking isn't necessarily.)
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You seem to be questioning whether there is any definitive meaning to the category of "pedophile," which amy then be related to the question of either stereotyping thus-designated "pedophiles" (as what?) or stereotyping a particular group (however delimited) as disproportionately pedophilic. Perhaps the stereotyping of pedo-types creates the false category; or the false category leads to equally false stereotyping. I'm guessing, perhaps wrongly, that you are objecting to the cutting off of certain desires from the broader continuum of desires so that they can be marked as both irremediable and deviant. So, if a 30 year old man desires a 23 year old woman, we would all agree that's perfectly normal; 22 year old, still normal; 21, still ok... but we will get to a threshold at which that 30 year old man needs to be conceptually and physically removed from the human community. And that threshold will be culturally and therefore political defined, but presented as if it derives from a natural and universally shared moral sense. The establishment of the category of pedophilia, I think, ultimately depends on some form of elder-younger sex that would universally be condemned. I think there are such practices--is there any individual or culture that would allow a 30 year old man to vaginally penetrate a 5 year old girl or anally penetrate a 5 year old boy? In that case, the word "pedophile" has such an image affixed to it--it rings that bell whenever it is used. And once the bell can be rung, it will be rung by whoever can gain something, like discrediting a political opponent, or an ex-spouse, by doing so. And who will be found to argue for lowering the age of consent or adulthood for sexual purposes--once there is a digital lynch mob out for Roy Moore for dating a 17 year old as a 32 year old, who is going to come along and say, 'that's perfectly fine, I think 32 year olds should be able to date 16 year olds--for that matter, I'm willing to discuss 15..." That fact that very few (there are some, I've seen them) are willing to essay such a defense of "dating teenagers" marks this as sacrificial territory. So, the way to get out of this sacrificial territory (and I'm still not sure how or if we are really talking about stereotypes here, unless it's the "once a pedophile, always a pedophile--and only a pedophile" mark that seems to attain to anyone so accused) we'd have to think about all this very differently. I think these moral panics result from a crisis in the "consent" model of sexuality which has replaced the hitherto universal model of close adult and communal supervision of sexuality, with sexuality confined as much as possible within marriages approved and often arranged by familial authority. Those more "archaic" cultures had no problem marrying off a 12 year to her cousin because consent wasn't an issue, an open sexual "market" was never considered and sex could not be separated from all the family, communal and sacred ties constituting individuals in relation to each other. Once "consent" becomes the sole criteria for determining the "legitimacy" of sexual relations, everyone goes mad because the absolutely separate and equal individual who could consent in some "confirmable" way doesn't exist--it's unequal power relations, dependencies, illusion, mimetic contagion all the way down. And people can only legitimate the world of consent by singling out the most obviously "unconsentable" relationships, and focusing all moral opprobrium on those. It's like knowing that you're good, or at least not evil, by knowing how different you are from Hitler.
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I've been reading the anthropologist C.R. Hallpike's "How We Got Here," and in his opening discussion of the most primitive hunter-gather societies he points out that these people don't count past 2 or 3 and so if you ask them how many rivers are on their territory they don't even understand the question because each river is itself, with its own features, its own mythology, its own memories, etc.; the same with "how many knives" you have, as each knife is incomparable to the others, etc. This resistance to all categorization is a high form of morality and thinking, even as it has come to depend upon high level abstractions: each and every soul as a sacred entity is a highly abstract concept. I think the interruption of accusations of pedophilia relies on the accusation being made--that is, if you just say "no one should ever be called a pedophile in such and such a tone and "someone's age" should never be a means of "marking" them as inviolate," etc., then a wide range of resentments are stripped of their name but will not cease to exist because each and every person also has those who are responsible for him or her. The better approach is the patient deconstruction of accusations as they are made--and if the accusations are valid, accounting more precisely for their validity.
Yes, Gans has instructed us that the "market society" was "always already" prefigured on the originary scene, but I disagree with this. Gans has never shown any interest in power, and it mars much of his analysis of modernity. Feudalism has not been replaced by unregulated egalitarian atoms in market motion--it has left a vacuum into which power has rushed, power which benefits from not being named as such. That 24/7 supervision is a large part of it, and every society, I would be willing to bet, has had it's equivalent to our antiseptic "age of consent," with various initiatory rituals marking the different stages of maturity. In every community, it means something to "violate" "children," even if what counts as "violation," who is considered the real "victim" of the violation, and what counts as "children" will differ very widely.
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You beg the question of whether the nuclear family should be protected. I'd say it depends upon "from what," and against which alternatives. From the current movement, still tiny but such things can grow very rapidly these days, to eliminate the family in the name of direct care taking by the state of all children, I would defend the the nuclear family. If it becomes possible to recreate more sane overlaps between immediate family, extended family, community, nation and state, then I would be in favor of transitioning the nuclear family into this more complex web.
But the ideology of "consent" will always be incoherent under any set of relations.
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Send it here--it won't get buried,like in my email.
I think I'm accounting for desire through what I am calling the "imperative exchange," for which I am also very dependent upon that same E of C. Desire is both socially constructive and socially constructed--we can't treat it as "natural" and "spontaneous" any more than we can treat it as epiphenomenal or mere symptom. The way to take this into account is to situate it within language, especially the imperative, the most transparent linguistic expression of desire. Through the imperative exchange, we can see any particular desire in a chain of desire (our imperatives are extensions of those issued to us), along with the demystification of desire (but also its enshrinement) in the declarative.
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This is also a question of power--scapegoating and sacrificial thinking/practice is encouraged by power vacuums and power struggles. If your question is, "how do we take out Roy Moore?," then the answer is "pile on the accusations so that truth cannot be distinguished from falsity, crime from misdemeanor from lawful and appropriate, until a vast cloud of smog covers the issue and everyone just wants it to go away." The solution is to take away the question.