kick downstairs

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Verb

kick downstairs - assign to a lower position; reduce in rank; "She was demoted because she always speaks up"; "He was broken down to Sergeant"

demote, relegate, bump, break

assign, delegate, designate, depute - give an assignment to (a person) to a post, or assign a task to (a person)

sideline - remove from the center of activity or attention; place into an inferior position; "The outspoken cabinet member was sidelined by the President"

reduce - bring to humbler or weaker state or condition; "He reduced the population to slavery"

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References in periodicals archive ?

The square, as Krauss sees it, defines a kind of idealized space "within which to work out unbearable contradictions produced within the real field of history." This she calls, using the inevitable gallicism, "the site of Jameson's Political Unconscious" and then, in art, the optical unconscious, which consists of what Utopian Modernism had to kick downstairs, to repress, to "evacuate .