Psychoanalysis and Politics

Exclusion and the Politics of Representation

Lene Auestad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429917745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book examines the nature of social exclusion and the aspects of the politics of representation in the social, interpersonal, and political field. It questions how psychoanalysis can be used to think about the invisible and subtle processes of power over symbolic representation.

PART I

THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS

Editor’s introduction to chapter one

In The dread of sameness: social hatred and Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences”, Karl Figlio argues that antipathy is more rooted in sameness than in difference. Consciously, is the argument, we exclude others who are different from us, while unconsciously, it is sameness that we hate, and we avoid the experience of sameness by creating delusional differences. Thus our problem is not that of managing difference, but rather one of managing the unease which inheres in human society. The common sense of hating difference, states the author, is easier to believe than a hatred of sameness, as it reinforces a defence against self-examination. Such self-examination might reveal a hated similarity, pointing to a more fundamental hatred, of the similarity that is, in the limit, oneself. Figlio refers to Murer’s (2010) characterisation of the Dayton Accords as having consolidated the belief in the hatred of ethnic difference as the basis for narratives of identity. It replaced seventeen recognised national minorities with three identities inflamed by nationalist rhetoric: Serb, Croat, and Muslim, acting as ego ideals; identity-erosion thus becomes a rift between ego and ego ideal, a loss that sparks violence. While being left with oneself, it is argued, whether as an individual or as a group, is a hateful state of affairs, being left with an other very similar to oneself is nearly as hateful, but the latter situation is one that offers a way out, namely the creation of an other by means of a projective attack. An example of the disjunction between conscious perception of difference and the unconscious phantasy of sameness that provokes hatred, is that of the difference between male and female. In reference to Freud’s notion of a taboo as a defence against a wish, Figlio adds that the horror of castration opposes a wish to be castrated. Alongside the son’s Oedipal wish to have mother to himself as a partner, there is the wish to be mother, and to be at the origination of himself. Castration horror, in this sense, acts as a defence, while the difference is in fact reassuring to the male, since it makes the threat appear to emanate from an external object, rather than as a wish from inside. The drive to be the same is a characteristic of narcissism; as the ego comes into being there is a tension between the ego being an object for itself and being replaced by an external object; here, external reality is a source of contamination. The ambivalence which in a mature form refers to loving and hating the same object, refers, at an earlier level, to the anxiety of annihilation in assimilating to, and differentiating from, an object. Figlio links this with a paranoidschizoid mode of thought, where the replica other threatens the ego with extinction, and the depressive mode, in which the ego gives itself over to protect the other. With reference to Mitchell’s (2003) work on the ambivalence constituted by the sameness between siblings, he emphasises how the presence of a sibling is both a comforting reassurance and at the same time “the thief of one’s being”. Girard (1988) goes further than Mitchell in claiming that violence inheres in sameness, managed by choosing and expelling or sacrificing a group member as its representative. This scapegoat is both internal and external to the society, both desecrated and sacralised, and the process is ritualised, so as to form the basis of religion. Crucially, the projection aims to dispel, not just the sameness, but the wish for sameness. Thus projection does not expel something already present in the self and unwanted, but rather creates the conviction of unwanted parts of the self in the very process of projection. Underlying the projection is the wish to have the qualities of, to be the same as, the other. In Yugoslavia, political disintegration produced nationalist sentiments as a secondary consequence, creating communities of fear (Allen, 1996). The Serbian attempt to cleanse the nation of Muslims and Catholics by rape, the author argues, exemplifies how the phantasy of contamination by the object is a projection that conceals the wish to contaminate the object. Terror and excitement are confused and intermingle: the excitement of polluting and thereby destroying the object coexists with the excitement of dwelling in the object by inseminating it. The excited phantasy of polluting the woman is aimed at destroying her in hatred, and thus to re-establish a difference, while at the same time wanting to identify with her. Thus the attack enacts the collapse of identity into narcissism, sought as well as dreaded, revealing how a conscious aim, of defending against an aggressive object, is “normal” in the sense of well anchored in reality, while simultaneously supporting an illusory world of a regressive pull into a pre-objectal world.

Chapter One

The dread of sameness: social hatred and Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences”

Karl Figlio

One normally thinks that we stick together with others like us, and that we exclude others whose difference provokes antipathy towards them. I will argue that antipathy is more rooted in sameness than in difference. Consciously, we exclude others who are different, but unconsciously, we hate sameness, and avoid it by creating delusional differences. Hatred drives the projection of these delusional differences into the other that it creates, there to be exterminated. Overt differences, to which the delusional differences can be attached, mask the delusional projection and the source of hatred in sameness.

In what Freud called “the narcissism of minor differences”, neighbours harboured the most persistent grievances against each other. “[P]recisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well … are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other …” (1930a, p. 114). He went on to say that

the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered the most useful services to the civilisations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows. When once the Apostle Paul had posited universal love between men as the foundation of his Christian community, extreme intolerance on the part of Christendom towards those who remained outside it became the inevitable consequence. (Freud, 1930a, p. 114)

The clear implication was that Jews provided the “neighbour” that the host community could vilify, exclude, and annihilate, on behalf of its own coherence; and they provided it for any community. Without such a contribution, new “neighbours” would erupt from imminent rifts inside the host community. As eternal neighbours, Jews might be different from their hosts, but as Freud says, “often in an indefinable way” (1939a, p. 91). Freud suggests that the antipathy of the narcissism of minor differences does not arise as a consequence of difference, but in the creation of difference. The problem is not managing difference, but managing the endogenous unease in human society.

There is substantial documentation of entrenched tribal hostility between neighbours: in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea; between the Nuer and Dinka in the Sudan; between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda; in the Holocaust, which aimed to expunge all European Jews, including those who were German. One could add Balkan nationalism, with the disintegration of Yugoslavia into civil war between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, sparked by the eruption of Serb nationalism when Albania and Croatia, each with minority Serb populations, bid for independence (Ignatieff, 1998); the “troubles” in Northern Ireland (Blok, 1998); the eruption of Georgian nationalism with the disintegration of the Soviet empire; the forced eviction of ethnic/national populations, suddenly rendered “foreign” by post-war redrawn boundaries (Schulze, 2006; Volkan, 2006, pp. 21–34) (Volkan speaks of an “ethno-nationalism”).

Nonetheless, the idea that we hate difference is so deeply engrained that it might be difficult to consider the thesis that it is sameness that we hate, especially given the historical, sociological, and economic complexities of each case. Each case of virulent aggression between ethnic groups strengthens the belief that we hate difference. In my view, however, the common sense of hating difference is easier to believe because it reinforces a defence against self-examination, a self-examination that could reveal a hated similarity or, more fundamentally, the hatred of the similarity that is, in the limit, oneself. Difference supports a defence against such self-examination. Vamik Volkan says that “we create [minor differences], in order to strengthen the psychological gap between enemy and ourselves” (1986, p. 187), but this formulation, while it refers to creating difference, is in danger of begging the question: the origination of the psychological gap—the difference that apparently attracts the hatred—is the problem to be explained, not the answer to it.

Jeffrey Murer’s analysis comes close to mine. Taking the case of Bosnia, which was partitioned by the Dayton Accords along the ethnic lines created by the Bosnian war of 1993–1995, Murer argues that “[t]hese institutionalised identity frames now channel continuing conflict through symbolic and structural violence, even as they helped to end the physical violence and military hostilities of the 1990s” (2010, p. 2; also, McMahon & Western, 2009). The settlement consolidated the belief in the hatred of ethnic difference on which narratives of identity had been built. This characterisation of ethnic hatred between ancestral enemies is cemented in place by the idea of conflicts frozen by the imposition of authority, as in the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, which erupt when the authority collapses. He argues for a fluid notion of identity, formed in continuous relationship with the other, constantly constructing new narratives of identity in response to specific conflicts. “[A]cting out the conflict is the performance of identity [which forms] through a series of threats, responses, and the narrative structures that chronicle those responses” (Murer, 2010, p. 4).

“[T]he political institutions created by the Dayton Accords inhibit opportunities for different collectivities to engage one another inter-subjectively …” (Murer, 2010, p. 8). Instead of the seventeen recognised national minorities, it has created three identities—Serb, Croat, and Muslim—whose relationships are inflamed by nationalist rhetoric. They are ethnic groups, not political parties in a nation, and they act as ego ideals. Any erosion of identity constitutes a rift between ego and ego ideal, an absolute loss that sparks violence in order to demonstrate belonging by defending the group ego ideal.

Murer has identified a certain comfort in holding to the conviction that these differences are immutable and antagonistic, and can only be mitigated by quelling them. This conviction maintains a fragile equilibrium, but the more similar are these identities, the more they threaten to dissolve into each other, the more easily disturbed is the equilibrium, and the more readily they turn to violence to rebuild their differences (Murer, 2010, p. 16). Murer refers this inflammatory instability to an enemy within—Kristeva’s “abject other”—a totally demeaned self that seeks redemption by demeaning an abject other outside, for which a kindred other best serves.

But what is the nature of this internal enemy? I will begin with the transformations and outcomes of narcissism, specifically the implication that narcissism intensifies as the overt differences between people decrease, producing a “narcissism of minor differences”. At the heart of it lies an unease that must be projected. It is not that objects—ethnic identities—pre-exist, but that they are created in the process of projection. The differences that spark violence are delusions, fostered by projection: that is implicit in the idea that the group is an ego ideal, whose demands are most immediately satisfied by violence against the non-ideal, demeaned, other. We can call this unease the death drive or the abject, but the issue remains: it seems that to be left with oneself, whether as an individual or as a group, is hateful; to be left with an other very like oneself is nearly as hateful, but it offers a ballistic, projective attack as a way out. To create such an other is most effective, because it can be done any time, anywhere, as an omnipotent phantasy. To retreat into an enclave in which, externally, one is acting rationally, while, internally, a delusional world is maintained, creates a rigid, but stable structure.

The instability of the narcissistic ego

The basic problem is the illusory state of mind that accompanies narcissism. The more difference diminishes, the more primitive states of mind erupt, including the twinned illusion of omnipotence and helplessness. The immediate corollary of narcissistic eruption is violence, which, in a moment of omnipotence, projects an illusion of difference and helplessness, consolidates them in the targeted enemy, and vanquishes them, thereby achieving a stabilisation, albeit transiently. Perhaps the best example, in Freudian terms, of the disjunction between conscious perception of difference, and the unconscious phantasy of sameness that provokes hatred, is that between male and female. It was on this difference as a sign of castration that Freud (1918a) based the concept of the narcissism of minor differences.

In Freud’s account, male and female differ in many aspects, but only the phallic aspect tranches upon the narcissistic core of identity. The taboo of virginity avoided the virgin’s hatred of the male, aroused by her phallic envy, and the male’s hatred of the female, aroused by his phallic insecurity exacerbated by fear of her castrating retaliation. But, for Freud, a taboo is a defence against a wish (Freud, 1912–1913, pp. 69–70). So I would add that the horror of castration opposes a wish to be castrated. The Oedipal wish to replace father with mother—countered by the castration threat—is the wish to enter mother, not just to possess her, but to be at the origination of himself—to be the mother in whom he emerged. Castration horror at the sight of the female would then act as a defence, aiming to maintain the difference between male and female against the wish to undo their difference (cf. Gabbard, 1993). In fact, the difference reassures the male, because the threat now appears to emanate from external object, not as a wish from inside.

The drive to be the same is a feature of narcissism, which forces its way into all human relationships because it is there from the outset of psychic life, and remains as a pole of psychic life opposite to external reality. The first object for the ego is itself, and from this standpoint, narcissism is an achievement in which the ego comes into being for itself and in itself (Freud, 1914c). But it comes into being in a tension between being an object for itself and being replaced by an external object. There is, therefore, a rift in the psyche from the moment one can speak of there being a psyche. In relating to an object, the ego suffers the violation of its narcissism by the external world. The virulent hatred that erupts from narcissism would, in my view, be quenched only by the extermination of the object that unsettles this narcissism, and even that could not wholly satisfy, because the needed object, into which imperfection had been projected, would then have vanished. In other words, narcissism lives in a world of phantasy, which contact with reality can only contaminate.

Thus, there is conflict in narcissism. Difference reassures because it fixes what would be a deeper foreboding of depletion. In the world of narcissism, objects are replicas that steal the essence of the self. Here is a clinical vignette that shows this conflict between ego and object in males.

A man reported a dream, in which he was watching a little boy playing in a fenced children’s playground in a park. As he watched the child play, he realised that the child was himself as a child. Since he was both the child and the man who was watching, there could be only one penis. To whom did it belong? Father and son were reduced to the single penis that joined them: a narcissistic emblem that was the marker of both their sameness and their difference.

In this one-penis phantasy (see Isaacs, 1940, p. 286, for a case with brothers), father and son are separated by the difference between the generations, but the difference is eroded because they share the organ on which castration anxiety focuses. To the narcissistic ego, the object is a replica of itself, and, to the extent that the object continues to exist in its own right, it can only signify extinction of the ego. Freud says that the phallic woman reassures the male that there is no castration, because she is the same as he, but as a woman, she also represents an unstable delusion of difference along with the wish to be the same. In a mature form, this ambivalence refers to loving and hating the same object, and to concern for it. At a primitive level, it refers to the anxiety of extinction in assimilating to, and differentiating from, an object (Figlio 2000, pp. 61–72, 78–82; Figlio, 2010; Freud, 1915c).

Eric Rhode reported a patient, who spoke about

someone he knows who is in prison—and who suffers from an unusual bone disease. The man in prison appears to have two skeletons—or, rather, one full skeleton and another adjacent one that seems to shadow the first skeleton and to exist only in bits. The fragments of the second incomplete s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Theoretical Reflections
• Part II: Questioning Cases Of Exclusion
• Part III: The Exclusion of Psychoanalysis: Limits and Extensions
• Index