.....or how do fantasies fill the void? And how do these fantasies function as distractions?
We have been trying to make sense of our social and political context for a long time. We are both psychotherapists who invariably return to the problem we have in trying to think about and think through something that invariably seems to resist our paltry efforts. Trump and all that the name now represents, has amplified this resistance to thinking. So we go round in circles and in so doing forget our original starting point. IN which case the image is not of a circle but a spiral or some such so as we move we end up somewhere that seems a long way from our starting point.
The other day I wanted to name this sense of resolute difficulty and resistance to any conclusion. I thought of a void. That somewhere in our social imagining there seemed to be a void that also could be posited as something, symbolically, that seemed to reside in our democratic society. And now I remember the French political theorist Claude Lefort. He does not use the word void, but something linked. For him the centre is empty. He writes in the 'Logic of Totalitarianism' about democracy as follows:
".....power emanates from the people; on the other hand, it is the power of nobody." And he writes, "If the place of power appears...as really empty, then those who exercise it are perceived as mere ordinary individuals..."
This is society which lacks at its centre, absolute power and authority or ground. In which case there is a void that is both the strength of democracy and weakness.
We have been trying to make sense of our social and political context for a long time. We are both psychotherapists who invariably return to the problem we have in trying to think about and think through something that invariably seems to resist our paltry efforts. Trump and all that the name now represents, has amplified this resistance to thinking. So we go round in circles and in so doing forget our original starting point. IN which case the image is not of a circle but a spiral or some such so as we move we end up somewhere that seems a long way from our starting point.
The other day I wanted to name this sense of resolute difficulty and resistance to any conclusion. I thought of a void. That somewhere in our social imagining there seemed to be a void that also could be posited as something, symbolically, that seemed to reside in our democratic society. And now I remember the French political theorist Claude Lefort. He does not use the word void, but something linked. For him the centre is empty. He writes in the 'Logic of Totalitarianism' about democracy as follows:
".....power emanates from the people; on the other hand, it is the power of nobody." And he writes, "If the place of power appears...as really empty, then those who exercise it are perceived as mere ordinary individuals..."
This is society which lacks at its centre, absolute power and authority or ground. In which case there is a void that is both the strength of democracy and weakness.
Comments
Post a Comment