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=Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Imperative to Enjoyment!=
Racism and [[anti-Semitism ]] are both [[social ]] and [[psychic ]] [[structures]].The [[unconscious]], psychic, aspects of these [[processes ]] are exemplary of superegoic structures.
Both racism and anti-Semitism are inherently contradictory [[ideologies]].
In the United [[state]], for example, we constantly hear and read in the [[media ]] that immigrants are 'flooding' the country in [[order ]] to feeload on the [[welfare ]] of the state. At the same [[time]], these very same immigrants are attacked for stealing our jobs and therefore putting ordinary citizens out of [[work]]. There is clearly a [[contradiction ]] here - if immigrants are [[living ]] a [[life ]] of luxury on state benefits then they are not [[working]]; if on the [[other ]] hand, they are working hard and taking out jobs, then they are clearly not living off the state but contributing to it.
What [[psychoanalysis ]] adds to our [[understanding ]] of this [[process ]] is how [[subjects ]] manage to sustain thee contradictory beliefs.
The [[relationship ]] between racism and anti-Semitism is a [[complex ]] and changing one.[[Zizek ]] observes that traditionally anti-Semitim haas always been considered as an 'exception' and concpetualized differently to other forms of racism.Whereas classicla racism propounds an [[ideology ]] of national superiority, whereby so-called 'inferior' races were enslaved, anti-Semitism involves the systematic and organized annihiliation of the [[Jewish ]] [[people]].Moreoer, [[Nazi ]] propaganda linked the [[need ]] for genoicde to [[another ]] fundamental element of its ideology.It was not just that the [[Jews ]] had to be killed because they represented a [[threat ]] to the state, but more importantly that the socio-[[symbolic ]] order itself - the new Aryan state - could not be fully realized without that process taking [[place]]; and it is here that the [[notion ]] of the [[superego ]] comes into play.
The 'Jew', or the Jewish [[race]], is presented within fascinst propaganda as a [[figure ]] who transgresses and undermiens the law and as such must be first punished and eventually eradicated so that a new [[harmonious ]] Aryan [[society ]] can emerge.
For authoritarian [[regime ]] to [[exist]], however totalitarian it may be, the [[active ]] [[participation ]] and support of a population is required, toerwise the regime will very quickly collapse.
And yet, why would any population support an overtly repressive regime?
This is where the ambiugity of the [[father ]] and what LAcan calls the superegoic imperative to [[Enjoy ]] comes in.When a [[subject ]] [[identifies ]] with a [[leader]]/father figur,e he or she identifies witha [[position ]] of [[Oedipal ]] [[power ]] and [[authority]].At the same time, however, the subject identifies with that curel and licentious father of the [[primal ]] [[horde]].If we do not have access to [[pleasure ]] and [[enjoyment]], we assume that it is because someone else has usurped our position and taken it from us.
Hence the inflated iamges of power and potency ascribed to other 'minority' groups.
Accoridng to Zizek, this is the [[logic ]] that is at work in anti-Semitism.The efficacy of the figure of the 'Jew' relies on the assumption of a certain [[surplus ]] - that Jews possess somthing that we do not and therefore they ahve access to pleasures that we are denied.For racism and anti-Semtiism to function psychically an [[impossible]], unfathomable nejoyment, allegedly stolen from us, msut be attributed to the other.Paradoixcally, argues Zizek, what 'holds together' a given [[community ]] is "not so much [[identification ]] with the [[public ]] or symbolic Law that regulates the communty's 'normal' everyday life, but rather ''identification with a specific [[form ]] of [[transgression ]] of the Law, of the Law's suspension'' (in [[psychoanalytic ]] [[terms]], with a specific form of ''enjoyment'').<ref>1994:55</ref>
More specifically, what holds communitites together is the [[attribution ]] of ''excessive'' enjoyment to other or [[alien ]] groups; for [[instance]], the sterotypical [[fantasy ]] of seuxal potency associated with blakc men.
This attribution of excessive enjoyment to the other then comes to operate as a specific form of theft for the subject - the theft of one's own enjoyment.
Psychoanalysis argues that the inehrent ambiguity of these psychic structrues - the superego, the father and fantasy - is a necessary and constituive part of all social roders and essential to their proper funcitoning.
If the threat is not actually, empirically, there then it will have to be invented, just as Nazi ideology had to [[construct ]] the '[[conceptual ]] Jew' in order to justify its own repressive regime.The poitn is that the Jews is not hte [[cause ]] of that ideology, but rather something that is constitued in its effects, that it to say, the Jew is posited retrosepctively as the condition of possibility for the fascist regime.The notion of the 'conceptual Jew' is what gives the [[irrationality ]] of fascist ideology its [[coherence ]] nad consistency.Within racism and anti-Semitism, enjoyment, and aspecifically an '[[excess]]' of enjoyment, is always imputed to the other: "the other may be lazy but they still have more fun than us; they live off our hard work, etc."
However that is not enoguh in itself for racism to take hold.
The enjoyment of the other must also be seen as depriving us of our own enjoyment: "we work hard to build a community we cna be proud of and be happy within, but this [[goal ]] is denied us by lazy scrounging foreginers. We can therefor not enjoy our community because they have stolen away from ust aht which would most fully realize our enjoyment."
This is what Zizek sees as the logic of racism and anti-Semitism: the theft of enjoyment.
Furthermore, the [[Nazis ]] claimed that, because there were so many Jewish people who occupied positions of wealth and power, then the state mus tbe strong and authoritative to counteract [[them]].
On the one hand, therefore, we find in fascinst propaganda the portrayal of Jewish people as less than [[human ]] -as insects and rodents - o that it is easier to rationally justify their extermination and, on the [[other, the ]] attribution to them of excessive power and influence.That is to sya, a [[dual ]] process is taking plce whereby the dehumanizing of the o ther is accompanied by an inflation of the other's power and strenght.If a [[particular ]] group is so small and significant that we can simply stamp them out then why bother?
They cannot pose that much of a threat.
We must eradicat ethe other precisely because by they are rich, powerful and influential they are depriving us of our rightful position in society.
What wee find in anti-Semitism is that [[vicious cycle ]] arituclated through the superego, whereby the law - the [[prohibition ]] that maintains and regulates the social order - draws its strength from that which it excludes.
The more authoritarian a regime becomes the greater the threat against it mus tbe presumed to be.
Nazi ideology, therefore, involves a particualr fantasy [[structure ]] that allows that subject to reconcile the apprently contradictory positions that the Jewish people are at once less than human and as such [[represent ]] an insidious threat to 'our way of life' and at the same time are superhuman, hence their greater power, influence and success.
According to psychoanalysis, there is always a [[good ]] and a bade side to fantasy. There is the blissful [[dream ]] state beyond the mundane aspects of our lives and the horrors of modern [[civilization]], but this is always acompanied by a darker side that involves [[envy]], irritation and malice.[[Totalitarianism ]] povides a perfect illustration of this dual structure.FIrs,t there is the [[utopian ]] side - the fantasy of the perfect state as a [[unified ]] harmonious community of organically, [[naturally]], linked people.This [[utopianism ]] however, is always accompanied by its opposite - those [[fantasies ]] of plots, conspiracies and [[threats ]] that stop the realization of this utopia.THus, argues Zizek, insoar as a community expeirences its [[reality ]] as regulated and harmoniously [[structured]], it has to [[repress ]] the inehrent conflcit at its veyr heart.In other [[words]], for a utopian fantasy to work, it presupposes the [[disavowal ]] and [[repression ]] of part of itself, and its effectiveness depends on how wwell it does this.
Fo the Nazis, the Jews performed precisely this function.
The figure of 'the Jew' is the preconditon for anti-Semitic ideology; it is that which sustains anti-Semitism.
What Zizek calls the 'conceptual Jew' must be invented and sustained at the level of fantasy for anti-Semitic ideology to work.
Interestingly, aruges Zizek, Nazi ideology was often most virulent in those areas of [[Germany ]] that had the fewest Jews.PAradoxically, then the smaller the threat and the actual [[number ]] of Jews [[present]], the greater their power was perceived to be.
This in turn, of course, legitimates a greater use of repression and force, which in turn presupposes a stronger threat agaisnt it.
This is the vicious, [[self]]-punishing, cycle of the superego.
