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  • Deaths of Nobodies:Fantasmatic Fascination in Cultural Products and Intellectual Discourses
  • Dorit Szykierski (bio)

W. R. Bion's theory of groups offers significant insights into our social nature as a species that have been mostly applied to furthering the exploration of organizational dynamics; its potential contribution to the understanding of culture is not fully realized as yet. Only a few papers have been published, rare exceptions that prove the rule (see for example, Waddell, 2011). Amongst them, Judith Levy's group relations analysis of Forster's A Passage to India (Levy, 2008) is especially interesting in its awareness of the intricacies entailed in creating an interface between literary criticism and group relations analysis. These sporadic papers use Bion's theory of groups in various ways, and it is obvious that a methodical application of this theory to interpreting cultural products awaits further development.

At the heart of Bion's theory as published in Experiences in Groups (1961) lies his conceptualization of a constant tension between reason, which guides work group functioning, and primitive defenses, which operate simultaneously against anxieties aroused in groups. The first lines of defense express themselves as three basic assumptions: dependency, fight-flight, and pairing. With dependency, "the group is met in order to be sustained by a leader on whom it depends for nourishment, material and spiritual, and protection" (p. 147). The group leader consists of a deity and the group culture resembles a miniature theocracy (p. 56). With fight-flight, the group preserves its existence using fight or flight (p. 63) and the leader of the group is that person who demands the group fight or flee (pp. 152-153). With pairing, the group creates "a Messiah, be it person, idea, or Utopia . . . it is necessary that those who concern themselves with such a task . . . should see to it that Messianic hopes do not materialize" (p. 152). A close reading of Bion's Experiences in Groups, however, reveals that group dynamics evoke second [End Page 249] lines of defense, including the specialized work group and union or schism (pp. 127-128, 156-158; see also Szykierski, 2009).

In this essay, I suggest the concept of fantasmatic fascination to delineate a third line of defense, one that remains active behind the scenes of intellectual discourses and artistic expression. This defense can be defined by its discursive function—diverting attention from anxiety-provoking social and political meanings of cultural products and re-directing it to a fascination with fantasies and phantasies projected by individuals into the public arena.1 Following Dominick LaCapra's noteworthy discussion of the author's transferential relation to his or her objects of study (LaCapra, 1987, 2001), fantasmatic fascination can be regarded as the discursive manifestation of the author's transference concealed in various forms within intellectual investigation or artistic creation. LaCapra explores the author's transference in the context of Holocaust studies—especially in his book Writing History, Writing Trauma (2001)—thus drawing our attention to the intensity of the emotional experiences involved in intellectual work. As passionate involvement characterizes much of both intellectual and artistic production, subtle and complex defenses indeed become necessary.

The conceptualization of fantasmatic fascination derives from the mind's tendency to interpret available information through phantasies (Klein, 1948) and express these in the public domain by imbuing cultural products or intellectual works with derivative fantasies constructed as dramatic narratives (Klein, 1955; Szykierski, 2009). Consequently, individuals cope with anxieties by construing phantasies and fantasies, which are then transformed, in accord with the subjective preferences of each author, into arguments or interpretations fitting within relevant intellectual discourse. Fantasmatic fascination narrows the scope of exploration by limiting it to unconscious identification with individual perspectives, thus preventing contemplation of group phenomena. It organizes our perceptions of reality in a dramatic Gestalt and functions as a discursive defense against anxieties provoked by the inherent social and political nature of the author's creation.

Because fantasmatic fascination operates through unconscious identification with individual phantasies embedded in [End Page 250] a specific cultural product or projected into a particular intellectual discourse, this conceptualization can be considered an extension of Bion's description of projective identification in the group. Bion (1961) suggests that when projective...

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