The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse

Preface

vii The movement in circular fashion from the individual subject to society is self-evident to me. Psychology and sociology, as I see them, are not two different modes of perception, not even two points of view. The psyche and the social always operate in tandem and form who we are as subjects and who we are as a society (whether we think of ourselves as singular or plural). The psyche cannot be conceived outside the bounds of language, and society, likewise, cannot be understood without taking into account the ways in which we as individuals use language, explicitly or implicitly, expressed or repressed. True, this double image of self and society cannot simply be taken for granted without attending to the paradoxes and theoretical difficulties that such movement entails. Yet what image of society can we form without the subject who speaks (and interacts)? And what subject is free from the power of society and interpellation, able to resist or conform fully to the law of society? And what are the subtexts—the anxieties—of language that constitute the unconscious? These social anxieties (individual and collective) as well as feared desires form the space through which the social, the political , and the psychical speak together in a conundrum. Take violence, for example. Violence, I argue, must not be seen merely as a behavior, attitude, or emotion, aspects that define violence in most studies. Whether violence is a behavior, an attitude, or an emotion, it also indicates that “something” forbidden or unutterable demands satisfaction or fulfillment. Something has been erased but not lost. I am not saying that the function of violence is to simply create relief through expression, but rather that something unseen and unconscious demands fulfillment and satisfaction and that this something plays an intimate part in most atrociously P r e f a c e viii Preface violent moments in history. Indeed, this something has to be given a theoretical space if we aim to cultivate nonviolent practices and interactions. What are these unutterable demands that ask for satisfaction? What are the ways in which these demands speak? What are the anxieties and fears that, when expressed, cause others hurt and suffering? Attempting to confront the abyss of hatred around me, and sensing and fearing the hatred in myself as well, I set out to write this book. I knew from the start that hatred per se is not what puzzles me. Rather, I long to see clearly what hatred comes to hide: the forces that endow representations of hatred with their power of signification. First, however, I needed to confront the question of pleasure: my own pleasure in writing about hatred. How can I write with pleasure on hatred? What does it mean to write on hatred with pleasure? Can one attest to truth without writing with pleasure? Will my words be recognizable by others if I do not derive pleasure in writing? These questions led me back to Freud’s method of understanding culture and society, and drove me to problematize collective hatred through my own experiences and relations of love and hate. I suspected that if I theorized my own fears of hatred that initially impelled this inquiry as well as the defenses that protect my love, as a Jew and an Israeli I might be able to better understand the identiterian hatred that I see between religious, ethnic, and national groups that live in close proximity. Thus writing on hatred from the place of my fears turned out to be a struggle of writing with pleasure—and this conscious struggle has turned out to be a particularly productive way to write the unconscious into a theory and social critique of hatred. Precisely for this reason, I want to say a few words about what I learned from my father. In Chapter 4 I write a brief vignette that recalls a conversation with my father, who has always declared his resistance to hate, his refusal to give the Germans the pleasure of hating them. I grew up wondering how a person like my father, who survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Teresienstadt, could love Man and believe in the future of humanity. I wonder how he, a secular person who survived the Shoah, could sustain his trust in the goodness of Man. Where did he find the power to resist hate and hope for a just, nonviolent, and democratic society in Israel/Palestine, his new homeland? I do not raise these questions now as a general...