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INTER-ETHNICITY AND IRRATIONALITY
Oravecz Robert MD
In the former decades, the issue of inter-ethnicity and especially the
inter-ethnic relations came into the spotlight of the applied social science
and psychology. Many of scientific concepts, intending to interpret the
inter-ethnic relations and conflicts were presented.
Almost all of those theoretical concepts were developed under the shadow
of group theory, fulfilling a clear pragmatic need for the understanding
of persisting inter-ethnic conflicts.
The theoretical concepts of M.Sherif, Billig, Tajfel and others reflects
the same conclusions:
-
Conflict is a natural and very typical phenomenon in every type of human
relationships, at every level
-
Conflicts at every level have very significant common characteristics
and dynamics
-
People get involved in conflicts because their interests or their values
are challenged, or because their needs are not met.
-
The conflicts will be resolved in many different way, but sometimes
the conflict still persist, without resolution.
The above mentioned psychological concepts were sufficient to interpret
the surface of the phenomenon, but only the psychoanalytically based theory
of Vamic Volkan met the need for an "deeper" understanding of the inter-ethnic
relations, especially the problem of irrationality observed in social acting.
Through the past decades relevance of inter - ethnic concepts became
even more and more respectable. The western shaped representations about
inter-ethnicity were developed through the experience of inter - ethnic
conflicts in the "not eastern" part of the world.
But the picture in the last few years rapidly changed. Media professionals
and humanitarian mission members, working in Bosnia, Croatia and in Kosovo,
collected and transferred a tremendous amount of information about the
suffering of civil population in the war torn former Yugoslav countries.
This information, presented in the media contributed to the confirmation
of individual suffering and facts of ethnic cleansing.
The media presented globality and irrationality of the inter-ethnic
violence was definitely overwhelming for the average Western Europe and
USA citizen.
In the face of this facts, it becomes even more clear, that the inter
ethnicity based theories are insufficient for understanding of the actual
Balkan war.
Few weeks before the NATO bombing campaign the term of "fascism" almost
imperceptibly appeared in the vocabulary of the global news channels, like
CNN and the western politicians also.
Referring to the fact, that the media is reflecting the global social
discourse, the change of vocabulary could be interpreted like a sign of
paradigm shift in an attempt to modify the image of the Balkan conflict
.
Indubitably, the term of fascism has a trivial, politically exploitable
meaning. But from the other hand, the phenomenon of fascism was after the
II. World War in the focus of very important scientific activity and very
consistent psychological theories on fascism were developed.
It is well known, that the representatives of the Frankfurt Institute
of Sociology (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse) were deeply involved into the
scientific efforts to discover the psychological aspects of fascistic ideology.
Although the fact, that the "Frankfurt Psychoanalytical Institute"
existed alredy in 20's and 30's, the representatives of the "Institute"
confronted the ideology of fascism only few years after the II.W.W.
The increasing totalitarian political tendencies in USA were the main
motive for scientific and publicistic activity of Horkheimer, Adorno and
others.
Adorno defined the fascism, like a "rebellion against the civilisation".
He declared, that the re-appearance of archaic contents in the fascistic
societies is less relevant, than the reproduction of this elements in the
contemporary civilisation.
Referring to Horkheimer, the hostility against the civilisation cannot
be understand through the irrational projections of disturbed individuals,
but only through the understanding of the joy-reducing potentials of the
bourgeois society.
The theoretical concepts of Horkheimer and Adorno clearly reflects
the tradition of classic Freudian psychoanalysis.
They pointed out the role of Ego in supervising the reality. One of
the most important Ego functions is to take and maintain control over
the relations between the Self and the world and Self and deeper psychic
structures, and they stated, that this synthesis is in the case of authoritarian
personality unsuccessful. Referring to the concepts of Horkheimer and Adorno,
the authoritarian person is unable to develop a consistent system of values,
and that is perhaps the reason, he / she becomes engaged into a searching
for some kind of organising co-ordinating power.
Klaus Theweleit developed his psychological concepts independently
from the Frankfurt Institute of Sociology. He discovered the psychological
presumptions of the fascism.
He identified in the paramilitary organisations (Freikorps) voluntarily
organised after the I. W.W. the core of the early development of German
fascism.
The theory of Theweleit pointed out the negative attitude of the "Freikorp
" activists regarding to the sexuality and human body. In the centre of
the negatively perceived image of joy is their fear of sexually liberated
women. The fear of castration, they expressed, was deeply connected with
the fear of communism.
Theweleit understood the psychological phenomenon of fascism like a
preoedipal phenomenon, which had nothing to do with the psychological role
of the father.
Theweleit described also the way of fascistic reality building, which
tends to the absolute unification of two components.
-
the exclusion (excluding anything, what couldn't be integrated).
The logic of fascistic ideology seems very similar to the logic of paranoid
psychosis.
It could be identified as a cognitive and behavioural strait of excluding
everything, which oppose to the fragile, irrationally built reality. Exclusion
in this case automatically means elimination. And elimination does not
depend on any civilisational rules, (probably because there are no civilisation
experiences and rules for elimination) but the elimination is "per definitionem"
totalitarian and irrational.
Theweleit's theory was very useful to interpret the German fascist's
phobia of femine and of communism, but he was less successful in understanding
the phenomenon of German anti-Semitism. Namely, he didn't recognise the
important, intellectual function of European Jewish culture which originated
in their "insider outsider" position.
Dolar Stated, that the paranoid attitude expressed against Jewish people
was not motivated only by the well known economical reasons, but also by
the irrational fear of "those, who possesses the knowledge". This "knowledge"
was connected to the unconscious fear of fascists of impotency and castration,
and they recognised it like a hidden power of Jews.
Behind the irrationality, expressed in paranoidity, stands the secret.
The secret of vulnerability and impotency. (Dolar 1982).
However, the phenomenon of the fascism seems to be connected to the
feelings of shame. The mechanism of exclusion and extermination of the
"observer", (the "insider-outsider") could serve an unusual (but definitely
successful) way of liberation from the feelings of shame.
Referring to the above mentioned, the theoretical concepts of inter-ethnicity
and the fascism are not exclusive, but complementary, because they approached
two different, but often confluent phenomenon in different way.
Indoubtly, the phenomenon of German fascism was a great challenge for
the belief system of the western world. The totalitarian authority was
recognised like a new, unique product of the XX. century.
The belief into the certainty of the rational mind was broken by the
experience of global, totalitarian and irrational ideology and praxis of
fascism.
Today, from the distance of two generations, we assumed, that the experience
of the W.W.II., the Holocaust, the tremendous individual and collective
pain and suffering caused a great impact on the matrix of European cultures.
The global starvation and losses caused a modification of collective belief
systems.
The culture modificative power of suffering depends on dysfunctional
meaning producing mechanisms, like denial and ignorance. The insufficient
narrative integration causes a tabuisation of some non-integrated social
contents.
Tabuisation and ignorance of individual suffering (especially of the
Jews) influenced the mystification of the meaning of "fascism" and contribute
to the constitution of the "inter-ethnicity" concepts. (And vice versa).
In face of contextually based presuppositions of inter ethnicity,
the difference between "victims" and "perpetrators" disappeared. "Nobody
is innocent". Inter-ethnic conflicts and inter ethnic violence is recognised
in the sense of usual consequences, determined by ordinary social rules.
The way, how the concepts of inter-ethnicity treats the problem of inter
ethnic violence contributes to the acceptance of the violence through
the integration of the phenomenon into the global social discourse. (Look
to the fabula of the movie: " The Apocalypses Now").
The research of inter-ethnicity focuses the "group" level. The "mass"
becomes a peripheric term for the majority of researchers and the term
of "trouble-maker" substitutes the "leader". The inter-ethnic concepts
prefers the "group " and "ethnicity " based identity dimensions of individuals.
Behavioural patterns of the "ethnically determined " persons are not explicated
like unique and unusual , inspite the cruelty of inter-ethnic violence.
Because this way of behaving has a great predictability in inter-ethnic
conflicts of our time.
And it seem, that the predictability is an important element of the
rational logic and the so called normality. So, this is the way, the
violence becomes the part of social reality.
From the other hand, the psychological concepts of fascism pointed
out the crucial role of interaction between individually based meanings
and the (leader oriented) mass. The psychological theories of fascism interprets
the melting of the individual identity into the collective ideology, the
problems of guilt, shame and the punishment.
Few decades ago, at the time of Horkheimer and Adorno, it seemed, that
the phenomenon of fascism is unique, determined by more or less clear socio-economical
and cultural factors. But today, it becomes even more clear, that the totalitarian,
irrational ideologies are like "dragons in the cave of humanity" which
could appear everywhere, at any time.
By some personal experiences, the irrational and totalitarian ideology,
as an overwhelming social principle is very often observable not even at
the level of global society, but in clinical and educational settings of
large group also.
Zalka stated, that the large group is a specific discourse of the culture.
The members of the large group are in specific "border-line" situation,
showing at the same time processes and interactions specific to the level
of family and small groups, but many characteristics of the cultural processes
also.
The dynamic of the large group, determined by a specific contextual
system is producing specific new meanings. This meaning-producing process
depends on the same discursive rules, like the meanings, observed on the
level of global society.
But, the coherent meaning - production presupposed the presence of
a stable sociocultural structure, which could be interpreted in the sense
of institutionalised social reality. Culture, through the meaning - production
mechanisms constitutes the place of integration of the past, present and
future, but the individual narratives and the tradition also.
Reality is structured in a discursive way. The mechanism of habituation
contributes to the transparency of the coherent reality. Namely, the social
reality is non perceptable for all of individuals, impregnated by the social
discourse until it makes possible the non problematic communication of
the community members.
So, the socio-culturally constituted reality is coherent as long, as
the virtual transparency is preserved. Only the madness, the transcultural
identity and the critical philosophical reflection could contribute to
the distortion of the above mentioned transparency, from the position of
the "insider outsider".
Otherwise, the individual consciousness is undoubtedly impregnated
by the language and discursive reality. The person is from this reason
unable to reject the influence of social or ethnical discourse, because
the personal identity is strongly engaged with the social (ethnic ) discourse
In certain circumstances is the individual identity often overridden by
the discursive logic of ethnicity and irrationality.
If the socioculturally determined reality is subordinated to certain
discursive rules, the tendencies of "rebellion against civilisation" are
"coded" in similar way.
The "circle of perception", described by Neisser could contribute to
the understanding of
the nature of mental representations. Namely, the still present mental
representations influences in a selective way the interpretation of an
actual event and the anticipations of future also.... The main criteria
for successful representations is the historical continuity.
So, in a situation of developing reality incoherence the relevance
of mental representations is decreasing. That could contribute to the feelings
of meaning - uncertainty and meaning unpredictivity which may cause the
activation of some (less effective) cognitive straits. The product of a
discourse, organised and presupposed in above mentioned way is the phenomenon
of irrationality, expressed in a paranoid way of thinking.
The lack of stabile way of meaning creation generates a strong need
for the creation of a new, alternative reality, which eliminate the frustration,
based on meaning incoherence. But, this kind of reality is possible only
under totalitarian circumstances.
The paranoid discourse is cognitively disconnected from the
rational (fact and logic based ) reality, but practically from the civilisation
also. It seems, that the reason of "rebellion against civilisation" is
based on tendencies to eliminate the presence and availability of all possible
alternative realities from the social space.
The large group discourse often manifests the fragmentation of reality
by reducing the discourse perception to some kind of "keywords", which
ignite the alternative way of cognition. This phenomenon could be interpreted
like a sign of a so-called meta reality development, which reflect the
state of discourse incoherence.
SUMMARY:
The term of fascism is a semantically overburdened expression. That
is the reason to look for a new expression for ideologies and authority
systems, which shows the signs of
-
totalitarism, (non-democratic political system)
-
irrationality (manipulative, monoview media production)
-
leader orientedness, (cult of personality, iconography)
-
paranoid cognition
-
hostility against representatives of different realities (minorities,
intellectuals, marginalized populations)
For today it is even more clear, that such kind of phenomenon is connected
to the process of social transition transformation. It appears after
the symbolic "loss of the father", connected to the perspective of threatening
individualisation. The symbolically interpreted "loss of authority" could
be interpreted like a loss of meaning coherence, and a consequent damage
of discursive reality.
-
The phenomenon, described above differ from the phenomenon of interethnic
conflicts.
-
The phenomenon is definitely connected to the western shaped civilisation
of the XX. century.
-
Referring to the historical facts, it is even more clear, that the irrational,
violent totalitarism is a possible perspective for every human community.
The inherent feed-back and warning systems are almost always inefficient
to change the direction of political movements.
The previous positive social experience of violent problem solving could
contribute to the development of irrational, violent totalitarism (and
the experience of negative sanctions could effect aversively.)
The phenomenon couldn't be discovered through the exploration of the
group dynamic, and personality straits of participants are also less relevant
in comparation with the understanding of the discursive process, leading
to the development of an irrational, totalitarian violent social system.