Michel Foucault observes that in the 19th Century it was the "social body" that replaced the King’s body as the new "principle that needed to be protected"—in a quasi-medical sense. In place of rituals that served to restore the corporal integrity of the monarch, a medical discourse was brought forth in the name of cleansing this social body.
Remedies and therapeutic devices such as segregating the sick, monitoring of contagions, exclusion of delinquents, eugenics and quarantining of 'degenerates' arose. But why was this discourse brought forth? What did it mean? Why was it embraced?
The fantasy of "cleansing the social body" reached its climax with the rise of Nazism. Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels brought forth a discourse of disease revolving around the removal of "Jewish bacillus" from within the German body politic. The objective was to forge a social body that would be "immune" from Jewish infection.
Foucault speaks of power relations that are intentional, but not subjective: "Les relations de pouvoir sont à la fois intentionelles et non subjectives." What a delusion to imagine that Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels were not subjectively involved in the discourse that they brought forth! It is true that these men did not invent the discourse of anti-Semitism. But why did they—and millions of other Germans—invest themselves so passionately in this ideology?
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HITLER'S IDEOLOGY: Embodied Metaphor, Fantasy and History
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"This work deserves to be an instant classic. With care and caution, Koenigsberg remains close to the data from which he adduces his theory. Koenigsberg suggests that what is at stake is larger than an explanation of Hitler, Nazism, or even nationalism: it is, rather, an explanation of culture itself. Koenigsberg cuts through conventional cultural and historic interpretations. He is not a literary stylist describing or evoking the psychological 'atmosphere' of Nazi Germany. Rather, with algebraic precision, he explains that atmosphere through the psyche of the chief magician of the nightmare. Koenigsberg's genius has unlocked many of the unconscious secrets of a timeless drama."
—Howard F. Stein, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
Author, Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography
In the New Edition of HITLER’S IDEOLOGY—recently published—Richard
Koenigsberg reveals Nazi discourse as a fantasy about the body politic. Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels identify their own bodies with the German body politic. They espouse and promulgate the discourse of nationalism because they are motivated to do so. They embrace this discourse because it allows them to escape their frail, mortal bodies and to imagine they are fused with an omnipotent body that does not seem susceptible to death and decay.
In spite of our fantasies of omnipotence, each of us contains weakness and illness—a principle of death—operating within our own bodies. The Others—criminals, the sick, the insane, the sexually deviant and the Jew—represent classes of people into which the principle of weakness, frailty and death have been projected.
The discourse of Nazism allowed Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels—and millions of other Germans—to conflate their own bodies with the social body. The Final Solution represented a socially constructed discourse whose purpose was to kill off the principle of death operating within one’s own, human body by killing a disease imagined to be contained within the body politic.
NOW AVAILABLE AT A SPECIAL PRICE:
HITLER'S IDEOLOGY: Embodied Metaphor, Fantasy and History
FOR INFORMATION ON ORDERING CLICK HERE
"This work deserves to be an instant classic. With care and caution, Koenigsberg remains close to the data from which he adduces his theory. Koenigsberg suggests that what is at stake is larger than an explanation of Hitler, Nazism, or even nationalism: it is, rather, an explanation of culture itself. Koenigsberg cuts through conventional cultural and historic interpretations. He is not a literary stylist describing or evoking the psychological 'atmosphere' of Nazi Germany. Rather, with algebraic precision, he explains that atmosphere through the psyche of the chief magician of the nightmare. Koenigsberg's genius has unlocked many of the unconscious secrets of a timeless drama."
—Howard F. Stein, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
Author, Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography