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Nationalism as the Fantasy of Immortaltiy
The nation is a projection of one's body: double of the self. One "splits off" a part of one’s self to identify into a "third dimension." Nations symbolize the dimension of immortality--what seems to "live on." Fear of separation from culture is fear of separation from an immortal body politic. We imagine our culture as an omnipotent body that will perpetuate itself even as our own body no longer exists.
The body of culture—unlike one's own body—does not seem subject to disintegration or decay. It seems to “keep on keepin’ on." Obituaries in the New York Times perpetuate the life of an individual in a cultural form, even as the actual body of an individual has become a corpse. In a way, the individual only “comes alive” as a culture figure when he or she dies: the obituary testifying to the truth or reality of one’s existence.
Projecting one's body and self onto a "higher level" is to identify with the fantasy of self-perpetuation contained within the idea of culture. Books in libraries or programs on television (or the Internet) constitute a split off dimension, seemingly separate from concrete existence. People plug into the stream of books or television programs in order to partake of what seems to be eternal or never-ending.
Lacan’s “symbolic order” is a denial of death. “There is no other but the other.” There is nothing not contained within the symbolic order: “No reality exists outside of discourse.” If you do not partake of the symbolic order, reality does not exist.. “There is no other but the mother.” Eternal symbiosis: Til death we do not part.”
To free the self is to split from identification with the omnipotent body of "culture"—the symbol order with which we equate our self. Separation from culture constitutes the "unkindest cut of all:" loss of the dream of immortality. One’s life becomes small, limited, and finite—realization one is not bound to the omnipotent "system." To abandon identification with symbolic objects generates a feeling that one has become a shrunken version of one’s former self.
To escape from one’s real body into the life of the nation is to identify with the fantasy of immortality. Identification with the body politic represents negation of one’s actual body (moving toward death). One forgets (refuses to acknowledge) that one's actual body is in the process of disintegrating. My time to run a mile shrank from 4:25 to 10 minutes. Once I squatted 200 pounds; now I do squats without weights.
The death instinct refers to this gradual (biological) breakdown of one’s body. Freud’s simplest, most obvious concept, therefore the concept that people are most likely to dispute.
We are in the process of withering away. We escape knowledge that our bodies are disintegrating through projective identification with an omnipotent body politic. The dynamic of national identification is motivated or fueled by the desire to deny or escape the actuality of one's real (disintegrating) body by projecting existence into the idea of an immortal body that will never die.
For Hitler, the principle of decay was externalized onto society and split off into the Jew, who symbolized a force of disintegration. By projecting the idea of death into the Jew, Hitler was able to maintain the fantasy of Germany as a perfect body (lacking defect) that could live forever. However, the idea of death “returned.” Hitler’s experience of his own death instinct led to his belief that Germany was being attacked by a horrible disease. Killing Jews represented Hitler’s struggle to kill the disease, that is, to kill a force within the German body politic that might lead to its demise (his demise).
The idea of the nation is sustained by deflecting libido into this "dream body." Energies originating in one’s actual body are transferred or displaced into a symbolic body. The idea of the nation contains the fantasy of eternal fusion: one’s own body united forever with an immortal body politic. The idea of disease and death may be projected into groups or classes of people within the nation. Societies seek to destroy these groups or classes of people in order to "rescue the nation from death."
The idea or fantasy of an omnipotent object existing "out there"—and the desire to fuse with this object—lies as the essence of the dynamic I’m describing. The symbolic object is imagined to contain immortality. One seeks fusion with this object in order to imagine that one’s own body will go on forever. Fear of separation from culture is fear of separation from the fantasy of immortality.
Liberation from culture means embracing concrete existence and withdrawing energy from symbolic objects in culture. One begins to abandon the desire to fuse with omnipotent objects. The privatization of life (your own private enterprise) means separation from the "big world."
"Contraction" means lopping off objects into which one had projected one’s self and with which one had identified. Cutting off that part of the self that had been identified with the world outside represents a form of castration or contraction: withdrawing libido from the body politic. As one embraces separation from culture—lopping off omnipotent identifications—one feels small and vulnerable. However, one gradually becomes more compact, dense, and real.
If one stays away from “the news” for a long period of time, one may become dizzy or disoriented. One feels one has separated from the real. Life may seem empty, confused and meaningless. A scholar of Chinese civilization wrote of Western man’s "pathetic longing for a third dimension." This third dimension is transitional space (the king's second body): a transcendent realm that seems disconnected from concrete existence.
The idea of “the nation” symbolizes longing for an omnipotent, transcendent domain. We dream that there is a center "out there" separate from our concrete existence: something to reach for and look up to. It’s everywhere, all over the place, this symbolic dimension, so omnipresent that we equated it with reality. If one doesn’t think that what is everywhere is reality, people may think one is psychotic. How dare you separate? How dare you not follow the Presidential campaign?
We believe there is a realm of being outside the self that is superior to the self: a domain of existence above or beyond ordinary life. We may imagine that this transcendent realm is contained in “the White House” (where the President and his wife exist). This place acts as a center or magnet for citizens, drawing them outward toward the place where real life (the life of the nation) seems to exist.
The value of the current President (Donald Trump) is that he turns transitional (transcended) space into a location of degradation and debasement. One would think that this would lead to the “withdrawal of human projection (M. D. Faber). But precisely the opposite occurs. People bind to the transitional realm through astonishment and hatred. How can this be? We are drawn into a new version of the “sacred realm.” Thus, there is no end to history.
Identification seeks externalization of the self into an object outside the self. One's ego seeks existence in the form of a fantasy of connection to an omnipotent object. The object becomes a symbol of one's ego.
The physical fitness revolution (running and body building) represented disidentification with the symbolic world: abandoning or throwing off projective symbols of the self and falling down into one’s body; the concreteness of physical existence.
Running and body building constituted substitutes for nationalism: seeking unity of the self within one’s own body: trying to love one’s own body rather than the national body. Running and body building seek to return libido back to the self. As the nation dies, so does one’s body come alive. Pornography serves a similar function. Descent into the “underworld,” an alternative universe (but so close to the “real world,” a button away).
At the beginning of civilization there were pyramids and megaliths. These monumental structures defined the essence of civilization: the aspiration to create and identify with objects greater and more permanent than the lives of we human beings. Pyramids and megaliths symbolize the struggle to defeat death by constructing objects (of no practical use) that transcend actual existence. Life is fragile, short, and finite. Human beings create megalithic structures: doubles of the self that last beyond concrete existence. We create skyscrapers, corporations, paintings, books, and nations: symbols of immortal life.
The glory of human civilization (creation of megalithic or monumental structures and baseball stadiums and skyscrapers) also constitutes the disease of civilization: elevating structures or principles or symbols into something more real or significant than actual existence. One seeks to bind oneself to omnipotent objects: ideas or symbols of greatness and perfection. Yet attachment to these objects often crushes and mutilates the self (Hitler declared his people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything”).
This is what it means to be “oppressed:” to be bound to an omnipotent object. On the one hand, such objects are experienced as expanding the self (one becomes bigger or “more ample” by virtue of identifying with the King’s Second Body). On the other hand, these objects weigh down the self, thwarting development. To be oppressed is to be attached to objects imagined to contain the principle of omnipotence. Oppression is the other side of the coin of attachment.
Yet sexual liberation too, “Let’s do it, let’s do it, there’s nothing to it,” can become a source of oppression. Yet and still, we desperately people need the symbolic world: as a defense against masturbation and perversion.
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