Boundaries and borders:
Fear of penetration, fear of rape

Richard Koenigsberg
  1. Ideology, I theorize, represents or reflects a fantasy that is shared by members of a society. This shared fantasy lies at the core--constitutes the heart and soul--of a given culture. The leader’s role is to “divine” the cultural fantasy, give it voice. Through his language, the leader invents images and metaphors that contain the fantasy.
     
  2. Ideas put forth by political leaders are orthogonal to “truth:” they do not necessarily correspond to "external reality.” The coin of the realm in politics is fantasy: the leader’s ability to express his own fantasies and to induce others to share these fantasies. Highly successful leaders are deeply plugged into the ideological fantasies they put forth. No one was more moved by Hitler’s ideas than Hitler himself. By virtue of his ability to share his excitement and passion, the leader is able to evoke a similar experience of excitement and passion within followers.
     
  3. Ideologies act as a gravitational force, “pulling” fantasies into the world, sequestering energy bound to fantasies, giving fantasies a place in "reality." The Nazi revolution was constituted by collective dreaming. Nazism was a dream that many people were having at the same time—a shared fantasy powerful enough to give rise to an ideology and social movement, genocide and war. Dreaming this dream most deeply, Hitler was able to articulate the Nazi fantasy and bring it forth into the "external" world. To know why Nazism achieved popularity, one seeks answer the question: what was it that Hitler said that caused Germans to rise to their feet and shout “Heil Hitler.”
     
  4. The scope of psychogeography, according to Howard F. Stein, is the unconscious construction of the social and physical world. Men and women fashion the world out of the substance of their bodies. They project psychic contents outward. “Fantasies about the body are transmuted into descriptions of one’s own group and other groups--into shapes and features of the world. Projected outward, the fate of the body becomes the fate of the world.”
     
  5. Psychogeography, Stein says, is the study of the psychology and social construction of Boundaries: How we delineate inside and outside; who is to be in included and who excluded. How do personal boundaries come to be felt as co-extensive with the boundaries of one’s group?
     
  6. People seek secure boundaries in order to "differentiate between us and them, inside and outside, good and evil." Boundaries must be closed, and “anything which might threaten the perfection of greatness within must be excluded.” Psychogeography is the study of how nations build walls in order to protect citizens from “demonized dangers from beyond the borders” (Daniel Brownstein).
     
  7. National “security” revolves around excluding not-self others. Secure borders means making certain that aliens do not enter the national body.
     
  8. Everything follows from the equation of one’s own body with a body politic. Individuals project their own bodies into the external world. Or shall we say that the idea of the nation is internalized into our bodies. Threats to the nation are experienced as penetration of one’s own body. Nationalism is a psychosomatic phenomenon.
     
  9. The figure of the enemy is constructed from a particular perspective on territory the enemy penetrates the border (Paul Kahn). This transgression makes someone an enemy even if he does relatively little damage and regardless of whether he damages public or private property. Borders represent the integrity of the state. To eliminate the modern state means to erase its borders. Thus, wars begin with a border penetration; they end when the enemy is driven back across the border. The border has become a geographical representation of national existence.
     
  10.  A CROSS-BORDER THREAT, REGARDLESS OF HOW LIMITED, motivates an extreme response. The United States has been in a frenzy of border protection since the penetration of 9/11 (Paul Kahn). Conversely, the enemy must be linked to a threat of border penetration.
     
  11. Whereas Foucault sees discourse as independent variable, shaping bodily experience, I understand discourse as a dependent variable, shaped by bodily experience. We project or externalize inner bodily experiences--as well as fantasies and desires and anxieties connected to the body--into the external world. Ideologies and discourse derive their nature and shape and power from these bodily experience, desires and fantasies.
     
  12. The Wall may be thought of as a psychosomatic phenomenon. I hypothesize that building a wall represents an effort to separate the American body politic from human bodies that might penetrate into…and contaminate…this American body. The maintenance of personal boundaries may be related to immune functioning.
     
  13. Nations are defined by boundaries…separating self from others. A primary goal of a nation-state is...not to be penetration. Penetration evokes rage: fear of rape. Hitler insisted that Germany had to “protect its rear” (against the danger of Great Britain invading from the left-hand side, and Russia from the right-hand side).
     
  14. Psychogeography is the study of the psychology and social construction of Boundaries: How we delineate inside and outside; who is to be included. How do personal boundaries come to be felt as co-extensive with the boundaries of one’s group?
     
  15. Building a wall meant that one had to seal the borders of America—against foreigners who might be penetrating into the country. These foreigners were perceived as dangerous and therefore had to be prevented from entering into America--even removed from the nation. 
     
  16. The Idea building a wall was closely associated idea of MAGA ("Making America Great Again"). Donald Trump believed that the United States had becomes less great because too many immigrants were entering the country and residing within the country. Foreigners like enemies could not be allowed to penetrate American borders. As if the nation was porous: too easy for foreigners to seep in. To maintain the goodness of America, bad  foreigners had be prevented from entering the nation.
     
  17. Donald Trump: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best. They’re sending people that have lots problems and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bring crime. They’re rapists and some, I assume, are good people." This statement was the foundation for an entire Presidency and national discourse.
     
  18. The boundaries of a nation are the walls of a state. Like walls of a house or of a room. Trump's reign was based on this fantasy that America's walls were porous. Like a promiscuous woman, America let people in too easily. Like a woman who could not protect herself--in danger of being penetrated by Mexican rapists and other foreigners. The fantasy of Mexican Rapists defined Trump's ideology and his Presidency.
     
  19. America as a nation too easily penetrated. Unable or unwilling to protect herself. Immigrants creeping in from down below. Weakness of America means that the nation is too easily penetrated. To overcome a feeling of weakness, or being exploited, America had to become stronger; walls had to be built. Trumpism was rage against weakness (masculine protest). Anger against those who seemed responsible for causing American to become weak. Finally, rage returns to weakness, emptiness, nothingness. 
     
  20. DATE FROM THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ON IMMIGRATION AND CRIME: Compared to citizens born in the Unites States, undocumented immigrants in Texas are less than half as likely to be arrested for violent crimes or drug offenses. Undocumented immigrants have lower felony arrest rates than both legal immigrants and native-born citizens. They are less likely to commit crimes or to become become incarcerated.
     
  21. US born citizens compared with undocumented immigrants are 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes and over 4 times arrested property crimes.
     
  22. Sealing the holes in the body politic. Fear of rape. No one must be allowed to penetrate. The nation is experienced as a vulnerable human body. “Orifices and entry points must be sealed.” Immigrants are experienced as alien bodies flowing into the American body. Paranoia and hysteria are the same. Political movements build upon a paranoid fantasy that a foreign body is entering into one’s own body (the human body is a body politic).
     
  23. Boundaries and fear of penetration. Maintenance of boundaries. “Protecting the rear.” National “SECURITY”= NOT GETTING FUCKED BY OTHER NATIONS. “The enemy penetrates the border.”
     
  24. Koenigsberg: The individual ego identifies itself with the national one. Human beings exist in a symbiotic relationship with their societies. Individuals identify very profoundly with nations. Our ego may become one with the national ego. Foucault should be read backwards: IT IS NOT THE DISCOURSE that shapes the body; instead, the body is a source of discourse. Body politic is not a mere metaphor, but expresses the fact that the nation is experienced as the body.
     
  25. Josefina Alvarez (2006) states that borders are the very “walls of the edifice of the state, separating inside from outside”. Security discourse “name dangerous;” define enemies. As long as an enemy exists, the nation exist. The idea of a nation cannot be separated from the idea of an enemy. Nations exist to wage a struggle to eliminate or defeat enemies.