Death's Dream Kingdom

Walter A. Davis

Description

Why is fear a dominant emotion in contemporary society? Why are politicians using words like 'terror', 'evil' and 'fundamentalism', and what effect is it having on public consciousness?



This book taps into the cultural psyche to explore the link between ideology and emotional and psychological manipulation. It shows that the Bush administration has been hugely successful in controlling and developing a new political climate through the creation of an almost hypnotic mass consciousness.



From the sado-masochist hysteria of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ‚ to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison; and from the genocidal use of depleted uranium in Iraq to the apocalyptic language driving the Christian Right's assault on basic human rights.



Davis's findings take us to the heart of the ideological paralysis of the Left, while offering an innovative approach to understanding contemporary history.
Preface: The Way We Were

PART ONE—THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

1. 911- America

2. Living in Death’s Dream Kingdom: The Psychotic Core of Capitalist Ideology

3. Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib

4. Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq

5. A Humanistic Response to 9-11: Robert Jay Lifton, or the Nostalgia for Guarantees

6. A Postmodernist Response to 9-11: Slavoj Zizek, or the Jouissance of an Abstract Hegelian

PART II: TO THE LEFT OF THE LEFT

7. Bible Says: The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism

8. The Psychodynamics of Terror

9. Evil: As Psychological Process and as Philosophic Concept

10. Men of Good Will: Toward an Ethic of the Tragic

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• USA
• United States of America
• Cultural studies
• Anthropology
• États-Unis
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 mars 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644624
• Langue: English

Extrait

Death’s Dream Kingdom

The American Psyche Since 911

Walter A. Davis

P Pluto Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI

First published 2006 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright © Walter A. Davis 2006

The right of Walter A. Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN ISBN

0 7453 2469 X hardback 0 7453 2468 1 paperback

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for

10

9

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the United States of America by Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group

To Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury and in America to those who have kept faith with the spirit of the Sixties

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a  st hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? Good God, we would also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. Franz Kafka,Diaries

Cont

Acknowledgements Preface: The Way We Were

e

nt

PART ONE: THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

s

911– America Ground Zero as Image Mourning vs Evacuation The Psyche That Dropped the Bomb After Such Knowledge,What Forgiveness?

Living in Death’s Dream Kingdom: The Psychotic Core of Capitalist Ideology Ideology as Delusional Fantasy Capitalism as Fulfillment of the Ideological Enterprise

Passion of the Christ in Abu Ghraib The Misfit’s Dilemma Moviegoers in the Hands of an Angry Filmmaker The NonAccidental Tourist The Principle of Hope: or,The Late, Late, Late Show Endgame: The Christ of Abu Ghraib

Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in Iraq Laughin Brings You the News Appointment in Samarra The Fatal Lure of Guarantees The Nuclear Unconscious The Fantasmatic Becomes the Real A Billet for Dubya Final Jeopardy

A Humanistic Response to 911: Robert Jay Lifton, or the Nostalgia for Guarantees History With and Without Guarantees The End of Humanism

xi xiii

1

3 4 5 6 8

11 11 16

23 23 25 30 39 42

45 45 47 48 52 56 59 63

67 67 71

 6

A Postmodernist Response to 911: Slavoj Žižek, or theJouissanceof an Abstract Hegelian The Pleasures of Ideological Criticism How to Become a Critical Critic The Missed Encounter

PART TWO: TO THE LEFT OF THE LEFT

 7

 8

 9

10

Bible Says: The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism Literalism Conversion Evangelicalism Apocalypse Now Sexual Roots of the Fundamentalist Psyche

The Psychodynamics of Terror Home Brewed Evacuation Through Projective Identification The Perfect Murder: Soul Murder Thanatos: The Pleasure of Terror Patriot Games

Evil: As Psychological Process and as Philosophic Concept Ordinary People Radical Evil Systemic Evil: The PsychoLogic of Capitalism

Men of Good Will: Toward an Ethic of the Tragic The Ethical Significance of Pat Tillman Psychoanalysis and Ethics The Apostle of Duty and the Subject of Existence The Choice on which Ethics Turns Toward an Existential Ethic The Value That Admits No Equivalent Tragic Situatedness: A Modest Proposal Singing in the Hard Rain

Notes References Index

x

75 75 87 93

119

121 123 128 133 136 144

151 151 154 156 159 160

165 165 185 198

219 219 220 223 230 235 238 240 244

247 263 269

Acknowledgements

There is one consolation to the melancholy of things completed: the opportunity to thank those who helped along the way. This work owes a large debt to the work and the example of Ruth Stein whose own book on the psychoanalysis of religious terrorism will appear shortly. It was my good fortune to be invited by Ruth to participate in an online seminar on fundamentalism and terrorism conducted byPsyBC.I want to thank the founder ofPsyBC, Dan Hill, for including me in the forum and the other participants: Richard Koenigsberg, Charles Strozier, James W. Jones, AnaMaria Rizzuto, Dan Merkur, and Dan Shaw. The interchanges of the forum galvanized my thoughts on a number of topics. A large debt of another kind is owed to Hannah Berkowitz. As a good Luddite I frequently make major mistakes working by computer. Hannah is always there to bail me out and set things right. Hers too is the credit for my website which she recently designed to aid readers of this book: http://www. walteradavis.com. (Readers who wish can contact me through the website or at [e-mail].) I have also had the benefit of a number of friends who have read portions of the work and responded with incisive comments that made my work harder but hopefully the book better. As but a partial token of my gratitude thanks to: Todd McGowan, Howard Beckwith, Nick Kaldis, Virginia Hill, Kara J. Kostiuk, Alex Blazer, Christopher Shinn, Paul Eisenstein, Lois Tyson, Stephen Davis, Greg Forter, Gretchen Cline, Guy Rowland, Jon Mills, Adam Engel, Daniel DeQuincy, Janet Pfunder, Jon Mills, Donna Bentolila, Paul Whalen, the late Gary Heim, Liz Burbank, Shahram Vahdany, Chris McMahon, Salwa Ghaly, Jonathan Lewis, Gerry Gargiulo, Susan Block, Rachel Newcombe, George Snedeker, Tadit Anderson, Mark Bracher, James Kozicki, and Ghislaine Boulanger. A special word of thanks to Michael Eigen for encouragement and support on numerous occasions. And deep appreciation to Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor ofCounterpunchwho enabled me to try out earlier versions of some of these chapters online and to those readers ofCounterpunchwho were good enough to write me. An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared inSocialism and Democracy.

xi

Preface: The Way We Were

“We must finally relearn what we forgot … that humanitarian and moral arguments are not merely deceitful ideology. Rather, they can and must become central social forces.” Herbert Marcuse,The Problem of Violence

“Iflibertymeans anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell,Notes on Nationalism

The word American in the subtitle of this work was originally spelled Amerikan, the spelling used on the left in the 1960s to indicate a fascist direction in our politics that seems mild compared with our current situation. That spelling was a gesture of hope. America is not Amerika. Not yet. But it could become so, which is why we must understand Bush and Company better than they understand themselves. In them many disorders rise to the surface: an economic pillage rivaling the robber barons; a political agency savaging the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; a social agenda catering to everything reactionary in the religious right. All these are also signs of a deeper disorder of the American character or psyche requiring an indepth psychoanalytic examination. But the method for undertaking such an examination does not exist and any desire for it was lost long ago in the flight of American culture from the psyche. My goal is to reverse that situation by developing a method that will enable us to recover and radicalize a psychoanalytic way of examining political and cultural events. To put the proposition in concrete terms, the reactions of the Bush administration to the trauma of September 11, 2001 brought an underlying psychosis to the surface. An event that should have led to restrained and farreaching reflections on America’s place in the world led instead to a hysterical acting out that continues to project globally the demands of a bullying vision that is also uncannily suited to the designs of global capitalism. Dubya is a fundamentalist crusader in the service of several masters. His deepest service perhaps is to cover the void at the center of American society. A culture of narcissism, religious infantilization and infatuation with violent computer games as the only ways to shock a benumbed sensibility

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