Human Development and the Political Subject

This chapter analyzes the etiologies of hatred. It explores psychic and emotional constructions of indifference, devoid of genuine passion. Such mentalized constructions of indifference partially result from secondary psychic representations. The alien self is described as a rival self-other captivated by mentalized constructions that prevent empathetic vision during mass atrocity. Sight becomes beholden to social fantasies that transform external realities into ghosts and internal apparitions perpetrators flail against. The analysis emphasizes the primacy of cultural influences. In so doing it outlines the concept of ego-ideal to show how cultural influences determine not what to desire, but rather discipline how to desire. Mimetic rivalry is understood through the conceptual lens of identicality and the fantasmatic tyranny of minor difference, comprised of political reifications functioning as supererogatory ideals. This chapter explores the relationship between aggressivity and narcissism and concludes by exploring semiotic initiation and entry into language and the Lacanian Symbolic.

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Hatred · Id, ego and super-ego · Narcissism · Passion · Political science · Politics · Psyche · Psychic · Psychoanalysis · Rage (emotion) · Rivalry · Semiotics · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Law · Philosophy · Political theory and Gramsci · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Social Psychology