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Understanding Racism : Freud, Klein, Horkheimer, Adorno - Projection and the Uncanny according to Professor Simon Clarke, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
I have always said that Racism is linked to Inferiority Complexes, to Inadequacies, to self inflicted shortcomings.
Racism surges from our real inferiority and fear projected on others. So that we project on others our own defects, shortcomings, lazyness, dirt, filth.
This phrase of Horkheimer and Adorno tells a lot : "what appears repellently alien is in fact all too familiar" ( because it is carried internally in a perturbed personality )
I excerpt a few paragraphs of a long and learned article by Professor Simon Clarke, University of the West of England, in Bristol, UK.
A discussion on the Origins of Racism :
By Professor Simon Clarke :
From Aesthetics to Object Relations: Situating Klein in the Freudian `Uncanny'
Some excerpts :
My first introduction to Das Unheimlich was through the work of Max Horkhcimer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1994, p. 182).
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I argue that as an aesthetic, a quality of feeling, the uncanny is deeply entrenched in phantasy. Phantasy provides a vehicle for the construction of our own identity and that of others.
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Horkheimer and Adorno use the concept of the ‘uncanny’ and projection to explain the visceral and embodied nature of anti-Semitism
................
The urge to control and dominate others through paranoid phantasy. We project on the world experiences and qualities that are part of ourselves, as if they were part of someone or something else.
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"Impulses which the subject will not admit as his own even though they are most assuredly so, are attributed to the object - the prospective victim... " (Horkheimer and Adorno:1994:187)
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"Unheimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained... secret and hidden but has come to light (Schelling) (Freud: SE:XVII:224).
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"The subject of the `uncanny' is a province of this kind. It is undoubtedly related to what is frightening - to what arouses dread and horror" (Freud:SE:XVII:219).
....................
Freud uses the example of the Sandman from Eight Tales of Hoffman. The sandman is roughly equivalent to the `bogeyman', the fear of which keeps children in their beds at night. In a linguistic sense the writer creates something uncanny which plays on our unconscious fears and phantasies. In the same way religion has created gods and demons. These we feel we have surmounted, particularly with the spread of secularisation and the demise of religious practice. But, we still have uncanny feelings of supernatural powers that are frightening. Freud thus gives us two forms of uncanny. First, feelings that are triggered by infantile complexes, and second, the uncanny which proceeds from actual experience, from animistic beliefs that have been surmounted.
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The racial or ethnic other is created by both our fear and ignorance of difference. What appears repellently alien is the manifestation, a reflection of phantasy in some other. In this way, that which is familiar turns to frightening and produces feelings of hate.
...................
As this phantasy is recognised in some other, the racist hates the hating self and tries to make reparation.
.................
It is in this way that I argue that ignorance, anxiety and fear lead to racism, hatred and suffering. The racial `other' is constructed in phantasy through ignorance, projected into others through fear, recognised in others as familiar, and experienced by us as uncanny.
.
Understanding Racism : Freud, Klein, Horkheimer, Adorno - Projection and the Uncanny according to Professor Simon Clarke, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
I have always said that Racism is linked to Inferiority Complexes, to Inadequacies, to self inflicted shortcomings.
Racism surges from our real inferiority and fear projected on others. So that we project on others our own defects, shortcomings, lazyness, dirt, filth.
This phrase of Horkheimer and Adorno tells a lot : "what appears repellently alien is in fact all too familiar" ( because it is carried internally in a perturbed personality )
I excerpt a few paragraphs of a long and learned article by Professor Simon Clarke, University of the West of England, in Bristol, UK.
A discussion on the Origins of Racism :
By Professor Simon Clarke :
From Aesthetics to Object Relations: Situating Klein in the Freudian `Uncanny'
Some excerpts :
My first introduction to Das Unheimlich was through the work of Max Horkhcimer and Theodor Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1994, p. 182).
.................
I argue that as an aesthetic, a quality of feeling, the uncanny is deeply entrenched in phantasy. Phantasy provides a vehicle for the construction of our own identity and that of others.
................
Horkheimer and Adorno use the concept of the ‘uncanny’ and projection to explain the visceral and embodied nature of anti-Semitism
................
The urge to control and dominate others through paranoid phantasy. We project on the world experiences and qualities that are part of ourselves, as if they were part of someone or something else.
....................
"Impulses which the subject will not admit as his own even though they are most assuredly so, are attributed to the object - the prospective victim... " (Horkheimer and Adorno:1994:187)
..................
"Unheimlich is the name for everything that ought to have remained... secret and hidden but has come to light (Schelling) (Freud: SE:XVII:224).
..................
"The subject of the `uncanny' is a province of this kind. It is undoubtedly related to what is frightening - to what arouses dread and horror" (Freud:SE:XVII:219).
....................
Freud uses the example of the Sandman from Eight Tales of Hoffman. The sandman is roughly equivalent to the `bogeyman', the fear of which keeps children in their beds at night. In a linguistic sense the writer creates something uncanny which plays on our unconscious fears and phantasies. In the same way religion has created gods and demons. These we feel we have surmounted, particularly with the spread of secularisation and the demise of religious practice. But, we still have uncanny feelings of supernatural powers that are frightening. Freud thus gives us two forms of uncanny. First, feelings that are triggered by infantile complexes, and second, the uncanny which proceeds from actual experience, from animistic beliefs that have been surmounted.
.................
The racial or ethnic other is created by both our fear and ignorance of difference. What appears repellently alien is the manifestation, a reflection of phantasy in some other. In this way, that which is familiar turns to frightening and produces feelings of hate.
...................
As this phantasy is recognised in some other, the racist hates the hating self and tries to make reparation.
.................
It is in this way that I argue that ignorance, anxiety and fear lead to racism, hatred and suffering. The racial `other' is constructed in phantasy through ignorance, projected into others through fear, recognised in others as familiar, and experienced by us as uncanny.
.
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