PSYCHOANALYSIS AND WAR
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND WAR

Summary/Abstract: Apropos of racism that now rages around Europe (neo-Nazi Skinhead beatings up of Turks in Germany or of Pakistanis in England) - let's call this racism postmodern -we must be very careful not to canfuse this new form of racism with more traditional forms of racism. The older style of racism was direct and brutal - "the others" (Jews, Blacks, Arabs, Eastern Europeans ... ) are lazy, violent; they are plotting against us, eroding the substance of our national identity, etc.; the new racism is "reflective," whitch is why it can appear under the guise of its very opposite, of anti-racism. Etienne Balibarl baptized this new attitude "meta-racism," on account of its reliance on the theory of anthropological culturism. As Balibar says, "there is no racism without theory." Because every racist complex expresses "a violent desire for immediate knowledge of social relations," it has to invent theories which are immediately intelligible to the masses.

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