[By Florent POUPART (University of Toulouse)]
Definitions
The postmodern identity ideologies that have conquered the University (studies, “critical” theories, etc.) evoke in many ways a religious movement, as Jean-François Braunstein recently showed.[1]. They are not, however, reduced to dogmas tinged with mysticism: what characterizes them is also a certain relationship to knowledge, to language, and ultimately, to truth itself, which constitutes a real subversion of thought, and the neutralization of everything that conditions the contradictory debate. With the support of psychoanalytic conceptions, I propose here to consider how the reference to the field of perversion allows us to shed light on certain aspects of this ideological mechanism.
It is regrettable that the reference to perversion is often reduced, in everyday language, to a simple moral condemnation. In psychoanalysis, it is a highly heuristic concept, which refers to an individual or collective psychic solution, relatively banal and universal, and particularly effective in combating anxiety, depression, or even collapse. Psychoanalysis considers that what characterizes perversion is to renounce neither one's desire (neurotic solution), nor the frustrating reality (psychotic solution): the pervert finds a middle way consisting of acknowledging the piece of reality that distresses him, while disavowing its meaning, that is to say by refusing to submit to the constraints inherent to it (disavowal of castration). This clever defensive solution is achieved at the cost of a tear in the ego, which turns away from reality while maintaining contact with it (splitting of the ego).[2]. From this paradigmatic model, to what extent is it legitimate to consider an ideological perversion?
René Kaës, a group psychoanalyst and specialist in ideology, invites us not to consider ideology solely from a pathological or deadly angle. Ideology first fulfills a structuring function: when it is tempered, it contributes to the formation of a collective identity, essential to the realization of great cultural, social and political works. But ideology can also drift towards a closing, inquisitorial, destructive modality. It is on the side of perversion that we must seek the structure of ideology, insofar as it resorts, in its relationship to knowledge, to the same defense mechanisms as fetishism: disavowal of reality, splitting of the self, narcissistic overestimation, idealization of a partial object (the ideal, the idea, the idol). In ideology, belief has the character of a fetishistic object, whose enclosing function operates both on the group (experienced as homogeneous, from which all differentiation has been expelled), speech (ideological discourse tolerates no contradiction, no flaw, nor any metaphorical use of language), and knowledge (ideological discourse excludes all other discourse). This enclosure provides ideological discourse with an illusion of completeness that exerts an effect of fascination and seduction.[3].
Denial of castration and scotoma
Every ideology is a denial of castration, insofar as it bears witness to the disavowal of a lack, with the particularity that it concerns knowledge. However, this disavowal does not concern so much the lack of knowledge, as the knowledge of the lack. Adherence to an ideology aims less to compensate for the lack of knowledge than to reduce the feeling of helplessness that knowledge of reality often causes: this is what explains why ideologies do not regress as scientific knowledge progresses. Thus, for example, the conspiracy ideology does not come to fill a lack of information on an event, but rather to disavow an unpleasant knowledge in that it concerns helplessness and vulnerability: by imagining that catastrophes are deliberately organized by the powerful, the conspiracy theorist saves himself the psychological cost that would be implied by the recognition of their helplessness to protect us from them. In other words, a bad father is better than a weak father, a sadistic mother is better than a dead mother.[4].
Within an ideology, it is necessary to distinguish, on the one hand, what is related to scotoma, the manifest denial of certain aspects of reality, and on the other hand, what is evidence of a fetishistic mechanism. In the first line, denial concerns the perception of reality; in the second, it operates on the mediation between the subject and reality: the form of discourse, and everything that governs the production and sharing of meaning. Ideological perversion therefore designates less a category of ideologies than an aspect of ideology, notably its rhetorical and performative side. If ideology consists first of all in idealizing and idolizing an idea, without consideration for reality, it takes a perversive form when, not content with supporting a false idea, a lie, it disavows the very idea of truth, while taking advantage of it: we move from the denial of truth to the disavowal of the truth, in other words from psychotic denial (Verwerfung) to perverse denial (Verleugnung). Ideological perversion resorts to the various modalities of disavowal: this will bear on the differentiations, the dynamic oppositions which constitute a matrix of intelligibility and make thought possible (the most elementary and fundamental of them being the opposition between true and false). This translates into hermeticism, esotericism, obscurantism, limitlessness, confusionism, paradoxality…
One of the characteristic discursive forms of this ideological perversion is duplicity, which consists in simultaneously supporting two propositions that exclude each other, by inextricably mixing them, and actively maintaining the confusion. The perverse ideologue can, for example, support a discourse that lends itself to both a radical interpretation (rationally or morally untenable, but fascinating and seductive), and a moderate one (dull, but acceptable and therefore likely to neutralize the contradiction, by ridiculing or demonizing it). Duplicity can also operate on the use of common terms, used sometimes in an esoteric form, sometimes in their banal definition. Such use of language, thus rendered elusive, again excludes any contradiction: it is enough to pretend that the contradictor has simply not understood anything...
This art of evasion can be illustrated by Michel Foucault's use of the concept of truth. Jacques Bouveresse has emphasized that this use is based on a confusion between truth and belief, between being-true and "the assent given to a proposition considered true." Bouveresse reproaches Foucault for only dealing with the conditions of production of belief, and for drawing "abusive conclusions concerning the truth itself."[5]. Foucault thus inextricably mixes a fact that is difficult to contest (the influence of the historical, political, cultural context on the production of belief and discourses claiming to be the truth) and a lie (by suggesting that truth is only an effect of discourse and, ultimately, that there is no objective truth). The seductive error, sheltered from its banal counterpart (the truism), is thus made unassailable.[6]. Psychoanalysis itself is not exempt from perversive ideological maneuvers: the very charismatic Jacques Lacan, through his inimitable rhetorical style, masterfully handled all the levers of confusionism and paradoxality.[7].
Outrageous relativism
In the contemporary intellectual landscape, postmodern critical theory (which also claims a lineage with the thinkers of French Theory, including J. Lacan and M. Foucault), is busy deconstructing scientific and rational thought, in favor of an outrageous and grossly paradoxical relativism: in its most radical form, this new obscurantism considers it absolutely true that there is no absolute truth.[8]. In the absence of a common frame of reference to arbitrate contradictory debates (factual reality), these are neutralized by the substitution of moral condemnation for rational argumentation: postmodern ideologues, preferring Good to Truth, become inquisitors, and claim confusion between the registers of research and activism.[9].
Ideological perversion is not only a defeat of thought (nor only a threat to the University). It is a formidable political instrument: irrefutable and exhilarating, it is the favorite weapon of all populism. It is even one of the driving forces of totalitarianism if we are to believe Hannah Arendt who, joining the position defended by George Orwell, writes that the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is the one "for whom the distinction between true and false (the reality of experience), the distinction between fact and fiction (the norms of thought) no longer exist."[10].
