ABSTRACT
In Subjectivity and absence: prejudice as a psycho-social theme, Lene Auestad questions the relationship between prejudice as a “nor-mal” and as an “abnormal” phenomenon, arguing that the more brutal and violent manifestations of prejudice are the ones that tend to become objects of study. Furthermore, when psychoanalytic studies focus on prejudice as a feature of the prejudiced person’s subjectivity, it is claimed, the extent to which this phenomenon is founded on a silent social consensus remains in the dark. As a consequence, the study tends to become an investigation not into the prevailing social norms but into an aberration. The prejudice that “works”, because it agrees with a social norm, is left untouched. The author suggests that, rather than focusing on individuals who appear as abnormally prejudiced on the background of a society which represents the standard of normality, we might look for condensation and displacement as evidence of prejudice in social space. A search for condensation and displacement as evidence of prejudice in social space will reveal multiple examples of groups being naturalised and homogenised in the media and in public
discourse. These processes, it is argued, are often not analysable in terms of malevolent intent or deviant subjectivities, as they may never figure in the subjective experience of the one who discriminates. The one who is being discriminated against, on the other hand, is often left in a position of being uncertain of whether, and to what extent, the discrimination is really happening. The experience of the former, the discriminator, is rarely questioned or challenged, the experience of the latter, the one who is subject to discrimination, is rarely confirmed. Balint’s model of trauma, built on Ferenczi’s writings on the subject ([1930-1932] 1988, [1955] 2002), is employed as a metaphor to describe this pattern, of how prejudice functions on a societal level. It enables one, argues the author, to think psychoanalytically in a more social way about the relationship between power, love, responsiveness on the one hand and subjectivity and its absence on the other. Balint (1969) argued that his proposed three-phasic structure changes the basis for the theory of trauma from the field of one-person psychology to two-person psychology. In the first phase the child is dependent on the adult, in a primarily trustful relationship. In the second, the adult, whether once and suddenly or repeatedly, does something highly exiting, frightening, or painful. This is exposure to excesses of tenderness or excesses of cruelty; to severe overstimulation or rejection. The trauma is only completed in the third phase when the child, in reaction to the second phase, attempts to get some understanding, recognition, and comfort and the adult behaves as if nothing had happened. Inherent in the common response of the racist, anti-Semite, misogynist, or homophobe-“My statement was not intended to be hurtful. You must be hypersensitive. You misunderstand me”—is a similar structure to the one seen in Balint’s account of trauma. It contains the claim that the speaker’s intention should be seen as real or valid, whereas the feeling and interpretation of the recipient do not. Thus the speaker is re-affirming his or her own subjectivity and nullifying that of the other. The recipient’s reaction is stripped of meaning and he or she is invited, or forced, to identify with the speaker. Since the speaker’s version presents itself as being in line with “common sense” whereas the recipient appears as “radical”, a third party would be inclined to support the former, which appears as intuitively meaningful. Thus the supposedly neutral third party in responding with “non-participating passive objectivity” would repeat the third phase of misunderstanding, thereby depriving the event of its reality.
