Revolutionary Neurotics and the Cunning of Conservatism
Author(s)
Caputi, Mary
Abstract
In its attention to internal conflict and disavowed ambivalences, psychoanalytic theory often makes trouble for the instigators of social change. This theory unveils a conservative drift lodged within even the most maverick impulse. The revolutionary’s identity is indeed overdetermined in nature, and certain tenets of psychoanalytic thought help explain the conservative identifications that sometimes lie hidden behind subversive action. At times, then, a society’s progressive forces ironically gravitate toward those institutionalized forms of power and authority they publicly oppose, replaying what they seek to dismantle and unwittingly repackaging what they hope to destroy. In this essay, I analyze why even the most revolutionary elements of a culture can ultimately display mimetic, conservative tendencies. I do this by focusing on those trends which identify strongly with the very framework they oppose and thus reproduce that framework in sometimes deliberate, sometimes subconscious ways. My specific interest lies with the deep ambivalences and neurotic orientation of the colonial setting as described by Frantz Fanon.
