Preface: This piece was written during and directly following the 2016 elections, mostly in 10 minute incitements between psychotherapy patients which is to say it is rough around the edges, sloppy, and aged, but none the less, still perhaps of interest some readers....
[ This is a longer text, so it has been structured as to allow the reader to pick and choose which section(s) most interests them as a starting point to read from ]Structure:
1: Media -
1.1. The Meme - Dawkins, Moldbug, Darwin, Lamarck, Genes and Viruses -
1.2. The Meme - Hall, Jameson, Deleuze, Guattari, Desiring Machine and Simalacrum -
2: Meme Analysis -
2.1 Bird Moment -
2.2 Savior Sanders -
2.3 Sanders and Clinton Imagined as Teachers -
2.4 Bernie vs. Hillary -
2.5 Bernie Would've Won -
3: The Narcissism of Minor Differences -
4: Conclusion - Work Cited
Keywords:
Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, Richard Dawkins, Darwin, Lamarck, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, McLuhan, Fredric Jameson, Zizek, Richard Rorty, Foucault, Melanie Klein, Freud, Lacan, Jung, (and various other Psychoanalysts), Trump, Sanders, Clinton, Narcissism of minor differences, object-splitting, begging the question, simalacrum, naturalism, viral memetics...
1: Media
The medium is the
message, or so goes McLuhan’s famous adage. However, here, the medium is the meme, and
what has been more meme worthy than our recent political climate? Trump’s on
everyone’s tongue, left right and center, and the upcoming midterm elections
are bound to reignite old polemics which have barely died down to begin with.
So, what can we learn about the presidential election - the 2016 one and the
one to come - through looking at media
messages, in our case memes associated with Bernie Sanders
and Hillary Clinton (and tangentially, Donald Trump)?
1.1 The Meme - Dawkins, Moldbug, Darwin, Lamarck, Genes and Viruses
What is a meme?
The concept was popularized by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins whose basic definition, consistent with the dictionary, is ‘a cultural unit for transmitting information.’ For Dawnkins - who invokes the banal analogy between the individual body and the social collective - the meme is to culture/the social body as the gene is to the natural/biological body, or, a meme is a social gene. Mencius Moldbug, both a computer programmer and political theorist who has written on Dawkins in his cheeky but no less astute How Dawkins got Pwnd, reconceptualizes the meme for the better as more of a social virus than a social gene. Moldbug’s rhetorical genius should be pointed out here; 1: The word virus captures the violence and virility of the way ideas contagiously spread with brute force through any avenue available, sexual or not (STD), rather than gene, which, solely sexual, seems more associated with reproductive processes and naïve teleology or agency (virus is Darwinian, gene is Lamarckian). Genes are passed down through filiation and are associated with values such as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ while viruses irreverently infect and mutate and are beyond good and evil. A person can host and transfer a virus without knowing it (impersonal force), just like ideology, while, for gene, a person requires agency to reproduce with another person (ego-level interactions). The former captures the chaos of overflowing life and its sublimated residue and sediment known as culture whereas the latter seems too reductive and restrictive (and naturalistic); 2: Virus is a perfect concept for the meme as it is language pertinent to both the computer programming world and biological world. By utilizing the videogame sub culture term ‘pwnd’ in the piece where he expounds on the meme as virus, Moldbug highlights the meme’s digital subculture connotations as well as its bio-socio-scientific connotations in our contemporary digital world.
1.2 The Meme - Hall, Jameson, Deleuze, Guattari, Desiring Machine and Simalacrum
1.1 The Meme - Dawkins, Moldbug, Darwin, Lamarck, Genes and Viruses
What is a meme?
The concept was popularized by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins whose basic definition, consistent with the dictionary, is ‘a cultural unit for transmitting information.’ For Dawnkins - who invokes the banal analogy between the individual body and the social collective - the meme is to culture/the social body as the gene is to the natural/biological body, or, a meme is a social gene. Mencius Moldbug, both a computer programmer and political theorist who has written on Dawkins in his cheeky but no less astute How Dawkins got Pwnd, reconceptualizes the meme for the better as more of a social virus than a social gene. Moldbug’s rhetorical genius should be pointed out here; 1: The word virus captures the violence and virility of the way ideas contagiously spread with brute force through any avenue available, sexual or not (STD), rather than gene, which, solely sexual, seems more associated with reproductive processes and naïve teleology or agency (virus is Darwinian, gene is Lamarckian). Genes are passed down through filiation and are associated with values such as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ while viruses irreverently infect and mutate and are beyond good and evil. A person can host and transfer a virus without knowing it (impersonal force), just like ideology, while, for gene, a person requires agency to reproduce with another person (ego-level interactions). The former captures the chaos of overflowing life and its sublimated residue and sediment known as culture whereas the latter seems too reductive and restrictive (and naturalistic); 2: Virus is a perfect concept for the meme as it is language pertinent to both the computer programming world and biological world. By utilizing the videogame sub culture term ‘pwnd’ in the piece where he expounds on the meme as virus, Moldbug highlights the meme’s digital subculture connotations as well as its bio-socio-scientific connotations in our contemporary digital world.
1.2 The Meme - Hall, Jameson, Deleuze, Guattari, Desiring Machine and Simalacrum
All of this is
nice, but it goes without saying that it’s not
required to have read Dawkins, a new atheist scientist, or Moldbug, a neoreactionary
blogger, to know what a meme is. Anyone with the web knows this. As much
as it is a bio-social virus, it is also a digital entity made possible through
the advent of the internet composed of text and imagery constructed via a template
that immediately transmits a kind of cultural inside joke or somewhat mutually
understood social idea between groups that, like any social medium, requires
coding and decoding on the part of the meme producer and meme consumer (Hall
1974). These structures often refer
to other memes or other versions of itself, a process self-aware and steeped in
irony. More theoretically speaking, the meme is loosely related to Jameson’s
(1991 pg. 16-17) analysis of pastiche:
“[pastiche is] the increasing unavailability of the personal style...like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style…This omnipresence [in culture] of pastiche is not incompatible with a certain humor…it is at the least compatible with…a whole historically original consumers' appetite for a world transformed into sheer images of itself…it is for such objects that we may reserve Plato's conception of the ‘simulacrum;’ the identical copy for which no original has ever existed [my italics].”
The mention of the
pastiche is not so much to argue that a meme is or is not a pastiche – though
the recent UK bill that aims at copyrighting memes does refer to them as such –
but rather to show us some descriptive and associated terms for a meme - imitation,
humor, self-referential image, etc. – while also getting us succinctly to the
concept of the simulacrum, a concept which more readily relates to the meme and
its function in society. Though Jameson rightfully attributes the simulacrum to
Plato, it was of course popularized by Baudrillard who Jameson (1991 pg. 399)
admits to being “indebted” to. For Baudrillard the simulacrum
is not only a copy without an original, but also a model or simulation that goes
beyond parody and pastiche and replaces the thing it is supposed to be
abstractly modeling or simulating. That is, as illustrated in the famous
example, the map becomes more accurate than the real territory supposedly
mapped; the model becomes flush with the real and the simulation of the model in
the real has the same consequences as the real (what Land or Fisher via the
CCRU refer to as a cybernetic feedback loop, i.e., hyperstition / hyperfiction,
a fiction that makes itself real).
Iterated
succinctly, as Deleuzioguattarian researchers of virtual ontology (see Digital Ontology and Example by Aden Evans in The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy) have shown,
the meme is quite the shining example of a simulacrum as it is a digital entity
and as such can be produced essentially ad infinitum with little to no material
limitations (other than the inert physical servers and cables of the internet), and
therefore operates by rules radically different than ‘real’ material thus making
it highly conducive to rapid diffusion and dissemination, never mind
hermeneutic slippage. An example often used is that of mp3 music sharing or
‘pirating:’ When someone downloads a song for free off the internet instead of
buying the CD, it does not remove the digital file from the internet, or the CD
from the shelf. It makes a copy of the file. Files can be copied essentially infinitely
and spread and shared rapidly without any depreciation of the
original file. The same applies to the meme. In fact, the dissemination not
only does not devalue the meme, it increases its value through accumulating
social clout.
What is more, in line with the Deleuzeioguattarian line of thought, it is unavoidable that ‘the meme,’ in being both digital / immaterial and organic / material, conveying information and affect both representationally and diagrammatically, is what Deleuze and Guattari would call a desiring machine:
What is more, in line with the Deleuzeioguattarian line of thought, it is unavoidable that ‘the meme,’ in being both digital / immaterial and organic / material, conveying information and affect both representationally and diagrammatically, is what Deleuze and Guattari would call a desiring machine:
“Neither
mechanism nor vitalism has really understood the nature of desiring-machines,
nor the twofold need to consider the role of production in desire and the role
of desire in mechanics…” (pg. 44).
“…the real
difference is not between the living and the machine, vitalism and mechanism,
but between two states of the machine that are two states of the living as well”
(pg. 285-286).
“Desiring-machines
work according…"microscopic cybernetics" without regard to the
traditional opposition between mechanism and vitalism” (pg. 288).
“Desiring-machines
are…inherently connective in nature: "and…" "and then…"
…Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by
nature fragmentary and fragmented” (pg. 5).
“…desire
produces reality, or stated another way, desiring-production is one and the
same thing as social production. It is not possible to attribute a special form
of existence to desire, a mental or psychic reality that is presumably
different from the material reality of social production. Desiring-machines are
not fantasy-machines or dream-machines, which supposedly can be distinguished
from technical and social machines. Rather, fantasies are secondary
expressions, deriving from the identical nature of the two sorts of machines in
any given set of circumstances. Thus fantasy is never individual: it is group
fantasy—as institutional analysis has successfully demonstrated” (pg. 30).
– Anti-Oedipus 1972 Eng. Trans.
Deleuze and
Guattari smuggle desire back into politics by introducing the concept of the
“desiring machine” with the intention of not only bridging the gap (if one
permits such a vulgar turn of words) between vitalism and mechanism - or the
organic and the inorganic – but by also bridging the gap between the outside
and the inside, and between group social dynamics and personological
experience. That is, politics is the play of forces or flows of group libidinal
investments. Politics, having to do with the unconscious and desire, is
contagious, viral, and machinic, and the meme being the medium or 'currency.'
2: Meme Analysis
These aspects of politics and desire, which the meme is the vehicle of, have significant implications in the political realm. In the case at hand, political election memes, the medium of the meme allowed for a rapid, low-effort transmission and non-critical consumption of various complexly coded and likely to be incorporated and reproduced politico-ideological messages, like Moldbug’s virus (and it is no coincidence that we refer to internet phenomenon that spread quickly and induce influence as viral). For example, meme webpages were consciously, though perhaps ironically, integrated into the discourse this election. Thus, memes are treated here as cultural and psychological productions that express some sort of significant underlying emotional and cognitive political message about the election, an “aestheticizing of political life” in Benjamin’s language (2008 pg. 41), productions which also harbor a set of latent unconscious and ideological assumptions.
2.1. Bird Moment
The moment where a
small bird landed on Sanders’ podium was made into a meme that seemed to
communicate the notion that a skittish or non-domesticated animal could be within
the vicinity of Sanders free of any concerns of danger.
This moment was often juxtaposed with an incident of Trump beingattacked by an eagle. An interpretation which
the material seems to suggest is that the eagle, a symbol of America,
represented America’s intuitive understanding that Trump was bad for America,
while the bird landing on Sanders’ podium indicated that Sanders was good for
America. This is reminiscent of Disney films where the interaction between the human
protagonist and nature is romanticized through the character’s ability to
communicate with helpful and friendly animals, a theme which is precisely
evident in several Sanders memes which depict him as a Disney princess
character communicating with birds.
In our current context this seems to say Sanders is in touch with nature and that nature knows that Sanders is good, while Trump is out of touch with nature, and in fact an object of nature’s justified aggression.
To understand this
communication, we need to understand the idea of nature. Ideologically
understood, nature ‘naturally’ or instinctively understands the good from the
bad and knows how to act accordingly (as seen below).
This speaks to an idea of intuition and
rational reflection, as Rorty (1979) points out. Two brief examples can be cited:
developmental psychologists show how young infants will not crawl across a
glass bridge as they perceive, even if illusionary, that they will fall a great
distance to their death. For a naturalist, there is an inborn or ‘natural’
tendency to know what will aid survival and what will not. As disaster films
rightly show - and these films are expounded upon later - animals tend to flee
from natural disasters like tsunamis or volcanic eruptions before humans are
even aware of these events. Science aside, ideologically put, what is natural knows what is good or bad
for it. It is no surprise then that our society also positively values
nature. We see this in ecological movements, the market for electric cars, push
for alternative energy, and the trend of products marketed as ‘all natural.’
This phrase is used to communicate that the product in question is better than a
comparable product which contains unnatural ingredients. In fact, I cannot
think of an instance where anyone would market their product as ‘unnatural!’ To
this point, one may make note of the ‘all’ (one is reminded of the term ‘all natural’
again) or nothing split tendency - as a single unnatural ingredient
makes the whole product unnatural - that we will cover later regarding Melanie Klein and her conceptualization of psychological splitting.
For now, back to nature.
This value of nature can be tied to a larger phenomenon, the archaic thread of ‘naturalism’ or ‘essentialism’ in religion, philosophy, and the human sciences (Foucault talks about at length in The Order of Things) which posits that a thing which is more in line with nature is also a thing which is ‘the good’ or morally correct, and furthermore, that an idea in the mind is a reflection of a natural object (Rorty 1979). Foucault (ibid p.137) describes this well as “the ethical valorization of nature.” In short, Sanders is compared to the natural realm. He is depicted as in tune with nature and therefore natural himself. Thus, Sanders is also moral and good. The implication is that anyone who was aligned to see nature or Sanders in its ‘objective’ existence would have to be faced with this apodictic truth. It means ‘this is the choice that one would make if one were thinking clearly, that is, correctly.’ We will return to this idea later when we look at depictions of Clinton as unnatural.
This value of nature can be tied to a larger phenomenon, the archaic thread of ‘naturalism’ or ‘essentialism’ in religion, philosophy, and the human sciences (Foucault talks about at length in The Order of Things) which posits that a thing which is more in line with nature is also a thing which is ‘the good’ or morally correct, and furthermore, that an idea in the mind is a reflection of a natural object (Rorty 1979). Foucault (ibid p.137) describes this well as “the ethical valorization of nature.” In short, Sanders is compared to the natural realm. He is depicted as in tune with nature and therefore natural himself. Thus, Sanders is also moral and good. The implication is that anyone who was aligned to see nature or Sanders in its ‘objective’ existence would have to be faced with this apodictic truth. It means ‘this is the choice that one would make if one were thinking clearly, that is, correctly.’ We will return to this idea later when we look at depictions of Clinton as unnatural.
2.2 Savior
Sanders
Images linking
Sanders with the word ‘revolution’ were popular during his campaign. Some
slogans and catch phrases of Sanders’ used the word as well.
The communication here is that Sanders is going to give the masses the revolution they need or deserve, or that things have been unjust and will be set right by Sanders. Another version of this consists of an image of Sander’s running through a train station captioned with text that indicates he is on his way to right a wrong or save someone from an injustice.
One meme combines this theme of salvation
with the theme of naturalism (a combination quite worthy of the phrase 'ethical
valorization' of nature) and shows a disheveled Sanders with text representing
the general idea ‘Sander’s looks like the character (often a scientist) in the
disaster film (mentioned earlier) that nobody listened to, but who was right
the whole time.’
In these types of memes Sanders is cast as both understanding nature (natural disaster film genre is specifically mentioned), and being a savior because of this privileged and scientific (naturalist) understanding (let us remember Foucault’s genealogical tracing of naturalism and essentialism into the foundations of the state apparatus, and its expression of power through science).
In this particular
set of memes, he is cast as the powerless and discredited hero who must look on
in horror as what he already knows comes to fruition. The viewer watching this gets to witness the
struggle of the hero doing all he can despite knowing the almost pre-destined, disastrous
outcome which of course makes the heroic actions that much more virtuous. If
this sounds familiar it is because it is the archetype of Christ which is also
- not surprisingly of course- invoked
several times in regard to Sanders (Christ must go through the motions despite knowing he will die).
This comparison of Sanders to Christ and the similar comparisons of Sanders to popular characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Gandalf, and Dumbledore are examples of what Jung refers to as the “wizard transference,” which is commonly seen, as Bollas points out, in patients in psychoanalytic therapy.
This is where the patient idealizes the analyst or person as all
knowing, wise, and good (Cath & Cath 1978 p.636; Grossman 2002 p.10; Dam,
Heinicke, Shane 1975 p.459). It is typically associated with old fatherly
hermits. This is also consistent with the theme of nature and intuition, as
wizards are often attuned to the magic of nature, live in caves or forests, and
have a mystically intuitive understanding of others. An old man who lives in
the woods of Vermont surely fits this description
2.3 Sanders
and Clinton Imagined as Teachers
Another meme, a
version of the “Bernie vs. Hillary” meme that I will touch upon fully in the
next section, compares Clinton and Bernie to teachers leading a classroom.
Clinton is the teacher that, when the classroom bell rings, says “I dismiss the
class, not the bell!” Bernie is the teacher who happily lets the students go,
wishing them a good day. The message of this meme is that Clinton is uptight,
restrictive and non-gratifying while Sanders is cool, reasonable, in line with
the kids’ wishes, and gratifying. Other memes, one of which is a “Bernie vs.
Hillary,” one of which is not, support this idea of Sanders as gratifying and
Clinton as withholding.
Here, I feel it
beneficial to take a brief aside: Anyone who has run a psychoanalytic group or
taught a classroom of children knows that on some level it is important to have
the group members direct their actions and words at the leader (Spotnitz, 1985;
Ormont 1984; Rosenthol 2005; Meadow, Ormont, Rosenthal, Spotnitz, Bernstein,
1993). The leader is supposed to start and end the group or class as opposed to
the group or bell (some external and often arbitrary authority) ending the
class. Having a clear leader allows for the other classmates or group members
to be and feel protected, and to have a focal point to direct aggression, or
communications for needs. It is the leader’s responsibility to deal with the
emotional content, not the sole responsibility of the other students. My own
experience teaching classes and running groups only serves to confirm this
notion.
Likewise, over-gratifying
can often be harmful in therapeutic and learning situations. It results in the
‘permissive’ parenting style which is often damaging to the development of
children (this is in part the line of argument Lacanians develop,
oddly consistent with conservatives, in claiming that patricide or the death of
the father results in permissive social behavior and therefore the decline of
society. Bernie is a soft dad who will not commit to castration, Clinton is a pant-suiting wearing woman who is ready to cut...). In my
experience as a school based clinician, children with permissive parents and
out of control teachers tend to be the same children who throw desks in unruly
classrooms when frustrated, and at my past clinics, seem to have the most challenges
in life. They lack what Klein (1946) calls 'acting as a container.' In the final
analysis, perhaps Clinton’s imagined intervention is more psychoanalytic and
beneficial to the group than Sanders...’ At least Clinton would have directed
some attention at herself, creating a containing environment, developing a
transference, and fostering a relationship. This is after all what is required
of a good leader, but I digress.
Back to memes.
Back to memes.
2.4 Bernie
vs. Hillary
The most popular
meme to appear which is called “Bernie or Hillary” or “Bernie vs. Hilary” shows
Clinton and Sanders literally ‘split’ up by a dividing line drawn down the
center of the image. On each side of the line is a question or pop culture
referenced followed by a humorous answer to the question or reference. Clinton always
produces clichés or answers that have an inauthentic and unnatural appeal to
‘hipness.’ Sanders always produces deep, complex, and profound answers that
show some natural and authentic knowledge of the subject matter at hand. The
message seems to be that Clinton is lame, out of touch, and tries too hard to
appeal to young voters while Sanders naturally and intuitively (to return to
the previous themes) understands the voters. In short, Clinton is unnatural and
forced whereas Bernie is natural and cool.
Many websites and blogs were quick to point
out the sexism inherent in this meme. Despite these sources’ lack of rigor and depth,
I think they are correct. These themes
are consistent with run of the mill sitcom depictions of the cold, domineering,
mother and happy go lucky, gratifying father (one may be reminded of my
Lacanian aside written above). In this
regard, it may be important to note in passing that the psychological mechanism
of splitting (which, again, we will elaborate on more late) is often seen in clinical accounts of racism and sexism (Tan 1993;
Altman 2000). In regard to racism, contemporary sociologists call this “the one
drop rule,” meaning that even if a ‘white’ person only has one drop of black
blood or blackness in them, figuratively speaking, they are considered wholly
black (Dworkin, & Lerum, 2009).
2.5 Bernie
Would’ve Won
Another popular
meme with Sanders is “Bernie would’ve won” (Tilford 2016).
On a naive level, the phrase refers to the idea that ‘Bernie, if elected as the Democratic candidate, would have won against Trump.’ On a deeper register, this phrase implies an injustice has occured and serves an ideological purpose.
The phrase ‘Bernie
would’ve won’ is almost always presented as if it were a complete sentence despite it not being a full sentence as the referent one would expect at the end of the
sentence is missing. Likewise, it is also not a coherent argument as the premises
we would expect to have lead us to the conclusion ([premisesA, and therefore B] is why Bernie
would have won) are missing. I shall briefly deconstruct the sentence to
further illustrate.
Bernie would have
won is a different way of saying ‘Bernie did not win.’ ‘Would have’ indicates
there is a reason resulting in Bernie’s not winning. ‘Would have’ is also a
certain tense of ‘to be.’ We can safely say the sentence is saying ‘Bernie
would be a winner if not for X’ or ‘Bernie did not win because X…’ Thus, the
sentence ‘Bernie would’ve won’ is actually
the conclusion of an argument
erroneously presented as the argument
itself. This is the common logical fallacy known as begging the question.
To be clear, the
implicit structure of an argument is:
A Premise: [Blank in this case]
B Premise: [Blank in this case]
C Conclusion: [Bernie did not win
because A and B]
What are we to
make of the fact that in this case A and B are left out? Perhaps the referent
of the sentence (A and B premises) are omitted so that any idea can be slotted
into the end of the sentence. As Zizek (1989) points out, synthesizing Lacan
and Marx, an effective ideology (not unlike a meme) is specific enough to appeal to a certain crowd
but flexible enough to be appropriated by a wide range of needs found within
that crowd. That is, anyone can take the root phrase and insert their own
personal reason into it without compromising the inclusivity of the pro Sanders
group ideology: Bernie would’ve won if not for X. If not for Y. So on and so
on. This is ideology in the political sense and transference in the individual psychoanalytical
sense (and for Althusser and Zizek, roughly speaking, the two correspond). In both cases there is a loose
structure (grammar and syntax) or object (actual analyst in the chair) which contains
just the right amount of vagueness and
structure to allow for emotions and beliefs to be unconsciously projected upon
or into.
However, demonstrating
that the ‘Bernie would’ve’ phrase is an invalid argument or incomplete sentence
is not intended to show any cognitive dissonance or lack of proper reasoning (the cringey 'Ackchyually, that's not really an argument!' intro to phil. bullshit...).
People do not speak or take rhetorical positions based on formal logic. To imply such would be to overly intellectualize common discourse and thus miss the point of media communications. Rather, my intention is to show that this phrase is an example of an unconscious process colloquially referred to as ‘kettle logic.’ Zizek (2014) illustrates this perfectly in both the unconscious and political sense, just as I am trying to do here, when he extrapolates a joke Freud would often use to depict the ‘logic’ of the unconscious. In the joke, Jon borrows a kettle from Tim. After it is not returned for some time, Tim asks Jon about his kettle. Jon responds to Tim: “(1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you” (Zizek 2014 p.75). Zizek goes on to show how the same logic is utilized by holocaust deniers to justify antisemitism, as well as the American government to justify the 2003 war in Iraq (p.76,77). The idea is that the unconscious generates several different conflicting reasons to justify or avoid an event or belief. The kettle logic regarding Sanders is that, as previously mentioned, ‘Bernie would’ve won’ can be slotted with any number of sentence endings that would contradict one another if not for the introduction of kettle logic which keeps each of the sentence endings equally valid but in a parallel operation. The left hand does not know what the right is doing! That is, the argument/sentence is unconsciously left open-ended to facilitate whatever reason comes to mind. To mirror the above instance of the joke: Tim asks Jon why Sanders lost the Democratic spot. Jon replies: (1) Bernie didn't want to win anyways; (2) Bernie didn’t actually lose, if you think about it...(3) Bernie was destined to lose from the start due to cheating. We're dealing with the political unconscious here.
People do not speak or take rhetorical positions based on formal logic. To imply such would be to overly intellectualize common discourse and thus miss the point of media communications. Rather, my intention is to show that this phrase is an example of an unconscious process colloquially referred to as ‘kettle logic.’ Zizek (2014) illustrates this perfectly in both the unconscious and political sense, just as I am trying to do here, when he extrapolates a joke Freud would often use to depict the ‘logic’ of the unconscious. In the joke, Jon borrows a kettle from Tim. After it is not returned for some time, Tim asks Jon about his kettle. Jon responds to Tim: “(1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you” (Zizek 2014 p.75). Zizek goes on to show how the same logic is utilized by holocaust deniers to justify antisemitism, as well as the American government to justify the 2003 war in Iraq (p.76,77). The idea is that the unconscious generates several different conflicting reasons to justify or avoid an event or belief. The kettle logic regarding Sanders is that, as previously mentioned, ‘Bernie would’ve won’ can be slotted with any number of sentence endings that would contradict one another if not for the introduction of kettle logic which keeps each of the sentence endings equally valid but in a parallel operation. The left hand does not know what the right is doing! That is, the argument/sentence is unconsciously left open-ended to facilitate whatever reason comes to mind. To mirror the above instance of the joke: Tim asks Jon why Sanders lost the Democratic spot. Jon replies: (1) Bernie didn't want to win anyways; (2) Bernie didn’t actually lose, if you think about it...(3) Bernie was destined to lose from the start due to cheating. We're dealing with the political unconscious here.
On these grounds, I
propose we consider the following development: Some of Sander’s followers at
one point said that they would rather vote for Trump than Clinton (Gettys 2016;
Stone 2016; West 2016). This turned into the “Burnie or Bust” movement (Zeleny
2016; Becket 2016 - also see this video). Though many of these followers eventually voted for Clinton, this occurrence
should still initially strike us as odd as these were the same followers who
criticized Hilary for being ‘bad’ in all areas that Trump was arguably - to them at least - ‘worse.’
Here, it wasn’t that the followers of Sander’s intended to cognitively align
with Trump’s ideas, but rather, this motion by Sanders’ following was an
emotional communication of ‘Anything over Clinton! Anything is better than her!’
It is similar to the cliché ‘I would rather die than X.’ Most people do not
really wish to die when they say this, and most people upon hearing this
utterance do not assume this as having a concrete meaning. It’s a symbolic
communication.
This was a move intended to showcase the
intense distaste for Clinton and the lengths at which one would go to stay
resolute to this position. Though one may cite many actual policies and events
that show Clinton’s ‘evil,’ the way the events are handled seems to be evidence
of unconscious dynamics at play. That is, willingly choosing the ‘worse’ option
to communicate a certain feeling to another must have unconscious motives. Or
in a different sense, willingly choosing to punish others (Trump elected as president)
in order to stay true to a personal or group value has unconscious motives.
As a clinician, the feeling I noticed in this moment was a feeling I noticed in some of my own patients, and particularly a psychoanalytic group I ran. Prior to our work together, this group had been abandoned abruptly by an idealized and highly gratifying teacher who they described as having an intuitive understanding of them like the wizard or nature themes mentioned previously. They refused to cooperative with the replacement teacher who was a good teacher trying hard to work the kids. The kids were unable to tolerate any of the teacher’s shortcomings in light of their “perfect” prior teacher. The feeling in both the case of the group and of the Sanders’ followers voting for Trump was ‘If I can’t have it the way I want (perfect) then fuck it all!’ Or ‘If I can’t have what I want then no one will have what they want!’ This feeling, if I can’t have it no one will, consistent with our splitting hypothesis, is what Klein refers to as envy. These are feelings supported by a few memes found on the subject.
3: The
Narcissism of Minor Differences
The example of Sanders’
followers threatening to vote for Trump also says something else. It says that
Clinton was perceived as more of an immediate threat to Sanders than was Trump.
That is, Sanders and Clinton are closer associated due to being members of the same Democratic
party, and because of this closeness and immediacy a sharper distinction or
‘split’ was required to make sense of the situation and form a political narrative .
The Republican
Trump and the Democrat Sanders are already pre-split for us by a discursive
structure, the two party system and the media that propagates it. This is taken
as a given, if not consciously, then unconsciously, and predetermines the way we
tend to view these candidates. Thus, it would require more of an argument to reconcile
Trump and Clinton than Sanders and Clinton.
It is easy to say in passing ‘Clinton and Sanders must share some of the
same values because they’re of the same political party.’ This statement sounds
relatively agreeable on face value. That is, it is easier to erroneously lump
Clinton and Sanders together and thus extra energy has to be exerted in the
direction of separating or splitting
Clinton and Sanders. In other words, things that are already noticeably
different, even if illusionary, require less argumentation to show the
differences. This is what Freud called the narcissism of minor
differences, and this concept, still in keeping with our subtheme of racism and
sexism, was used by Freud to explain the battle of the sexes, and racial and
cultural conflicts.
Before we get into the
memes themselves, I must make explicit a basic theoretical assumption I work
under, one which importantly relates to the concept of the meme: the memes
chosen here indicate that the narratives around Clinton and Sanders are
unconsciously formed through the process of what psychoanalyst Melanie Klein
called splitting. Splitting is the unconscious psychological process where
imagined, perceived, or even real ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of an ‘object’ of
perception, sensation, and ideation are divided up to avoid or preserve certain
ideas and feeling states. When the splitting defense is in use, things are ‘all
or nothing,’ and even a little speck of ‘bad’ can turn a good object completely
bad. Considering all people have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ qualities, splitting results
in a limited view of a person, what Klein - and this is all a vulgar bastardization of her metapsychology, but who cares - calls a partial object. When
splitting, an object may be idealized whereupon its ‘bad’ aspects are ignored
or explained away, or it may be completely denigrated whereby the same violence
is done to its ‘good’ aspects. With this in mind, it seems that the recent
election, Clinton, or “Crooked Hillary” as she was called, was, primarily
through the use of memes, seen as an all bad object while Sanders was seen as
an all good, idealized object.
For our purposes, what Clinton and Sanders did or did not do is of little concern.
Rather, what is of concern is the public reactions
to what they did or did not do. That is, how
certain transferences (sets of ideas
and feelings associated with or projected onto certain objects) developed
towards Clinton and Sanders, and how the followers of these politicians
attempted to maintain these transferences in the face of contrary data. The
meme, in relation to this Kleinian idea of splitting, is very similar to a
Kleinian part object. It is a small and reductive snap shot of a large event or
person. The meme reduces (aestheticizes, or makes a pastiche of) a complex
political event or figure into a one dimensional, easy to digest, and quick to
produce and reproduce image with a few lines of text. The meme is a perfect
medium – a viral one - for projecting internal psychological processes
involving fantasy onto ‘real’ life events at a rapid rate.
4: Conclusion
By now I hope to
have shown some decent evidence in support of the idea that thinking in terms
of internal psychological splitting, the narcissism of minor differences and its relation to ideology and appeal to naturalistic discourse can help explain some aspects of the
thoughts and actions during the recent election cycle. These psychological
processes were exacerbated by the medium of the narratives, the meme. The meme
reproduces itself at a high rate, without any sort of material limitation,
while simultaneously reducing complex political views to aestheticized
pastiches. That is, it rapidly recurs and transfers messages widely without
critical reproach. This turns something complex like politics into a sort of
ironic cultural game where psychological processes prone to lend themselves to
less than thoughtful decision making can easily be grafted onto a template.
As far as whether
or not we have an answer to the question we began with – ‘What can we learn
about the recent presidential election through looking at media messages
circulated by the different political camps?’ - I believe we do. We have
learned two things; 1: the meme, an internet age medium, allowed for rapid and
loose projection of ideological and psychological beliefs; 2: multiple aspects
of the process of projecting ideological and psychological could be described
consistently with the Kleinian model of meta-psychological or psychoanalytical splitting.
As I have tried to
show, Sanders was viewed as far more gratifying than Clinton who was typically
viewed as cold, and out of touch (regardless of whether these beliefs actually map onto their persons). Thus, Sanders was idealized as the good object,
and hyper-cathected to while Clinton was discredited and discarded as a bad
poisonous object, or someone who would not facilitate the meeting of needs –
the refrigerator mother. In our cultural milieu which downplays the need to
tolerate uncomfortable feelings, coupled with the economic and political state
of urgency which encourages action, splitting was used to concentrate or save
energy, and eject bad feelings, something which did not allow for a nuanced
position on either candidate.
Though in these
extreme conditions it is necessary for hope to be created through idealization,
unfortunately, as is the case with many instances of splitting, the patient
develops destructive character formations that prioritize internal fantasy as a
way of ‘meeting’ needs, a process which ultimately impedes any relationships or enjoyment in ‘real’ life, never mind political
change. This is perhaps a more contemporary elaboration of Voltaire’s argument - despite how cringey and heavy handed it might be - that the perfect is the enemy of the good. That is, with splitting the original
goal is often obstructed in the process of attempting to attain the goal. In
the current case of Clinton and Sanders, voters got neither President Clinton nor
President Sanders, but President Trump instead.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Work Cited
(I gave up half way through this I think)
(I gave up half way through this I think)
Baurillard - Simulation and Simalacrum.
Becket, S. (2016). Bernie Sanders
Supporters at the 2016 DNC: Don’t Blame Us if Donald Trump Wins. Accessed: https://mic.com/articles/149714/bernie-sanders-supporters-at- the-2016-dnc-don-t-blame-us-if-donald-trump-wins#.n5rJUFNCN
Benjamin, W. (2008). The Work of Art in
the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media.
Dworkin, S. Lerum, K. (2009). Race,
Sexuality, and the “One Drop Rule”: More Thoughts about Interracial Couples and Marriage. Accessed: https://thesocietypages.org/sexuality/2009/10/18/race-sexuality-and-the-one-drop-rule- more-thoughts-about-interracial-couples-and-marriage/
Foucault, M. (2005). The Order of Things.
An Archaeology of Human Sciences.
Freud,
S. ([1930] 1961) Civilization and Its Discontents, Standard Edition,
Vol. 21. (London: Hogarth
Press).
Gettys, T. (2016) Some ‘Bernie-or-bust’
voters are backing Trump – and Daily Shows’ Jessica Williams discovers why. Accessed: http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/some-bernie-or- bust-voters-are-backing-trump-and-daily-shows-jessica-williams-discovers-why/ Bernie or bust folks voting trump
Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in
the Television Discourse
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or the
Culture Logic of Late Capitalism. Can be accessed:
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Fredric-Jameson-Postmodernism-Or-the-Cultural-Logic-of-Late-Capitalism.pdf
Klein, M. (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid
Mechanisms. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 27: 99-110
Klein, M. (1958). On the Development of
Mental Functioning. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39: 84-90
Klein, M. (1930). The Importance of Symbol
-Formation in the Development of the
Ego.Int.J. Psycho-Anal.,11:24-39
Klein, M. (1932). The Psycho-Analysis of
Children. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib.,22:1-379. London:
The Hogarth Press.
Stone, S. (2016). Bernie or Bust
Supporters Continue Sabotage Clinton Just to Prove a Point. Acessed: https://thepolicy.us/bernie-or-bust-supporters-continue-to-sabotage-clinton-just- to-prove-a-point-22f0be063ee1#.duzqavsnx Bernie or bust
voting
Tilford, J. (2016). The “Bernie Would’ve
Won” Meme: What is it, where did it come from and is it true? Accessed: https://mic.com/articles/163185/the-bernie-would-ve-won-meme-what- is-it-where-did-it-come-from-and-is-it-true#.8OdUzg7Jt
West, J. (2016). We Asked Bernie Sanders
Die-Hards,”Who will you vote for in November?” Accesed:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/bernie-sanders-rally-hillary- clinton-trump-video-philadelphia some bernie or
bust people voting for trump
Zeleny, J. (2016).Bernie or bust: Sanders
supporters vow to hold out. Accessed: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/01/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-bernie-or-
bust/index.html
Zizek, S. (2014) Zizek’s Jokes.
Zizek, S. (1989) The Sublime Object of
Ideology
