BOMBS IN BOMBAY and blasts in Britain, a smart capitalist might see this as wise time to buy a few shares in a window replacement company. The rest of us might dare to think more radically in trying to understand what all this sort rage and anarchy is about, beyond the convenient and dismissive rhetoric of thugs and terrorists.
On my recent flight to the UK, I sat next to a charming Englishman, an Economist who shared with me a number of observations about Britain. He observed, he told me, that since the credit crunch, that devastated the livelihoods of so many people, there were more high-end cars in the hedge-fund streets of Mayfair in London than ever. He added that it appeared the gulfing divide between the haves and have-nots appears to be growing. He also told me that he feels there is an underlying anger and despair in Britain about the future and the bail-out of the banks, did little to help the plight of individuals who had lost jobs, businesses and homes. Within three days of telling me this, the riots broke out across London, then Birmingham, then Manchester.
Struck by the similarity of a conversation I had on the way to the airport, I tell the Englishman, that interestingly, a friend who has lived in Bombay for many years sensed there was more anger brewing in urban India. I shared with him that my friend had said, “There is a tangible tension in the City that you didn’t use to feel,” he observes. “We have these great lifestyles, with drivers, cooks and servants, who we all get so cheaply because they live in slums. It can’t go on forever.” The Englishman asked me whether I felt India might join the revolutionary ranks of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia in demanding greater justice from political leadership and the state. However without a strong social movement against injustice, I shared that it seems unlikely soon.
The book he occasionally glances at, possessively in my lap, is the stunning collection of essays by Jacqueline Rose, just published this year by Duke. I explain to him with the passion of a nine year old Spice Girls fan, “She is an extraordinary woman who brings the full force of psychoanalytic thinking to such a daring range of topics as the politics of Israel and Palestine, Suicide Bombers, Feminism, Peter Pan, Sylvia Plath, the South African Peace and Reconciliation process.”
What is very clear about Rose’s approach to mobs, gangs and terrorists, whether in Britain or Bombay, is that we are madly off the mark, possibly deluded citizens, if we lazily presume this sort of phenomena is merely about individual pathology, or some sort of essentialist diatribe about certain religious or class based groups in society. Tariq Ali, in his London Review of Books blog, reminds us of the singular event, the police shooting of an unarmed citizen, the tipping point of the riots in the UK, happened “Because grievances build up over time, because when the system wills the death of a young black citizen from a deprived community, it simultaneously, if subconsciously, wills the response.” He also adds that for the 1000 deaths of young men in custody in Britain, since 1991, not one single policeman has been charged, despite overwhelming evidence.
What Roses applies, is that without bringing into the field of politics the difficulties and challenges of the inner life, not merely in an individualistic way, but in terms of the collective inner life that shapes politics and world events, healthy, sustainable, transformation will not occur. Drawing upon Freud, in her essay on Mass Psychology, she warns any country to be aware that:
“If a culture has not got beyond the point where the satisfaction of some participants requires the oppression of others, maybe the majority (and this is the case with all contemporary cultures), then understandably, the oppressed will develop a deep hostility towards a culture that their labour makes possible but in whose commodities they have too small a share.”
Introducing Rose at a recent talk she gave at the London Review of Books, Paul Myerscough rather magnificently laid out the kinds of ways in which she asks us to think the unthinkable into politics and our lives. The unthinkable, firstly as that which we can hardly bare to think. The unthinkable, that dares to poke around in the private and collection operation of fantasy. The unthinkable, as out of sight and awareness in those things that can’t be admitted into our consciousness. It is to think the things we don’t want to think about and we can’t think, because it hasn’t been thought before.
This is precisely what we hope also happens of course in the consulting room work - we open up a space, for radical thinking - a space to ‘think the unthinkable. Whether the war is going on inside or outside, lurking beneath is invariably a narrative of victimhood. What Rose reminds us, as is that it is healthy to acknowledge an event, a moment when we feel we have been a victim, but we are absolutely stuffed, the moment we make victimhood or suffering a part of our identity.
The complacent state of victimhood, involves of course living either individually or collectively, a life to the tune of a stuck record that says “It’s not fair, look what they have done to me.” Not only disempowering, it is used to justify all manner of hideous cruelties and offensive acts of retribution. Most difficult global affairs or charged interpersonal conflicts, therefore involve what Christopher Bollas describes as ‘Violent innocence’. It is this, Rose reminds us, a discourse of suffering and victimhood, that underpins certain types of Zionism, which allows a complete denial and negation of the brutal oppression of the Palestinians. At the heart of this, in opposing sides in a war, is an inner collective life, that battles over the right to claim “My side is suffering the most.” The space in between, would involve the difficult task of allowing both narratives be heard, for meaningful dialogue to occur. However, the sort of sophistication of both collective and individual consciousness this requires, is often painfully lacking and not without dangerous consequences. This is of course, partly because it demands a deep inquiry into oneself, or indeed one’s nation and the operations of collective fantasy.
It’s the voice that says, hey, hang on a minute, how much more destruction do we need to witness, before we begin to think the unthinkable, to step out of our tribal mentality and radically think for ourselves. Martin Luther King once said, “It’s not what the bad guys do, the problem is what the good guys don’t do.” I think a contemporary version of that has to include what the good guys don’t dare to think. Therefore in a sense, our not doing something, in this case, thinking the unthinkable, maybe even more insidious that we dare to imagine.
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