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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628953718 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2019 |
| Series: | Breakthroughs in Mimetic Theory |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 338 |
| File size: | 419 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
Crowd Psychology Redux
The link between fascism's power of affection (or pathos) and mimetic behavior was once well-known at the dawn of the twentieth century. Imitation, in its conscious and, especially, unconscious manifestations, was then a popular subject of analysis. It concerned not only philosophy and psychology but also emerging human sciences (or logoi) such as sociology, anthropology, and especially crowd psychology, a discipline that provided a patho-logical account of the mimetic contagion that fascist leaders were quick to put to political use — and abuse.
And yet, as the phantom of fascism eventually dissolved in the second half of the twentieth century, the shadow of mimesis, and its legendary power to trigger affective contagion in the crowd, progressively fell to the background of the theoretical scene and, with few exceptions, was eventually relegated to an aberrant political anomaly that concerned only the few European countries who had openly embraced fascist governments, most notably Italy and Germany.
This theoretical neglect did not prevent mimesis from operating in political practices, though. Since humans remain, for better and worse, eminently mimetic creatures who are formed, informed, and transformed by dominant models, including political models, we should thus not be surprised to see that as tyrannical figures reappear in times of crisis, the shadow of mimesis — understood as an affective and infective force that leads people to mimic, often unconsciously, models — falls once again on the political scene.
A genealogical approach informed by past and present developments in mimetic theory can thus help us foreground a key trigger in the rise of (new) fascist movements that has been marginalized by mainstream social and political theories, but that is now, nolens volens, center stage in political practices: namely, the irrational trigger of mimetic contagion.
Mimetic Contagion Revisited
Much of what is currently at play in the process of becoming master of the actor does not sound completely new to mimetic theorists. From the pathological narcissism of mediatized leader figures to the mimetic desires of followers modeled on such figures, from violent rivalries with political adversaries to scapegoating mechanisms against minorities, from the readiness to sacrifice innocent victims (including children) to the potential escalation of nuclear wars that, more than ever, threaten to ensue as mirroring accusations between hypermilitarized governments are set in motion, the central mimetic mechanisms René Girard described can no longer be considered part of a theory of the violent origins of culture alone. Quite the contrary. In a mirroring inversion of perspectives, mimetic theory now directly informs political practices that, as Girard was quick to sense, are currently accelerating our violent progress toward potentially catastrophic destinations.
The relevance of mimetic theory for catastrophic behavior has not gone unnoticed. Informed by the work of René Girard but drawing explicitly on a tradition in crowd psychology that was attentive to mimetic contagion, the French theorist Jean-Pierre Dupuy has stressed the centrality of crowd behavior in situations of catastrophe. Drawing on Le Bon, Tarde, and especially Freud, Dupuy usefully reminds us that "the crowd is the privileged medium [support] for contagious phenomena." He also offers a searching study of the "ambivalence" generated by the mimetic phenomenon of panic that is attentive to the process of "violent deindividualization" that dissolves the subject. This double movement, as we shall see, operates not only in situations of panic. It is also constitutive of the ambivalent affects (new) fascist leaders generate in physical crowds and virtual publics during social and political conditions that may be momentarily experienced as "normal"— yet can lead to catastrophes in the long term.
There are thus ample reasons to justify a mimetic approach to authoritarian leaders that shadow fascist models, especially since (new) fascism, and the fluxes of affective contagion it generates, is still a largely unexplored area of investigation in mimetic theory. At the same time, mimetic theory is a growing, moving, and expanding field involved in a constant process of adaptation necessary to keep up with emerging mimetic pathologies that infect the present and future. There are thus other patho-logical reasons as well to convoke the register of mimesis.
For instance, it is well-known that fascist leaders, old and new, appeal to emotions rather than reason, pathos rather than logos, in order to generate an enthusiastic frenzy among potential voters assembled in what used to be called a "crowd." Robert Paxton, in his informed The Anatomy of Fascism (2004), goes as far as saying that "subterranean passions and emotions" function as fascism's "most important register" — and rightly so, for this register is contagious, and thus mimetic, and generates what Paxton calls "the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations." These foundations, he continues, include the "sense of overwhelming crisis," "the belief that one group is a victim," the desire for a "purer community," the belief in "the superiority of the leader's instinct," "the beauty of violence," "the right of the chosen people to dominate others," among other distinctive symptoms that, he specifies, "belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the real of reasoned propositions."
What we must add is that the contagious nature of these feelings central to the subterranean foundations of fascism has been diagnosed in detail well before the rise of fascist movements. For instance, Friedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher who had the historical misfortune of having a nationalist, anti-Semitic sister who cast a political shadow on his legacy by implicating his name in the very fascist forces he denounced in his writings. Both Hitler and Mussolini presumably found a source of inspiration in Nietzsche's conception of the overman. And yet, if one takes the time to read Nietzsche, his virulent opposition to anti-Semitism, not to speak of German nationalism, should be clear enough.
Further, if one practices the art of reading as Nietzsche understands it — that is, as an art of "rumination" — then it soon becomes apparent that despite his fascination with forms of sovereign will to power, or rather because of it, he is one of the most insightful critics of mimetic pathos central to mobilizing the lava that flows through the channels of the psychology of fascism. Connecting the ancient philosophical concept of mimetic "pathos" with the modern psychological concept of "hypnosis," Nietzsche was among the first to diagnose the will to power of a "leader" (Führer) to cast a spell over the "masses" (Massen), which eventually led to massive submissions to the fascist ideologies he opposed, such as nationalism and anti-Semitism.
Nietzsche was not alone in his diagnostic. The paradigm of hypnosis to account for mimetic contagion was in the air in fin-de-siècle Europe. Advocates of the newly founded discipline of crowd psychology, such as Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde, wanted to account for a psychological change that overcame people assembled in a crowd. Otherwise rational individuals, they observed, were suddenly easily affected by emotions — especially violent emotions that would spread contagiously, generating mimetic continuities between self and others. In their views, imitation and contagion could not easily be disentangled. As Le Bon puts it, in Psychologie des foules (1895), "in a crowd, every feeling, every act is contagious"; and he adds, "imitation, a phenomenon which is considered so influential on social behavior, is a simple effect of contagion." Le Bon is here inverting Tarde's affirmation in Les lois de l'imitation (1890) that "all social similitude has imitation as a cause," an affective cause that triggers what he calls "imitative contagions" (contagions imitatives). Either way, on either side of the cause/effect opposition, both contagion and imitation were considered as two sides of the same coin.
Now, given that Girard is one of the few contemporary thinkers who, writing against dominant academic trends in the humanities and social sciences, has furthered the connection between mimesis and affective contagion — stressing that "contagion is at one with reciprocal violence" and generates the "effect of quasi instantaneous mimesis" — the connection between mimetic theory and crowd psychology should be obvious, direct, and well-established.
And yet, this is not the case. Girard, for one, insisted on the mimetic dimension of the crowd in the context of sacrificial violence characteristic of past cultures, but he paid less attention to the power of fascist leaders to make us live outside of ourselves in the context of political rituals characteristic of modern cultures. Consequently, the striking continuities between mimetic theory and crowd psychology on shared matters such as mimetic contagion, loss of difference, confusion of truth and lies, méconnaissance, and frenzied dispossessions have largely gone unnoticed on both side of the disciplinary divide.
The aloofness is reciprocal. If crowd psychology is usually not internal to the burgeoning field of mimetic theory, Girard is not mentioned in the most informed accounts of crowd psychology. This mutual neglect is unfortunate, especially when the subject of investigation is a double mimetic phenomenon that emerges from the contagious interplay between the mimetic crowd and its (new) fascist leader. Hence the need to adopt a Janus-faced perspective that brings the insights of mimetic theory into closer collaboration with the insights of crowd psychology, and vice versa.
The reasons for building a bridge between these perspectives to cast light on the shadow of fascism are manifold, but let me at least mention a few general ones at the outset. First, historically, crowd psychology emerges in critical dialogue with human sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis, which are equally central to mimetic theory. Second, both perspectives share an interest in challenging a solipsistic view of subjectivity in order to call attention to the relational, affective, and interpersonal power of mimeticaffects. And third, both are in line with a theory of the unconscious that is not based on a repressive hypothesis but on a mimetic hypothesis instead. That is, a hypothesis that pays attention to an involuntary mirroring tendency to reproduce expressions and thoughts of others, especially dominant, authoritarian, and fascist others.
Let us look at this hypothesis more closely.
The Age of the Crowd (Le Bon to Tarde)
The laws of imitation are psychological in nature, but crowd psychologists were quick to sense their direct political applications. Both Le Bon and Tarde, in fact, pointed out that "leaders" (meneurs) rely on mimetic laws in order to cast a spell on the psychic life of crowds. Comparing the power of leaders to the power of hypnotists, they drew from a psychological tradition that had hypnosis as a via regia to the unconscious in order to account for the fluxes of affective contagion that introduce collective sameness in place of individual difference. In particular, they relied on the notion of "suggestion" understood as a psychological propensity of crowds to unconsciously or semiconsciously mimic and assimilate ideas, opinions, and attitudes coming from others, especially respected, dominant, or prestigious others.
Crowd psychology, we should be prepared, does not hold up a flattering, narcissistic mirror to the psychic life of the ego in a crowd. It is perhaps also for this reason that, even in a post-Romantic period in which originality has been proved to be a mensonge (Girard's term), its major insights tend to be ignored. Le Bon summarizes the major psychological characteristics of the crowd thus:
Dissolution of conscious personality, dominance of the unconscious personality, orientation by way of suggestion and contagion of feelings and ideas toward the same direction; tendency to transform suggested ideas immediately into actions: these are the principal characteristics of the individual who is part of a crowd. He is no longer himself but an automaton whose will no longer has the power to lead.
Not only does an automaton lack the power to lead; he also desires to be led. This is, indeed, a troubling image not only for the mimetic psychology it presupposes but also, and above all, for the politics it can lead to. If we take this diagnostic of the mimetic crowd literally, the politics that ensues can in fact be potentially complicit with, rather than critical of, fascism.
The shadow of authoritarian politics haunts crowd psychology. Le Bon, for one, writing out of fear of the socialist masses, argued for the need of a prestigious leader or meneur, which, according to his conservative political agenda, was necessary to give the body politic a head. Considered from a political perspective, then, Le Bon is not the most obvious candidate to convoke in a critique of fascism, be it old or new — if only because his conservative politics, his fear of the specter of socialism (rather than of fascism), and above all, his openly racist, sexist, and classist assumptions of crowds as "feminine," "primitive," "savage," etc., did not withstand the test of history, contribute to the problem we are denouncing, and deserve to be diagnosed in terms of what I call a "mimetic pathology." Le Bon will thus certainly not serve as our political guide in the critique of (new) fascism that follows.
And yet, at the same time, we should not hasten to throw out the baby of crowd psychology with the conservative political water in which it was born. Although the two are sometimes difficult to disentangle, the fact that we radically disagree with Le Bon's political conclusions does not mean that we should reject his mimetic insights. That both Mussolini and Hitler benefited from Le Bon's strategies to cast a spell on the crowd speaks against his politics but unfortunately also confirms his mimetic theory. Similarly, if Trump benefited from Girardian insights into the logic of mimesis, we should condemn its political use, but we have one more reason to take the theory seriously. Crowds and scapegoats tend to go hand in hand, and (new) fascist leaders can be quick to learn the mimetic lesson. Hence we better catch up.
Genealogically speaking, crowd psychology paved the way and articulated laws of imitation that reach into the present. Le Bon, for instance, had identified distinctive rhetorical mechanisms that fascist leaders would soon use to trigger mimetic contagion in the crowd. They included, among other things, the power of repetition, the affective role of gestures and facial mimicry, the use of images rather than thoughts, of concise affirmations rather than rational explanations, the adoption of an authoritarian tone and posture — all of which, he specified, have the power to "impress the imaginations of crowds." As he puts it: "The crowd being only impressed by excessive feelings, the orator who wants to seduce it must rely excessively on violent affirmations: exaggerating, affirming, repeating and never attempting to demonstrate anything through reason"; these are the strategies familiar to both orators and fascist leaders. Of particular importance, he also added, is the repetition of a simple nationalist "slogan" (say, a country made "great again") that unites the crowd, accompanied by a "captivating and clear image" (say, a "wall") that resolves a complex problem, as if by "magic."
This diagnostic has not been popular in the second half of the past century, but unfortunately the rhetoric of fascism continues to cast a spell on the present century. It is thus perhaps useful to note that Le Bon was not alone in his diagnostic of the irrationality of the masses — he was simply the most popular divulgator. Before Le Bon, Gabriel Tarde provided sociological foundations to the connection between imitation and crowd behavior, stretching to define not only the crowd, but society as a whole in terms of contagious imitation.
While politically moderate, Tarde's diagnostic of imitation is no less severe, for he extends the laws of imitation from the crowd to society as a whole. Thus he defines the social group as "a collection of individuals who are imitating each other ... insofar as their common traits are ancient copies of the same model." And stressing the role of "unconscious imitation" (imitation inconsciente), which operates on the model of hypnotic suggestion in the formation of the social bond, he specifies: "Having only suggested ideas and believing them spontaneous: this is the illusion proper to the somnambulist and to the social man." Like Le Bon, Tarde relies on the psychological notion of hypnotic suggestion in order to account for the unconscious tendency of social beings to adopt ideas that are external to the self as one's own, as if in a kind of somnambulistic sleep.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "(New) Fascism"
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Copyright © 2019 Nidesh Lawtoo.
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