The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..." - Jacques Derrida
It was Sigmund Freud who created a structural approach about how the unconscious mind works. The unconscious acts like a container for all of our primitive wishes and impulses; for Freud, he found that for some of his patients their experiences of certain events were so traumatic that they repressed them to the point that they became unconscious. Now, the main point for this article is that Freud also states that these issues, losses, or trauma's find other ways to re-emerge.
So, what if this model is then taken and applied to society as a whole and we begin looking at each current event as a moment when our corporate social-unconscious erupts on the scene to remind us that what we think we repressed is still there after-all? What we may come to encounter are the very things we are tempted to repress yet again, and for the sake of human progress, this would be a disaster.
The multiple sieges in Gaza are indicative of a country eating itself from within. People who have both been misguided by misinterpreting their own holy books. However, the point of the multiple ongoing crises in Gaza, Syria and the upsurge in immigrant migration from the East to the West tells us more about ourselves then it does them. The most grotesque of examples is a more infamous one, the one where an innocent migrating child washes ashore dead. So, if we employ Freud's notion of the unconscious here, what does this say about us?
In terms of the immigrant, we are told by the media (along with many conservative politicians) that the problem with immigration are the migrants themselves. They might come and take our jobs. They might come and consume our resources. They might come and bring copious amounts of uncontrolled violence. They might bring unknown diseases. Now, these are simply myths we are told to justify the false-fears being perpetuated in a bought-and-paid-for-western media who are literally compensated for spinning facts at the expense of truth.
This also demonstrates something basic which is seemingly lacking in the West, compassion. We think we're tolerant and accepting of the other, but this little body reminds us that: we still fear the other. We believe the bedtime stories we are inundated with. That monsters exist, and we found a name for them.
No, this child acts as a mirror and window into our unconscious fears.
We would rather choose corporate self-preservation, or our own convenient comforts. To absolve ourselves of the guilt of yet another dead child, we sit and quietly cry or send a few dollars to fix a crisis that needs more than money. It needs our bedrooms, our food, our water, our care. So, no, we are not as compassionate as we think we are. This needs to change at the cost of our own water-tight ideologies that keeps us from human transference.
No matter what you're opinion is on Black Lives Matter and its relationship to identity politics, there are issues that we have suppressed for far too long. For years now, America has haughtily assumed that we were a tolerant nation, embracing the outsider and etc. Obviously, this is not the case. We have turned citizen against citizen in the name of racial bias, in the name of abused power and police brutality.
In reality, we are still stuck in the 60's, with Martin Luther King Jr having failed, because we haven't actualized his 'dream', and we are still a nation who is racist. America has a long way to go before we can use the word progress and mean it. We are in the Second Wave of a Civil Rights movement. So, what is in our unconscious trying to get out?
Essentially the trauma is that of the white unconscious. In that, much like the Jews were for the German, the Black community has become the scapegoat for the white community (obviously, this is not the case for everyone!). The idea behind the scape-goating is that the black community is at fault for the disunity in society (i.e., why we have obscene amounts of violence which is due to their unemployment, why gun abuse is on the rise, and etc. - we can also see this same kind of thinking against those in the Islamic community). So, the unconscious then is a reminder that all of the fantasies we create in our mind to justify why we think the way we do, is simply a fantasy that feeds itself on itself.
Trump, for many is an anomaly. Not in the sense of who he is or what he represents, but moreso, why he is successfully part of the Presidential race. However, his participation represents the very unconscious that Freud expounded upon. This particular component is the repressed unconscious coming to the forefront of society. Meaning, Trump is working as a political prop to show us that all of the progress we think we've made is itself part of the story we tell ourselves to believe about ourselves but isn't true. Yet, he embodies the truth of our predicament: That we haven't got rid of xenophobia, bigotry, racism, Islamophobia, patriarchy or misogyny and that its still present in other acceptable forms (i.e. institutional patriarchy, misogyny racism).
We don't really agree that women should be treated equally, hence why we still have women who are fighting for equality (and they should); we still are a racist country (it's why Black Lives Matter exists!), all you need to do is turn on your television; we still fear outsiders, hence why innocent immigrant children are dying because of our politics of our fear and geographic privileging. The exclusive approach to what we think it means to be American (by denying certain people groups access to resources in America) seems to get smaller and smaller as more issues arise (i.e., an American is not a Black person, America is not an Immigrant, America is not an Islamic Person and etc.) - showing the intrinsic bigotry of nationalism.
The more we deny these things, the more they will find other ways to emerge. The more we deny them, the more they embrace us and remind us of their existence. These issues are serious, and can not just be treated as political issues, but as issues of personal and corporate responsibility. Things won't change until we're willing to challenge our own prevailing narrative that conveniently allows us to believe what we believe at the cost of others.
Reading The Racial Other by Slavoj Zizek