Manufacturing ‘Us’ and ‘Them’

1. Manufacturing ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ Israel, February 25, 2010 Farhad Dalal farhad.dalal@devonpsychotherapy.org.uk The full argument can be found in my book, Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization (Brunner- Routledge, 2002)

2. Some of the different kinds of differences that have been rendered meaningful • Class • Race • Culture • Ethnicity • Gender • Disability • Religion • Nation • Ideology • Interest groups…

3. A loose definition of racism • all occasions when members of one human grouping comes to denigrate and hate those of another human grouping on any basis

4. Socio-biology • We are programmed by the evolutionary processes to act in ways that will enhance the chances of our genes surviving and multiplying. • We are said to share more genes with kin than those not-kin, and this makes us automatically favour kin over others. • Third, ethnicity or race is said to be an extension of kinship, and so we are said to naturally favour those of the same race or ethnic group over others. • When we behave in these ‘natural’ ways – then we are (unfairly) accused of being racist.

5. Some of the flaws in the socio-biology argument • Any human grouping is found to have approximately 15% of its DNA patterns in common. • The other 85% is shared with the rest of humanity. • So why should this 15% seek to favour its kin and not the other 85%? • We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees – yet we do not treat them too well. • And finally, we need go back only 150, 000 years to find one of the many common ancestors for all of human kind – thus we are all kin.

6. Freud 1st instinct theory: self preservative and sexual instincts. Difference = trigger/provocation 2nd instinct theory: life and death instincts Difference = container Object – innocent

7. Mechanism of Projection • Subject’s internal difficulty (say aggressive impulse) is SPLIT off… • Aggressive impulse now REPRESSED • Aggressive impulse PROJECTED into Other person • Other person now experienced as aggressive • Subject reacts with hostility to Other person’s imagined aggressivity

8. Some issues with the projection model How and why does a whole group of people come to have these feelings simultaneously? Why are (say) Black people rather than nurses used as containers? Why one ‘kind’ of people (say – Jews) used in one setting and another ‘kind’ (say – Protestants, or Blacks) used in another setting? Where do the unwanted aspects of members of the denigrated groups go? Psychological mechanisms exploit pre-existing social conditions to manage internal difficulties. But how do those social conditions come to exist in the first place? ‘projection is a mechanism not an explanation’.

9. Individualism • Internal psychological mechanisms exploit pre-existing social conditions • Social conditions are an expression of internal psychological dynamics. • How do these social conditions come to exist in the first place? • ‘projection is a mechanism not an explanation’ Littlewood and Lipsedge (1989)

10. Relationists • People behave cruelly in later life because they have been cruelly treated in their early life. • This explanation also individualistic. • To work at societal level, developmental difficulties of individuals would have to be attuned to each other.

11. Three Problems with ‘culture’ • The illusion of cultures as monoliths • The illusion of cultures as consensual • The illusion of cultures being mutually exclusive

12. Difference used in the service of differentiation The English Tea Ceremony • Upper classes – milk in last • Middle classes – milk in first • Working classes – milk in last

13. Social groups – found or made? • Psychoanalysts begin with the premise that social groups exist and are there to be found. • But when we try to get a hold of a social grouping (like culture), it disintegrates into a number of conflicting subcultures. • The ‘one’ disintegrates into the ‘many’. • So, how do we come to experience cultures (ours as well as theirs) as homogenous unities? • I will argue that we make them unities.

14. Similarity/Difference • Similar (colour) • Different (shape)

15. Forming groups - why • Politics • Differentiating the ‘haves’ from the ‘must-not-haves’. • Psychology • The need to belong

16. Forming groups – how • Psychology • Cognition

17. Cognitive mechanisms – creating groups

18. Cognitive mechanisms – creating groups Illusion: each group looks more similar than they actually are Illusion: difference between group exaggerated

19. Forming groups – how • Psychology • Cognition • Emotions • Denigration and idealisation

20. I am not proposing… I am not proposing that we should find a way of not seeing these differences between people because we are all the same My position is that we cannot not divide; cognitively, emotionally or in any other way. ‘I divide therefore I am’. Given that there are always innumerable differences between any two people, how and why does one difference come to be chosen over another? Who is giving significance to one difference over another, and on what basis? Before the problem of integrating differences, is the bigger problem of how and why those differences came to be meaningful in the first place.

21. Reversing the psychoanalytic world view ‘the understanding of [the individual’s] personality is the foundation for the understanding of social life Klein • ‘the understanding of social life is the foundation for the understanding of [the individual’s] personality ‘all sociological problems are ultimately reducible to problems of individual psychology.’ Fairbairn • ‘all problems of individual psychology are ultimately reducible to sociological problems ‘the clue to social and group psychology is the psychology of the individual’ the clue to the psychology of the individual is social and group psychology

22. Radical Group Analysis • Power • Need, function, inter-dependency • The Social and the Psychological • False opposition of society/individual (traffic analogy) • The Individual and the Social • The ‘I’ is constituted by the variety of ‘We’s’ one is born into • Belonging (Identity) • The ‘need’ to belong • The inevitability of belonging

23. Paradox of belonging • To belong to one thing requires something else not to belong to. • Only some may belong. • If these two conditions not fulfilled, then belonging category becomes infinitely large, and so becomes meaningless.

24. Winnicott • Infant dispersed over environment • ‘I AM’ moment – some elements gathered into the ‘me’, other elements repudiated. • I AM moment = paranoid moment, because fear that elements left out, excluded, will be resentful and attack.

25. Identity • Who I am – British • If tested then it disintegrates and fragments into other categories • Jesus Christ • Christian and white • Jewish • Arab and brown

26. The ‘us’ is defined not so much by what it is, but what it is not. ‘concepts are purely differential and defined not by their positive content but negatively by their relations with the other terms of the system. Their most precise characteristic is in being what others are not’. De Sassure (1959)

27. Othering an other The Other From a possible one of us… Into One of Them

28. Amplifying differences to maintain a differentiation. When one difference weakens in the task of maintaining a division between the haves and must-not-haves, others are called forth: Monstrous types – ‘they’ not human Human – but of a different ‘race’ Same ‘race’ – but of a different ‘culture’ Difficult to sustain differences of culture – so now of a different ‘ethnicity’.

29. Summary • We cannot help create ‘us’ and ‘them’ groups. • We tend to favour ‘us’ groups. • The basis of the ‘us’ can be any sort of kin. Kin = kind. Ideology, colour, religion, nation, football team… • First impulse is to identify with the more powerful, when this is thwarted, then we are forced into other identifications. (psychological + political). • The formation of a group precipitates an aggression towards those who have been excluded. • Fairbairnian reversal: • Techniques mistaken for causes • Libido not cause of attachment • But libido used to make attachment (libido = technique) • Difficult negative emotions are not the cause of racism, but negative emotions are utilised to create and sustain differentiations.

30. ‘[in] discussing ‘racial’ problems one is apt to put the cart before the horse. It is argued, as a rule, that people perceive others as belonging to another group because the colour of their skin is different. It would be more to the point if one asked how it came to pass in this world that one has got into the habit of perceiving people with another skin colour as belonging to a different group.’ (Elias, 1976, p.xlvii)