The Psychoanalysis of Racism,
Revolution and Nationalism
(Richard A. Koenigsberg) is available for the first time as an e-book ($3.98). The format, design and text are identical to the best-selling paperback ($24.95) and the hardbound ($34.95). |
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Nationalism relocates one's own body into a larger body—the body politic. "It is because territory is imagined in corporeal terms that the state seeks to secure its borders—its orifices and entry points—from infiltration and penetration" (Mark Neocleous).
Like a human body, nations are imagined to have boundaries—to defend against alien entities or cells seeking to contaminate the body politic. Immigrants are conceived as invaders—creeping through porous boundaries—threatening to destroy a vulnerable self.
Immigrants are experienced as if foreign bodies within one's own body, eliciting hysteria—a psychosomatic symptom—generating an immune response.
Boundaries must be firmed up—a wall erected to protect the vulnerable self: to defend against sexual assault; to eliminate the danger of parasitic entities attaching to the national body, draining its resources, consuming its substance. |
