The Psychoanalysis of Racism,
Revolution and Nationalism
is available as an eBook. The format, design and text are identical to the best-selling paperback ($24.95) and hardbound ($34.95). |
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Nationalism relocates the self and one's body into a larger entity—the body politic. Because territory is imagined in corporeal terms, "the state seeks to secure its borders—its orifices and entry points—from infiltration and penetration (Mark Neocleous)."
Like human bodies, nations have boundaries delineating self from not self, defending against entities seeking to penetrate into the body politic.
Immigrants are one class of people that may be experienced or conceived as invaders—violating the boundaries of one's nation; creeping into the body politic; threatening a vulnerable self.
National "policy" grows out of a psychosomatic fantasy. The struggle of the body against alien organisms is projected into one's nation. Immigrants are experienced as foreign bodies within the body politic, eliciting hysteria or paranoia. Boundaries must be firmed up—a wall erected to protect the vulnerable against attack.
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