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- 2017 (147) (remove)
This is a review article of the following five recent studies on populism: 1) Ruth Wodak’s The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean (Sage, 2015); 2) Benjamin Moffitt’s The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style and Representation (Stanford University Press, 2016); 3) Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser’s Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017); 4) Jan-Werner Müller’s What is Populism? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); and 5) John B. Judis’ The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports, 2016). The review argues for a return to early Frankfurt School Critical Theory to address some of the shortcomings of these studies.
The tripod of terrorism
(2017)
Violent attacks against innocent civilians occurring on an everyday and global basis have intensified the discourse on terrorism. However, like pornography, terrorism seems readily recognizable but hard to define. The designation is applied to the destructive acts of religious zealots, mentally unstable individuals, terror-inducing despots, separatist militia, and, at times, even legitimate freedom fighters. Ordinary language fails to define terrorism’s nosological circumference and is itself defiled in the process. While acknowledging this denotational conundrum, this paper will propose that the origins of the current mayhem by the radicalized few reside in three geopolitical realms. These include the long shadow of colonialism, the hypocrisy and violence of certain Western foreign policies, and some fundamental problems in the societies that form the crucible of such rage. As a result, ameliorative strategies need to be directed at (and require the collaboration of) all three parties at the root of this tragic and bloody scenario.
Rock-A-Bye Baby
(2017)
How can some classical Freudian concepts such as defense, transference, infantile sexuality, and the role of the body ego and superego in the first year of life be applied to help the analyst working with parent–infant dyads? The case of a newborn that could not look at her mother, who did not feel empathy towards this child conceived as a result of an egg donation, was understood using Winnicott’s notion of early superego and the lack of libidinal pleasure. The notion of defenses towards primitive anxiety and the role of unconscious maternal functioning were helpful in helping the child as well as the parents to regulate their interactions.
Mainstream social science has struggled to explain the appeal of suicide terrorism to so many Muslim youths, relying as it does on standard socio-economic indicators and research meant to identify suicidal tendencies. The existential emphasis is missing. This commentary is inspired by the work of clinical psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) and his investigation of the social psychology of modernity, as well as how this intermingles with existential fears related to mortality (death-related fears) and the passage of time (the end of the world or apocalypse). Modernity, explained Fromm, makes one feel small, insignificant and isolated in the larger scheme of things. This demands a violent response, often involving self-sacrifice, to reassert the balance, which allows Islamists to take advantage of death-related anxieties and exaggerate the sense of confrontation with the world through apocalyptic prophecies. Current psychological research on death and studies of terrorism and religious extremism both confirm many of Fromm’s findings and expand on them. In this commentary I argue that the religion of Islam, far from being a source of suicide terrorism, has historically restrained both suicidal tendencies and political violence directed at civilians, but it is the slow yet sure encroachment of modernity that has eroded these theological and communitarian defences. Other problems, such as household politics, gender roles, and theological teachings concerning death likewise feed this process, as documented by Arabic researchers in contexts other than political violence.