In a recent post I introduced Jeffery Alexander’s idea of cultural trauma which occurs when members of a social group feel they have been subjected to an horrendous event, which changes their sense of group consciousness, memory and future identity in a fundamental and irrevocable way. What’s critical to note …
In my previous post on Brexit I made reference to what Samuel Hynes has described as the ‘Myth of the (Great) War’. This is the now widely accepted idea that one of the main legacies of the First World War was a lost, disillusioned and traumatised generation for whom all …
In my previous article on this topic I introduced the idea of Brexit as a manifestation of a cultural trauma, and discussed Jeffery Alexander’s theory relating to this subject. However, I then argued that there were problems with Alexander’s approach, and particularly with regards to his ‘equation’ of ‘culture’ and …
For many people who voted ‘Remain’ in the referendum of June 2016, the decision of the UK to leave the European Union after forty five years has been something of a trauma. By this I mean the Brexit decision is something that many people just cannot comprehend or come to …
In my experience, there is a commonly held view in clinical circles that the only people entitled to call themselves ‘psychoanalysts’ are those individuals who have a case load; that is, they see patients/clients/analysands for some form of psychoanalytic treatment. Of course, it’s actually more complicated than this because one …
It is now less than six months to ‘B-day’ (March 2019) and opinion in the UK seems as divided as ever regarding Brexit, with many wondering whether it will ever happen at all, except in name only. Therefore it seems an opportune time to pull together and expand upon some of the ideas that I’ve been exploring on this site regarding Brexit and its possible links to right-wing populism and nationalism.
A hundred years on the Great War still casts its shadow over our society, and in some ways, even more so over mainland Europe. The legacy of the war was not only the collapse of empires, but also the rise of new ones – most notably the United States and the Soviet Union. It saw the rise and collapse of fledgling democracies across Europe, the rise and eventual collapse of fascism, the advent of the Second World War, the Cold War, the collapse of communism, and finally the emergence of the post-Cold War. But there is another legacy, another shadow, and this is the psychical wound that the First World War has left us.
One might at this point ask: as opposed to what? In other words, a psychoanalysis of….the Symbolic, the Imaginary, neurosis…? In fact, it might be better to argue that it’s not a so much a case of a psychoanalysis of the Real in opposition to, say, the Symbolic, but rather …
Boris Johnson’s now infamous article in the Telegraph regarding Denmark’s decision to ban the wearing of the burka and the niqab appears to have ignited yet again the whole question of how far one can go in a ‘free’ society in expressing views that are bound to offend at least …
The latest US-led air strike on Syria, purportedly as punishment for Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons on the town of Douma last week, reminds me of Baudrillard’s short book of essays on the first Gulf War The Gulf War did not take place.1 The third essay, which bears the …