The Madman and the Iraqi War

By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

It is the war of the sated against the famished, the obese against
the emaciated, the affluent against the impoverished, the
democracies against tyranny, perhaps Christianity against Islam and
definitely the West against the Orient. It is the ultimate metaphor,
replete with "mass destruction", "collateral damage", and the "will
of the international community".

In this euphemistic Bedlam, Louis Althusser would have felt at home.

With the exception of Nietzsche, no other madman has contributed so
much to human sanity as has Louis Althusser. He is mentioned twice
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica merely as a teacher. Yet for two
important decades (the 1960s and the 1970s), Althusser was at the
eye of all the important cultural storms. He fathered quite a few of
them.

Althusser observed that society consists of practices: economic,
political and ideological. He defines a practice as:

"Any process of transformation of a determinate product, affected by
a determinate human labour, using determinate means (of production)."

The economic practice (the historically specific mode of production,
currently capitalism) transforms raw materials to finished products
deploying human labour and other means of production in interactive
webs. The political practice does the same using social relations as
raw materials.

Finally, ideology is the transformation of the way that a subject
relates to his real-life conditions of existence. The very being and
reproduction of the social base (not merely its expression) is
dependent upon a social superstructure. The superstructure
is "relatively autonomous" and ideology has a central part in it.

America's social superstructure, for instance, is highly
ideological. The elite regards itself as the global guardian and
defender of liberal-democratic and capitalistic values
(labeled "good") against alternative moral and thought systems
(labeled "evil"). This self-assigned mission is suffused with
belligerent religiosity in confluence with malignant forms of
individualism (mutated to narcissism) and progress (turned
materialism).

Althusser's conception of ideology is especially applicable to
America's demonisation of Saddam Hussein (admittedly, not a tough
job) and its subsequent attempt to justify violence as the only
efficacious form of exorcism.

People relate to the conditions of existence through the practice of
ideology. It smoothes over contradictions and offers false (though
seemingly true) solutions to real problems. Thus, ideology has a
realistic attribute - and a dimension of representations (myths,
concepts, ideas, images). There is harsh, conflicting reality - and
the way that we represent it both to ourselves and to others.

"This applies to both dominant and subordinate groups and classes;
ideologies do not just convince oppressed groups and classes that
all is well (more or less) with the world, they also reassure
dominant groups and classes that what others might call exploitation
and oppression is in fact something quite different: the operations
and processes of universal necessity"

(Guide to Modern Literary and Cultural Theorists, ed. Stuart Sim,
Prentice-Hall, 1995, p. 10)

To achieve the above, ideology must not be seen to err or, worse,
remain speechless. It, therefore, confronts and poses (to itself)
only questions it can answer. This way, it is confined to a
fabulous, fantastic, contradiction-free domain. It ignores other
types of queries altogether. It is a closed, solipsistic, autistic,
self-consistent, and intolerant thought system. Hence the United
States' adamant refusal to countenance any alternative points of
view or solutions to the Iraqi crisis.

Althusser introduced the concept of "The Problematic":

"The objective internal reference ... the system of questions
commanding the answers given."

The Problematic determines which issues, questions and answers are
part of the narrative - and which are overlooked. It is a structure
of theory (ideology), a framework and the repertoire of discourses
which - ultimately - yield a text or a practice. All the rest is
excluded.

It is, therefore, clear that what is omitted is of no less
importance than what is included in a text, or a practice. What the
United States declines or neglects to incorporate in the resolutions
of the Security Council, in its own statements, in the debate with
its allies and, ultimately, in its decisions and actions, teaches us
about America and its motives, its worldview and cultural-social
milieu, its past and present, its mentality and its practices. We
learn from its omissions as much as we do from its commissions.

The problematic of a text reveals its historical context ("moment")
by incorporating both inclusions and omissions, presences and
absences, the overt and the hidden, the carefully included and the
deliberately excluded. The problematic of the text generates answers
to posed questions - and "defective" answers to excluded ones.

Althusser contrasts the manifest text with a latent text which is
the result of the lapses, distortions, silences and absences in the
manifest text. The latent text is the "diary of the struggle" of the
un-posed question to be posed and answered.

Such a deconstructive or symptomatic reading of recent American
texts reveals, as in a palimpsest, layers of 19th century-like
colonialist, mercantilist and even imperialist mores and
values: "the white man's burden", the mission of civilizing and
liberating lesser nation, the implicit right to manage the natural
resources of other polities and to benefit from them, and other
eerie echoes of Napoleonic "Old Europe".

But ideology does not consist merely of texts.

"(It is a) lived, material practice - rituals, customs, patterns of
behavior, ways of thinking taking practical form - reproduced
through the practices and productions of the Ideological State
Apparatuses (ISAs): education, organized religion, the family,
organized politics, the media, the cultural industries..." (ibid,
p.12)

Althusser said that "All ideology has the function (which defines
it) of 'constructing' concrete individuals as subjects".

Subjects to what? The answer is: to the material practices of the
ideology, such as consumption, or warfare. This (the creation of
subjects) is done by acts of "hailing" or "interpellation". These
attract attention (hailing) and force the individuals to generate
meaning (interpretation) and, thus, make the subjects partake in the
practice.

The application of this framework is equally revealing when one
tackles not only the American administration but also the
uniformly "patriotic" (read: nationalistic) media in the United
States.

The press uses self-censored "news", "commentary" and outright
propaganda to transform individuals to subjects, i.e. to supporters
of the war. It interpellates them and limits them to a specific
discourse (of armed conflict). The barrage of soundbites, slogans,
clips, edited and breaking news and carefully selected commentary
and advocacy attract attention, force people to infuse the
information with meaning and, consequently, to conform and
participate in the practice (e.g., support the war, or fight in it).

The explicit and implicit messages are: "People like you - liberal,
courageous, selfless, sharp, resilient, entrepreneurial, just,
patriotic, and magnanimous - (buy this or do that)"; "People like
you go to war, selflessly, to defend not only their nearest and
dearest but an ungrateful world as well"; "People like you do not
allow a monster like Saddam Hussein to prevail"; "People like you
are missionaries, bringing democracy and a better life to all
corners of the globe". "People like you are clever and won't wait
till it is too late and Saddam possesses or, worse, uses weapons of
mass destruction"; "People like you contrast with others (the
French, the Germans) who ungratefully shirk their responsibilities
and wallow in cowardice."

The reader / viewer is interpellated both as an individual ("you")
and as a member of a group ("people like you..."). S/he occupies the
empty (imaginary) slot, represented by the "you" in the media
campaign. It is a form of mass flattery. The media caters to the
narcissistic impulse to believe that it addresses us personally, as
unique individuals. Thus, the reader or viewer is transformed into
the subject of (and is being subjected to) the material practice of
the ideology (war, in this case).

Still, not all is lost. Althusser refrains from tackling the
possibilities of ideological failure, conflict, struggle, or
resistance. His own problematic may not have allowed him to respond
to these two deceptively simple questions:

1.. What is the ultimate goal and purpose of the ideological
practice beyond self-perpetuation?
2.. What happens in a pluralistic environment rich in competing
ideologies and, thus, in contradictory interpellations?
There are incompatible ideological strands even in the strictest
authoritarian regimes, let alone in the Western democracies.
Currently, IASs within the same social formation in the USA are
offering competing ideologies: political parties, the Church, the
family, the military, the media, the intelligentsia and the
bureaucracy completely fail to agree and cohere around a single
doctrine. As far as the Iraqi conflict goes, subjects have been
exposed to parallel and mutually-exclusive interpellations since day
one.

Moreover, as opposed to Althusser's narrow and paranoid view,
interpellation is rarely about converting subjects to a specific -
and invariably transient - ideological practice. It is concerned
mostly with the establishment of a consensual space in which
opinions, information, goods and services can be exchanged subject
to agreed rules.

Interpellation, therefore, is about convincing people not to opt
out, not to tune out, not to drop out - and not to rebel. When it
encourages subjects to act - for instance, to consume, or to support
a war, or to fight in it, or to vote - it does so in order to
preserve the social treaty, the social order and society at large.

The business concern, the church, the political party, the family,
the media, the culture industries, the educational system, the
military, the civil service - are all interested in securing
influence over, or at least access to, potential subjects. Thus,
interpellation is used mainly to safeguard future ability to
interpellate. Its ultimate aim is to preserve the cohesion of the
pool of subjects and to augment it with new potential ones.

In other words, interpellation can never be successfully coercive,
lest it alienates present and future subjects. The Bush
administration and its supporters can interpellate Americans and
people around the world and hope to move them to adopt their
ideology and its praxis. But they cannot force anyone to do so
because if they do, they are no different to Saddam and,
consequently, they undermine the very ideology that caused them to
interpellate in the first place.

How ironic that Althusser, the brilliant thinker, did not grasp the
cyclical nature of his own teachings (that ideologies interpellate
in order to be able to interpellate in future). This oversight and
his dogmatic approach (insisting that ideologies never fail) doomed
his otherwise challenging observations to obscurity. The hope that
resistance is not futile and that even the most consummate and
powerful interpellators are not above the rules - has thus revived.


Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com