Displacement and the Rise of Left and Right Authoritarian States of Mind

Abstract

What I wish to argue in this paper is that a form of displacement is operating increasingly on a societal level, redirecting feelings of rage, fear and anxiety away from the neoliberal social order to objects that are affectively compelling but that do not challenge the foundations of real power.  Both the ideological Left and Right are engaged in the social construction of explanations for what so many of us see as social and political breakdown.  I use the concept of displacement for this process not in the traditional Freudian sense wherein intrapsychic conflict is responsible.  Rather, I view individuals today as deeply confused over the economic, social, and political worlds they inhabit.  They turn to what is currently available in their ideological landscapes for meaning and understanding, and it is in that turning they encounter ideologies of displacement.