Abstract
Psychoanalysis knows two things at least. First, that all human endeavour and all human failure is imbued with anxiety, and that, therefore, to diagnose human endeavour, or to diagnose failure, is to locate the nature and origin of anxiety. And second, that anxiety itself amplifies the need to “diagnose” human being, and human beings. Psychoanalysts, in other words, know that for them to be able to do the work of psychoanalysis, they need to be (cultural) anthropologists first. In this contribution an attempt is made to sketch out the broad outlines, and the deep anthropological backdrop, of a cultural undercurrent which has come to dominate Western culture in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Building on Peter Sloterdijk’s work, and using the image of the ‘line of anxiety’ as a heuristic tool, we’ve named this cultural undercurrent radical bastardy, i.e. the aspiration to live as sovereign—absolutely sovereign-a life as possible. This cultural trend-which has a long history, and which many are now drawn to- is, however, shot through with anxiety. To live the life of an aspiring sovereign is to live a life in nagging anxiety. It is to live a life of unrelenting attempts to “diagnose” anything that even vaguely resembles law, or code, in order to avoid it, elude it, keep it at bay, or, if necessary, eradicate it.
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Acknowledgements
Some of the points in this paper were first made on the occasion of a workshop at Keele University (27 March 2023) on the topic of the so-called “Permacrisis” in Western and global culture (the term ‘permacrisis’ seems to have been coined by Stephen Cohen in 1975). Many thanks to the following participants in said workshop for their comments, which were both incisive and constructive: Mark Featherstone, Sotirios Santatzoglou, Ceri Morgan, Siobhan Holohan, Phil Catney, Martha Gayoye, and Helen Parr. Some elements were also presented at a workshop (26 September 2022) at Edge Hill University on the topic of “Representing Neo-Liberalism”. Many thanks to Rafe McGregor at Edge Hill, and to Tzachi Zamir. And of course many thanks also to Anne Wagner for her continuing encouragement, as always.
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Lippens, R. The Line of Anxiety: Anthropological and Psychoanalytical Notes on the Line of Individuation in the Age of Bastards and Zombies. Int J Semiot Law 36, 1259–1279 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-023-10019-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-023-10019-w