Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PhantomAiD (Phantom Possession. The New Authoritarian Personality and its Domains.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-12-01 al 2022-11-30
PhantomAid is a project in the overlapping fields of social philosophy and political theory. Its topic is the recent global rise in right-wing populism. As a theoretical project, PhantomAiD asks about the frameworks we use to explain and analyze these political trends. To give an example of such frameworks: in an economistic framework, one would look at income levels and job precarity to find correlations with the increasing susceptibility for authoritarian politics. Another approach would be to say that many people simply already hold the prejudices – racist and sexist views, for instance – which leaders such as Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro advocate. Neither framework arrives at satisfying analyses. Often it is not the most dispossessed who opt for authoritarianism, and the preexisting prejudices do not explain why those views suddenly become politically mobilizing.
To arrive at a deeper understanding of the authoritarian surge, PhantomAiD suggests a theoretical framework which integrates materialist and psychological explanations. Its core is the novel concept of “phantom possession”. Phantom possession refers to the entitlement that some groups hold over others. This entitlement is both historically entrenched and politically vacuous. It was shaped in certain historical institutions of social domination, such as patriarchal marriage (where the husband owns the reproductive labour of his wife) or chattel slavery (where white planters owned enslaved Black people). With emancipation and abolitions, those institutions have ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the identities shaped within them partly endure. They endure, like phantom pain in the place of a lost limb, as differential dispositions to appropriate or to be appropriated. Neo-authoritarianism, unlike older forms with their collective focus on leadership and discipline, revolves around the defense of such individual entitlements.
To explain, in turn, where this attitude of the “phantom-owner” comes from, the project turns to two different sources. One is early modern political theory, most notably that of Thomas Hobbes, to show – in the line of an interpretation first offered by Hannah Arendt – how modern politics is tied to a destructive form of ownership. The political subject is he who owns himself. Where Arendt focuses on the accumulative drive of the possessive individual, PhantomAiD highlights the abusive tendency licensed by the specifically modern understanding of ownership as full dominion. The second source is psychoanalysis. PhantomAiD picks up the older attempts in Critical Theory (by Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm) to identify a particular personality structure prone to authoritarianism. The project confirmed the hypothesis that the character seeking to resolve his dilemmas in supremacist politics is best understood as “phantom owner”. Different structures of psychological defense mechanisms – obsessive, hysterical, and narcissist prejudices – can be shown to stabilize the inherently unstable figure of the self-owning subject, a subject which always needs an outer domain to exert its sovereignty over and experience its entitlement as “freedom”.
PhantomAiD traced the journey of an economic relation – ownership – through modern identities into contemporary politics, offering tools to specialists and citizen alike to analyze our situation.
To arrive at a deeper understanding of the authoritarian surge, PhantomAiD suggests a theoretical framework which integrates materialist and psychological explanations. Its core is the novel concept of “phantom possession”. Phantom possession refers to the entitlement that some groups hold over others. This entitlement is both historically entrenched and politically vacuous. It was shaped in certain historical institutions of social domination, such as patriarchal marriage (where the husband owns the reproductive labour of his wife) or chattel slavery (where white planters owned enslaved Black people). With emancipation and abolitions, those institutions have ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the identities shaped within them partly endure. They endure, like phantom pain in the place of a lost limb, as differential dispositions to appropriate or to be appropriated. Neo-authoritarianism, unlike older forms with their collective focus on leadership and discipline, revolves around the defense of such individual entitlements.
To explain, in turn, where this attitude of the “phantom-owner” comes from, the project turns to two different sources. One is early modern political theory, most notably that of Thomas Hobbes, to show – in the line of an interpretation first offered by Hannah Arendt – how modern politics is tied to a destructive form of ownership. The political subject is he who owns himself. Where Arendt focuses on the accumulative drive of the possessive individual, PhantomAiD highlights the abusive tendency licensed by the specifically modern understanding of ownership as full dominion. The second source is psychoanalysis. PhantomAiD picks up the older attempts in Critical Theory (by Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm) to identify a particular personality structure prone to authoritarianism. The project confirmed the hypothesis that the character seeking to resolve his dilemmas in supremacist politics is best understood as “phantom owner”. Different structures of psychological defense mechanisms – obsessive, hysterical, and narcissist prejudices – can be shown to stabilize the inherently unstable figure of the self-owning subject, a subject which always needs an outer domain to exert its sovereignty over and experience its entitlement as “freedom”.
PhantomAiD traced the journey of an economic relation – ownership – through modern identities into contemporary politics, offering tools to specialists and citizen alike to analyze our situation.
I developed an account of the politics of authoritarian personalities, which explains their destructiveness in reference to the modern property form. The account draws from Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism and traces possessiveness back through bourgeois society to Thomas Hobbes political theory. The result is published as a peer-reviewed journal paper in German, and forthcoming in English translation in an anthology about Thomas Hobbes.
Further, I started building an account of the psychology of authoritarian personalities, updating earlier work in the Frankfurt school tradition on this topic with recent feminist scholarship. My account links the defense mechanisms of different psychoanalytic character types to the precarious figure of the self-owning individual. The draft paper, which I am currently workshopping, is entitled “Ideologies of desire. A possible typology of authoritarian characters”.
I started the Dissemination earlier on in the project than expected, presenting at nine academic venues in four different countries (though mostly remotely). Until July 2021, I presented successive draft versions of the paper on Arendt and Hobbes, both in lecture series and in pre-read format at research colloquia. I also gave one talk in the international research network “Cultures of Rejection” on the politics of Covid-denial, and presented methodological considerations at a panel on “Transnational feminism” hosted at the New School for Social Research in New York. In November 2021 I organized a workshop entitled “Reconstructing Neo-authoritarianism” with four invited speakers from Amsterdam and Buenos Aires (Jana Cattien, Gisela Catanzaro, Oriana Seccia & María Stegmayer).
Finally, I sought to apply my framework to current political developments. I mostly did this in the form of general audience writing. A “letter” in the German edition of Monde diplomatique reflects on authoritarian responses to the climate emergency; an essay on authoritarian freedom in Die ZEIT discusses seemingly paradox populisms during the Covid-19-crisis.
Further, I started building an account of the psychology of authoritarian personalities, updating earlier work in the Frankfurt school tradition on this topic with recent feminist scholarship. My account links the defense mechanisms of different psychoanalytic character types to the precarious figure of the self-owning individual. The draft paper, which I am currently workshopping, is entitled “Ideologies of desire. A possible typology of authoritarian characters”.
I started the Dissemination earlier on in the project than expected, presenting at nine academic venues in four different countries (though mostly remotely). Until July 2021, I presented successive draft versions of the paper on Arendt and Hobbes, both in lecture series and in pre-read format at research colloquia. I also gave one talk in the international research network “Cultures of Rejection” on the politics of Covid-denial, and presented methodological considerations at a panel on “Transnational feminism” hosted at the New School for Social Research in New York. In November 2021 I organized a workshop entitled “Reconstructing Neo-authoritarianism” with four invited speakers from Amsterdam and Buenos Aires (Jana Cattien, Gisela Catanzaro, Oriana Seccia & María Stegmayer).
Finally, I sought to apply my framework to current political developments. I mostly did this in the form of general audience writing. A “letter” in the German edition of Monde diplomatique reflects on authoritarian responses to the climate emergency; an essay on authoritarian freedom in Die ZEIT discusses seemingly paradox populisms during the Covid-19-crisis.
PhantomAiD provided the opportunity for me as a young researcher to establish independence. The project allowed me to acquire management skills and new, international research contacts and to give contour to my own theoretical perspective. The project advanced the state of the art in social philosophy and political theory by offering a new approach to understand authoritarianism and the specific subjectivity underlying it. It addressed a desideratum of much of contemporary critical and feminist theory, namely the question of how to combine materialist and intersectional theoretical approaches.
It is too early to fully assess the impact of PhantomAiD’s research output. The regular invitations and lively discussions of my work in the critical theory community is a first, promising sign. On January, 6th, 2022 Prof. Jan-Werner Müller from Stanford University - arguably the internationally leading scholar of populism - published a brief article on the storming of the Capitol in which he drew exclusively from my analysis, citing the term “phantom possession” (https://www1.project-syndicate.org/commentary/january-6-white-male-resentment-by-jan-werner-mueller-2022-01).
Via my communication activities, my work has also directly contributed to public debates in Germany, Northern Italy and France, notably also on questions concerning the Covid-19-crisis and its political repercussions. My understanding of neo-authoritarianism will continue to inform my outlook as public intellectual and political commentator.
It is too early to fully assess the impact of PhantomAiD’s research output. The regular invitations and lively discussions of my work in the critical theory community is a first, promising sign. On January, 6th, 2022 Prof. Jan-Werner Müller from Stanford University - arguably the internationally leading scholar of populism - published a brief article on the storming of the Capitol in which he drew exclusively from my analysis, citing the term “phantom possession” (https://www1.project-syndicate.org/commentary/january-6-white-male-resentment-by-jan-werner-mueller-2022-01).
Via my communication activities, my work has also directly contributed to public debates in Germany, Northern Italy and France, notably also on questions concerning the Covid-19-crisis and its political repercussions. My understanding of neo-authoritarianism will continue to inform my outlook as public intellectual and political commentator.