LOGIC OF HATRED

Fred Baitinger speaks, on the behalf of TLR, with the philosopher and
sociologist Raphaël Liogier. Using Jacques-Alain Miller’s text, THE PARANOID LOGIC
“Paranoia, Primary Relation to the Other,” as its point of orientation,
the dialogue aims at making use of Lacanian psychoanalytic concepts OF HATRED
to think about contemporary political phenomenon such as the rise of
populism in Europe and the United-States. There are various forms of A Conversation with Raphaël Liogier
hatred and resentment that come with it, religious extremism, and the
terrorist passage to the act it triggers. This dialogue is also dedicated to KEYWORDS: Paranoia, Hatred, Populism, Jihadism, Semblance, Ontology
the memory of Bernard Stiegler whose entire work focused on these
questions, and who recently passed away. “Be paranoid. People… I hate to say it, it’s terrible to say it,
but I’ll say it anyway. People tend to be very vicious.
They will screw you whenever they can. Isn’t it terrible?”
Donald Trump1

FB: For more than two decades, you’ve been working on political phenomena
that have to do with what Freud called, a century ago, the discontent in our
civilization, i.e. the tension between the individual quest for instinctive freedom
and the demand for conformity and repression of society.2 You’ve worked on
terrorism and Islamophobia, on racism, migration and populism, on technology,

Raphael Liogier is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at The Institute for Political Studies in Aix-en-Provence,
a member of The International College of Philosophy in Paris, and a visiting scholar for The Council for European
Studies at Columbia University. He has published more than 16 books, among which, The Myth of Islamization:
Essay on a Collective Obsession; Populism is Coming ; The War Between Civilizations Will Not Take Place; Unemployed:
The Condition of Postindustrial Man; Heart of Maleness: An Exploration (published in English) ; with Dominique
Quessada, Metaphysical Manifesto. And finally, he is about to publish a new book called The Horror of the Void.
The ideas expressed in this last book in the making are directly related to the ideas developed in this interview.
1. Trump: An American Dream, Netflix Series, Season 1, Ep. 4, 17mn.
2. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (London: Norton &
Company, 1989).

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techno-mania and trans-humanism. And you developed many concepts to make FB: Absolutely. But if this narcissistic staging of the ego comes first, would you
sense of these phenomena. But to my knowledge, you never used, directly and agree, with Miller, that it is also what makes it “impossible to understand
explicitly, psychoanalysis to do so. Why? human phenomenon without situating the function of a third term.” Because
if such a function is lacking, it is the very survival of society that is at stake. We
RL: Yes, it’s true. I never used directly the discourse of psychoanalysis. But are only left with paranoiac egos, at war with one another…
while I was preparing for this interview, I realized that most of the concepts
that form what I am tempted to call my philosophy, are actually deeply RL: Yes, I also agree with this idea. However, for me, in order to understand
connected to the discourse of psychoanalysis. The way in which, for example, what this third function is, and why it is no longer functioning well today, we
Miller describes in his text the phenomenon of paranoia and schizophrenia, need to understand, first, what modernity is. Because modernity, as I explain
resonate deeply with my approach to modernity and ontology as a philosopher, it in my new book The Horror of the Void, has to do with the discovery of a
with my explanation of populism and religious extremism as a sociologist, and multiplicity of others, which are also others to each other. And it is this
with my understanding of human aggressiveness as an anthropologist. And, discovery that has disrupted the very core of the former traditional discourses
last but not least, I should add that during my own analysis, I also realized that were functioning so far as the third term that was capable of organizing
that the practice of psychoanalysis, i.e., the practice of free speech, could help and pacifying our primary paranoias. Before the Modern era, indeed, each
us think anew about what links aggressiveness and politics. traditional discourse was only confronted by a single other that could gather
onto itself all the aggressiveness contained in society. Greeks had the Persians;
Paranoia, Ontology and Semblance Europeans had the Arabs. But during the Modern era, Europe discovered
China, Africa, South America, etc., which is to say a multitude of new others
FB: To introduce our discussion, I would like to return to the concept of para- that were also others between themselves. And it is, I would say, this new
noia, which Miller defines in his text by saying that “the ego of every normal geopolitical and structural situation that has disrupted the functioning of our
person is paranoiac” and therefore that paranoia is the name of our primary traditional discourses, and through them, the very core of our primary adher-
relation to the other.” What do you think of this definition of the ego as being ences to the world and to ourselves. All of a sudden, it was no longer possible
paranoid, and how does this definition resonate with your own philosophical to say who was Greek, and who was barbarian, and thus impossible to define
approach to modernity and ontology? one’s identity through the negation of the other identity. Instead, modernity
has produced a kind of vacillation within each traditional discourse, which in
RL: The idea that paranoia is at the root of our personality confirms my turn has affected the very functioning of our primary adherence to the world.
hypothesis according to which any form of ontology, i.e., every meaningful As such, we could say that modernity has provoked, at once, an opening in
construction around our being, is by nature narcissistic and aesthetic. It means the Other, and a trauma at a subjective level. It has provoked an opening in
that we only have access to ourselves, and to the other, through a form of the Other by introducing into it new others, new cultures, new spaces, and a
staging that has the structure of a myth. This is why the myth of Narcissus subjective trauma insofar as it has inculcated a doubt, an uncertainty, a vacil-
represents, for me, the myth of all myths since it is a myth that stages in purely lation at the core of our sense of identity. Such is the dilemma of modernity.
narcissistic terms our relationship to ourselves and to others. It is a myth that
precisely showcases what Miller suggests, which is to say that paranoia is at FB: How should we face this dilemma? And in which way is this dilemma
once the source of the ego, and the name of our primary relation to the other. linked to the current rise of populism and terrorism?
In other words, to posit paranoia as the foundation of our ego, and as our
primary relation to the other, is to underscore that our postures, our aesthetic RL: In The Horror of the Void, I suggest that what we need to do is to face
poses in the eye of others, are actually more important when it comes to the the real of modernity; this real that not even Bruno Latour managed to
assertion of our personality than any form of ethical stance. It means, as I often assume completely.3 Because when Latour declares that “we have never been
like to say, that the aesthetic precedes ethics inasmuch as our primary relation
3. Cf. Buno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Boston: Harvard University
to ourselves and to others has to do with the narcissistic staging of our ego. Press, 1993).

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Modern,” he does not say it in the sense that we have never been able to keep trying to exit modernity as populists or terrorists, or that we will keep
face the real of modernity, but he says it in the sense that we have never being tempted to say that we have overcome modernity, while all we are
managed to be fully rational. However, for me, it is in fact lucky that we doing is remaining trapped in the realm of what I call, the industrialist anti-
never managed to become fully rational, because the project of modernity ontology of semblance.
is not to make us entirely rational. On the contrary, the project of moder-
nity is linked, as I just said, to the possibility of multiplying the modes of FB: Could you define in more detail what you mean by industrialist-anti-
beings, which is another way to say that modernity has nothing against ontology of semblance?
transcendence as such (or against what Alain Badiou calls “regimes of
truth”), even if, from a political standpoint, modernity does not accept any RL: Well, to understand what I mean by this, it is important to understand
form of transcendence imposing its modes of being on the public sphere. why, during the 19th century, the freedom that modernity opened up trig-
In other words, modernity is in a complex relationship with transcendence gered a form of generalized self-sabotage that we either call positivism,
since, on the one hand, it needs transcendence to multiply the modes of materialism, or nihilism, and which provoked, in turn, a global de-adher-
being, while on the other hand, it has to keep transcendence outside the ence from traditional discourse, as well as an acute form of anxiety. Such is
realm of political representations. In that sense, modernity does not aim at the trap in which we are still caught today, and which has transformed our
erasing transcendence in the name of reason, despite what Latour thinks, humanism into a form of schizo-humanism, i.e., into a form of semblance.
or what Jean-François Lyotard suggests when he introduces the term Post- To think this phenomenon of semblance at a philosophical level, it is
modern to think about the end of the “grand narrative” of modernity.4 important to return to Heidegger who produced a critique of modernity
For me, there is no “grand narrative” of modernity. And the one who by reducing it to its industrialist components.7 And the problem is that
perfectly understood it is Heidegger when he describes modernity as being everyone followed suit. The critique of modernity, indeed, always ends up
the epoch of Weltanschauungs5, written in the plural, i.e., the era of the being confused with the critique of technology—of what Heidegger calls
multiplication of world-views.6 In that sense, we could say that the only the Gestell.8 Heidegger, it is true, deploys an extremely refined, and
“grand-narrative,” or rather the only meta-narrative of modernity is extremely convincing critique of modernity inasmuch as one understands
reducible to the multiplication and co-presence of world-views as such, and that his critique is, in fact, a critique of industrialism. But, for me, if
thus to a form of relational ontology, which lets multiple forms of world- Heidegger accomplished such an operation of substitution, it is because he
views coexist in one territory, and not to a radical critique of any form of was the first one who hated modernity, and clearly refused to face the real
transcendence. Which is generally what the modern lizard, who is incapable of modernity and the kind of relational ontology that it requires. And it is
of dealing with the anxiety that such co-presence provokes in him, does for this reason that Heidegger on purpose confuses modernity with what
when he chooses to mutilate himself by no longer believing in anything. it is not, which is to say with industrialism. What is tricky is that
This is why, for me, the real stake of modernity is not to think about a kind Heidegger’s critique of industrialism is absolutely brilliant, and that there
of pseudo-modernity, or postmodernity, but to finally become modern. is an urgency, today, to return to it.
And to do this, to become capable of facing the real of modernity. Because
it is only inasmuch as we remain incapable of facing this real that we will FB: Your critical reading of Heidegger’s analysis of technology reminds me of
Lacan’s famous critique of Heidegger in his “Introduction to the German
Edition of the Écrits”: “For my “friend” Heidegger, invoked with the great respect
4. Cf. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Ben- I have for him: in the hopes that he might take a moment—a wish I’m
nington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
5. See Martin Heidegger, “L’époque des conceptions du monde,” in Chemins qui ne mènent nulle part,
trans. Wolfgang Brokmeier (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 1962): 99–146. 7. Cf. Martin Heiddegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt
6. The expression Weltanschauung is used to refer to the “wide worldview” or “wide world perception” (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1977).
of a people, family, or person. The Weltanschauung of a people originates from the unique world 8. Gestell (or sometimes Ge-stell) is a German word used by Heidegger to describe what lies behind
experience of a people, which they experience over several millennia. The language of a people or beneath modern technology. Heidegger introduced the term in 1954 in The Question Concerning
reflects the Weltanschauung of that people in the form of its syntactic structures and untranslatable Technology, a text based on the lecture “The Framework” (Das Gestell) first presented on December 1, 1949,
connotations and its denotations (quoted from Wikipedia). in Bremen (quoted from Wikipedia).

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expressing purely gratuitously since I know he won’t do so—to take a moment, Seminar XVI, D’un Autre à l’autre,9 I would be tempted to say that the logic of
as I say, to consider the idea that metaphysics has never been anything and can industrialism is a logic that works at erasing the function of the third term in
only continue by plugging the hole of politics. That is its province” (Autres order to put in its place a semblant. And thus, within the logic of industria-
Ecrits, 554-555). Would you also agree to say with Lacan that Heidegger’s lism, it is no longer the symbolic that structures the relations between speaking
critique of industrialism is but a metaphysical way of plugging the hole of poli- beings, but an imaginary order, industrialism, that represents all social
tics opened up by the real of modernity? networks, and that rules over each speaking being by commanding them to enjoy
themselves only through its industrial modes of surplus-enjoyment (i.e., its
RL: Yes, I would. And there is a famous sentence from Heidegger that will gadgets), while renouncing their true mode of jouissance.
enable us to understand it. “Modernity is when gigantism becomes a quality
as such.” In other words, what is supposed to characterize modernity proper RL: Exactly. And I will add that it is precisely because no one is a dupe of
is when quantity becomes a quality. It is, generally, this transformation of this substitution, or rather because no one is capable of believing in it
quality into quantity that the critics of modernity define as being at the foun- completely, that our industrial societies are also societies in which nobody
dation of what is wrong in modernity. It is inasmuch as modernity is believes in anything anymore. And it is for this exact reason also that there
supposed to have introduced in the realm of quality the reign of quantity is such a generalized defiance and suspicion against politicians today. We
that modernity is supposed to have opened the way for the reign of capitalism are all convinced that they are pretending… like we do.
and merchandising. But to me, the problem that we are facing today is not
only the reign of quantity, but the reign of quantification inasmuch as this FB: This is why we could say that modernity has introduced a kind of psychotic
process of quantification has become a quality in itself. Normally, when we twist within the discontent of our civilization, since psychosis, if we take its
talk about a quality, we talk about something that cannot be discussed because most basic definition, implies a failure of the function of the third term, which
it has to do with taste, and taste with the arbitrariness of subjectivity. On the introduced in turn a kind of generalized disruption of the function of separa-
contrary, what can be quantified is precisely what can be compared, and thus tion. And through this disruption, we could say that modernity has not only
discussed. Therefore, to introduce the reign of quantification into the sphere introduced a form of generalized paranoia, but also a form of generalized schi-
of quality is to try to render incomparable what is comparable in a desperate zophrenia, since, as Miller puts it, “paranoia and schizophrenia are responding
effort to reintroduce a form of transcendence in a world that is totally to one another — one is schizophrenic because of one’s lack of paranoia.”
deprived of it. This is why, for me, what makes the kernel of industrialism is
not the substitution of quality for quantity, but that quantity becomes a RL: Yes, our society today is a society that is not only one that no longer
quality. In other words, industrialism is not the transformation of quality believes in its former traditional discourses, but also a society that is in a
into quantity, but the transformation of quantity into a quality. And it is this constant need of constructing new fictional adherences to compensate for
phenomenon that I call semblance, inasmuch as the quality that is obtained this loss. This phenomenon is what I call, also, a “mythical depression” in the
through this process, is but a fake transcendence. sense that it is a depression that replaces traditional discourses with delusions
and affects our capacity to become active politically. We spend our time
Paranoia, Jihadism and Populism talking about bio-ethics,10 for example, or about humanitarian policies, while
no one believes in humanistic values anymore. This is why our contemporary
FB: This logic of industrialism and of semblance that you just described is a
logic, I think, which has a lot to do, once again, with the logic of paranoia.
9. Lacan, Jacques, Le Séminaire livre XVI, D’un Autre à l’autre, Paris, Edition du Seuil, 2006. See also,
Because the logic of paranoia, as Lacan and Miller define it, also implies substi- Miller, Jacques-Alain, “A Reading of the Seminar From an Other to the Other I & II & III,” trans.
tuting for the big Other, small others. In other words, the logic of paranoia and by B. P. Fulks, Lacanian Ink 29, 30 & 31, Spring & Fall 2007 & Spring 2008.
10. Bioethics is the study of the ethical issues emerging from advances in biology and medicine. It is also
the logic of industrialism are very similar in the sense that they both tend to moral discernment as it relates to medical policy and practice. Bioethics are concerned with the ethical
replace the notion of quality with a semblant of quality, and the symbolic order questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine and medical
ethics, politics, law, theology and philosophy. It includes the study of values relating to primary care
with a semblant of symbolic order. This is why, as Lacan suggests in his and other branches of medicine (“the ethics of the ordinary”) (quoted from Wikipedia).

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relationship to humanism is so weak and contested, and why, politically at the behaviors and the modes of thinking of terrorists, one realizes that they
speaking, we have become so impotent. Worse, even, what we are witnessing are not so much schizophrenics as paranoiacs who have reached the bitter (or
today is a form of global disinvestment in politics, as well as a rise of a new perhaps the ecstatic) end of their delusions of persecution. And one could say,
kind of individualism in which jouissance is the only true master. even, that it is their delusion of persecution that gives them their unity, and
that saves them from their schizophrenia. In other words, it is their paranoia
Profit is, at once, a way to gain an access to jouissance and a way to avoid that saves them at the same time from their fear of schizophrenia, and that
jouissance (to be scared of it). It is, in this way, the symptom of an anxious enables them to strike the other who is supposed to persecute them. This is
relationship to jouissance that can take multiple forms, i.e., sex, cars, why it is important not to interpret their suicide as an expression of their death
money, which is to say the form of the only type of jouissance that is tole- drive only, but also as a gesture of separation that permits them to take their
rated by the industrialist-anti-ontology and that Lacan calls surplus-jouis- distance from a society that they hate. If they are not afraid to die, it is because
sance. In this form of jouissance, the individual, instead of enjoying the their suicide is not a real one, but an access to a form of eternal life.
singularity of his own jouissance, avoids doing so in order to work instead
on the impossible (and therefore desperate) quantification of his own jouis- FB: And what about populism? Do you think that it is also the expression of
sance through the accumulation of money, external signs of well-being, an acute form of paranoia?
number of sexual conquests, etc. And he does that only to prove to himself
and to others that his jouissance is real while, in fact, all he does is entertain RL: Current phenomena of populism could be read in terms of paranoia
himself, in as much as he does not believe that his jouissance brings him since they also emanate from a wounded narcissism, and thus from a kind
any form of substantial satisfaction, and because, at a deeper level, he does of delusion of persecution too.12 If we take, for example, the case of France,
not even believe in his own existence. Consequently, we could say what is it is quite obvious that Marine Le Pen’s populism, (just like Trump’s
called individualism today paradoxically promotes a fake type of individual populism, to a certain extent) could be qualified as a form of “national
that works at erasing what is singular at the level of jouissance in every indi- socialism” that is grounded on the idea that there is a “real French popula-
vidual. Therefore the problem of modernity and of industrialism is not tion” that is threatened in its identity and that needs to be protected.
individualism, as many critical thinkers generally argue but, on the contrary, Conversely, there is a “false French population” that is attacking the French
what I would be tempted to call what Cynthia Fleury also calls, in her book identity from the inside, and that is putting the future of France at risk.
Les irremplaçables, the fading of the individual. And it is this idealized and completely constructed idea of a “real people”
that makes French populism the expression of an acute paranoia. Which is
FB: But if this fake relationship to jouissance in the form of surplus-jouissance why, also, populists generally do not have a political program, but mostly
has become our true master, how do you understand the current rise of populism a discourse on the wounded identity of their people. And this is why also
and religious extremism? Do you think, as Miller does, that if “one looks care- the populist is always a kind of tragic hero that comes to fight in the name
fully at political sects, one is led to think that there is a clinic of politics and of a lost identity that needs to be restored—even though everyone knows
that the paranoiac is especially capable of sectoring,” while the schizophrenic, that it is a lost cause and that this identity will not be restored. And it is
for its part, engulfed in his excessive jouissance, is only good at decoding, at precisely because it is a lost cause that the populist, and the people they
deterritorializing, and thus at fostering the reign of semblance? represent, can act beyond any norms, any form of rationality.
It is to the extent that the “real people” feel betrayed and violated by
RL: It is true that for me, terrorists’ passage to the act, as well as suicide bomb- the “false people,” that it gives them the “right” to act non-rationally, which
ings, are to be understood as an acute form of paranoia and not, as it is some- is to say, to betray and violate the “false people” that have wounded in the
times said, as an expression of schizophrenia.11 Because when one looks carefully first place their authentic identity. Populism, in this sense, is thus the

11. Cf. Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham: Duke University 12. For a fuller analysis of the notion of populism, see Raphaël Liogier, Ce populisme qui vient: Conver-
Press, 2007). In this book, Puar reads the suicide bombers as the perfect example of the dissolution of sation pour demain (Paris: Edition Textuel, 2013). See also, Fred Baitinger, “On Populism, Liberalism
subjectivity that poststructuralists, and particularly Deleuze-Guattari in The Anti-Oedipus, advocate. and the Future of the Left: An Interview With Raphaël Liogier,” Europe Now, November 2017.

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product of a “narcissistic wound” that triggers, in turn, paranoid answers. Catholics can protest in the street alongside traditionalist Muslims. But the
In other words, populism is never, as some people argue, the sole product exact same Catholics could be protesting against those same Muslims on
of an economic crisis.13 It is always, first and foremost, a problem related the question of the veil. This is why our contemporary populism is so fluid.
to the identity of a nation, and its growing incapacity to maintain the The object of its hatred can vary according to place and time. It is a
coherence of the narcissistic narrative of its own identity. Populism appears populism that hides its racism under the idea that certain cultures—like
when a nation can no longer narrate its own identity the way it was used the one of Islam—are incompatible with the French culture. It is also a
to (which is precisely what Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again!” populism that goes with the idea that the vast majority of people are held
shows). Populism indicates a fragility within the very discourse that is in hostage by minorities that political institutions are protecting at the
supposed to ground one’s national identity. And beyond this fragility, it expense of the “betrayed” majority.
also indicates a form of frustration, resentment and humiliation on the side
of the people that feel betrayed. And it is this specific frustration that trig- While the vast majority of people (a.k.a. the “real people”) are deprived of
gers the need to find scapegoats, or at least some institutions or people that their jouissance, all sort of minorities (a.k.a. the “fake people”) are supposed
can be held responsible for this loss of power. to enjoy themselves immensely more in the imagination of the majority.
During the 30s, for example, Jewish people were seen as depriving the real
FB: If the emergence of populism, as well as extremism implies a form of German people of their real jouissance. Today, in our times of liquid
mythological problem at the level of identity, would you also agree to say, populism, the “fake people” who are supposed to deprive the “real people”
as Miller suggests in a text called Extimate Enemies that to understand of their legitimate jouissance are more divers, but the role that they play in
the roots of their racism,“Putting the hatred of the Other in question is the imagination of the majority is the same. They justify the incapacity of
not sufficient, since this would precisely raise the question of knowing why the majority to obtain a real satisfaction. This is how Muslims, under such
this Other is Other. The hatred of the Other is something more than aggres- form of populism, can become our new scapegoat. Muslims, indeed, are
siveness. In this aggressiveness, there is a constant that merits the name of the historical enemies of the Catholic Church (and thus of the traditional
hatred, the hatred that aims at the real of the Other. What is it that makes French right), and they are, since the process of decolonization, the enemies
this Other so Other that one can hate it in its very being? This is the hatred from the inside—the ones that are putting at risk the French universalist
of the jouissance of the Other. It is the most general form of modern racism and enlightened identity. Muslims are supposed to be, from a left-wing
that we witness. It is the hatred of the particular way in which the Other perspective, the enemies of democracy, freedom of expression, feminism,
enjoys.” 14 same sex marriage, etc.—even though some people can demonstrate that
it is not true at all.
RL: Yes, while the populism from the twenties and thirties was able to
ground its claims about “the real people” on a very “solid” racial ideology, Facing the Void, Existing Paranoia
itself grounded on some kind of “science,” our modern form of paranoid
populism is “liquid,” which is to say grounded on a very volatile hatred of FB: If you’re right to say that it is an acute form of paranoia that saves terrorists
certain cultures. It is the notion of culture that has replaced, nowadays, the from schizophrenia, and paranoid forms of cultural racisms that save populists
notion of race. It is the culture of certain people that has come to represent groups from atomization, then how should we think our way out of our schizo-
what race represented in the twenties. But this hatred of certain cultures, humanism without taking the risk of developing ourselves an acute form of
far from being stable, is on the contrary very dynamic. It keeps changing. paranoia?
When it comes to the “marriage pour tous” for example, traditionalist
RL: Well, the main problem of our Western world, and in particular of
13. See, for example, Yotam Margalit, “Economic Insecurity and the Causes of Populism, Reconsid-
Europe, is that there are always at least two paranoid positions that are
ered,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, no. 33 (4) (2019): 152–170. facing one another, and that both react, in a way, to the anxiety of the schi-
14. Jacques-Alain Miller, “Exitmate Enemies,” trans. F. Baitinger, A. Khan, and R. Litten, The Lacanian zophrenic fragmentation that is threatening, at its basis, the foundations
Review, no. 3 (Spring 2017): 30–42.

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of our society.15 Because what characterizes our society is, I already said it, always two tendencies at work. One is directly plugged to the logic that I
a lack of primary adherence to the discourses and images that are supposed described as the industrialist anti-ontology, while the other, far more
to ground it. This is why the only way for our society to face this desperate archaic, is simply a return to the logic of the scapegoat.
situation is to make up for this loss by reinforcing, in the vast majority of The hatred of the other, within the paranoid-populist logic, is propor-
its population, a form of reactive paranoia. I call this paranoia reactive to tional to the anxiety that capitalism is instilling in us. Put differently, the
emphasize the fact that such paranoia is not what Miller calls “primary para- more capitalism is fragmenting our society, the more populists or terrorists
noia,” but a kind a secondary paranoia that is supposed to fence the risk of are trying to unload their anxiety onto some hated others. This is why, as
schizophrenia. It is to retrieve the unity of its body, and thus to go beyond long as we will not face the real cause that is fragmenting our society and
its organism, that society is reinforcing in each of its subjects, a sense of our identity, we will keep witnessing the return of populism and terrorism
paranoia. Because it is thanks to this paranoia that people can feel that they and their paranoid way to solve the problem, i.e., we will keep witnessing
have a body, and it is, I would say, thanks to this paranoia also that society racists acts against Muslims in France, against Black people in the United
as such can form a body too, and that it can move beyond the risk of schizo- States. It is as simple as that.
phrenic fragmentation that Émile Durkheim had already diagnosed when
he talked about the notion of anomie.16 FB: But how could we face, at a collective level, the real cause that is frag-
To me, paranoia provides a solution in the sense that it enables the menting our society and develop a politics for speaking beings, as Jean-Claude
subject, through a delusion of persecution, to project onto the other his Milner has it, and not a politics of things, as industrialism wants?18 Put diffe-
own anxiety of schizophrenic fragmentation. It is thus a way to put such rently: how can we make sure that politics is made for a plurality of speaking
anxiety at a distance by attributing it to an external object, not to say to a beings, i.e., made to guarantee the life and the right to speak of each individual,
scapegoat. At the same time, it is all too clear that the real historical reasons and not made to reduce to silence many speaking beings in the name of a few?
that have generated such a schizophrenic state in our society have nothing Because, as Milner writes, “a political speaking being cannot want the silence
to do with the specific others that their paranoia designates for their hatred. of speaking beings to be either permanent or universal. Otherwise, politics would
The paranoiac strategy is just an alibi not to think about the economic and die in him and outside of him. Neither a heroic death, nor a cowardly massacre,
historical reasons that have generated the overall fragmentation of our nor a suicide, nor a terrorist attack, should ever rule over the encounter between
society. It is due to remaining incapable of analyzing the reason for our the plurality of being as such and the speaking being of speaking beings” (my
mental and social disease that we project onto the Muslims, the Jews, the translation, 25).
Arabs, our anxiety. Within this logic, the Muslim is just a pretext to put in
motion a paranoid reconstruction of our national identity. It is what we RL: For me, the only hope we have to develop a politics for speaking beings,
can see when we read an author like Alain Finkielkraut, who always ends and thus the only hope we have to extract ourselves from the paranoid logic
up mixing his critique of Islam with a critique of capitalism insofar as both that grounds the politics of things, is to enter into another relationship to
of them are threatening what he considers to be the root of the French iden- language in order to obtain from it effects of realization, and not effects of
tity.17 To put it differently, within the populist paranoid logic, there are meaning. By realization, I mean the effect that language produces on us
during an analysis, and that Miller calls in one of his seminars, a “profane
illumination.” In other words, what my experience as an analysand made
15. Cf. Raphaël Liogier, Le Mythe de l’islamisation. Essai sur une obsession collective (Paris: Edition du me realize is what I would call the power of realization of language. And
Seuil, 2016). this power of realization does not take place in abstracto. When we talk
16. In sociology, anomie is a societal condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral val-
ues, standards, or guidance for individuals to follow. Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief together, for example, I am not realizing anything. I can, perhaps, make
systems and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community (both you understand something, or explain something to others, but I am not
economic and primary socialization). E.g. Alienation in a person that can progress into a dysfunc-
tional inability to integrate within normative situations of their social world such as finding a job,
finding success in relationships, etc. (quoted from Wikipedia). See, Émile Durkheim, The Division 18. Cf. Jean-Claude Milner, La politique des choses, Court Traité I (Lagrasse: Edition Verdier, 2011);
of Labour in Society, trans. S. Lukes (London: Palgrave, 2013). Jean-Claude Milner, Pour une politique des être parlants, Court traité politique II (Lagrasse: Edition
17. See, for example, Alain Finkielkraut, L’identité malheureuse (Paris: Edition Gallimard, 2015). Verdier, 2011).

196 The Lacanian Review No. 10 197

Logic of Hatred

realizing anything. This is why the idea of the unconscious is so important,

because it is an idea that opens up a space and a dynamic that refers to
language itself. Language, for me, is the unconscious and, at the same time,
what prevents me from paying attention to what is the unconscious. If I
remain trapped within a theoretical discourse, language is what prevents
me from getting in touch with the unconscious. On the contrary, if I let
language speak at a level that is not theoretical, which I had the sensation
of doing during my analysis, I became aware that the things that I judged
previously as being absurd, even though they were making me suffer, were
actually slowly disappearing as I accepted describing them for what they
were, and not through the lens of my theoretical discourse.
Likewise, I think that the only way for us to overcome, at a collective
level, the logic of paranoia, and thus the politics of things in which we are
trapped, would be to practice at a collective level the same kind of relation-
ship to language. Because it is all too obvious that it will never be enough
to talk about ecology, or populism or terrorism at a theoretical level if we
want to produce a real change in the world. Instead, we should try to put
in motion a democratic process, which could take the form of a public
debate that would look like a collective draining more than an intellectual
debate, and that would enable every speaking being to realize the unconscious
IDEAS OF
roots of what I call semblance and schizo-humanism. What would be neces-

REFERENCE
sary would be to realize that when we are racists, populists, or hateful terro-
rists, we are not actually truly so, but only reacting to our lack of primary
adherence. Because, as long as we do not realize this, we will not have the
strength to develop a politics for speaking beings, and the possibility of
change will remain closed.

198 The Lacanian Review No. 10