#itoohaveapsyche

We live in revolutionary times. I cannot imagine now what it would have been like to be thinking about Rosa Luxemburg if the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya had not taken place. I do not know whether it would have been easier or more difficult. But one thing revolutionary moments do is force us to revise our sense of time, stretching us between past and future, as we comb backwards for the first signs of upheaval, and look forward to see what is to come. For many observers, but mainly those in power, the uncertainty is a way of stalling the movement of revolution, curbing its spirit by calling it to account in advance for a future that it can’t predict or foretell. These are the fear-mongers, who point to a range of monstrous outcomes – say, anarchy or Islamic control – as a way of discrediting what is happening this moment, now; who manipulate the dread of a terrible future (and the future may always be terrible) to dull the sounds of freedom.

It is of course the whole point of a revolution that you cannot know what, if anything, can or should survive. 

“What more could we want of ourselves!,” Jacqueline Rose, 2011, London Review of Books

The recent events surrounding the Kavannaugh nomination – the senate confirmation hearings involving some strong moves on the part of DEM senators, the subsequent multiple credible accusations against Kavanaugh of sexual assault and attempted rape, and the imminent senate hearing on the Dr. Christine Ford accusation – have the radical and spontaneous qualities of revolution. And, as with all revolutionary moments, the details surrounding this moment will never satisfy those (currently on the right) who will insist that change arrive (although hopefully not at all)  in neat packages, tied up in textbook legal ribbons. Even the recent complaints by centrists and those to the left of center about Michael Avenatti’s self-inscription into the challenge also have that quality – but when the repressed returns, do we really expect to have orderly choices about who leads the discourse at what moment?

Sexual assaults on women overwhelmingly take place without witnesses (although in this instance, there seems to be an actual witness whom the GOP is determined to keep from answering questions under oath). Because of the contexts of such assaults – and the fact that false accusations are rare – attention to the accuser’s story must categorically be given weight and taken seriously, must be believed. But it is a catch-22 for the victim that even as reporting sexual assaults and rapes creates a hellish legal and social process for the victim, she is still expected to report an attack immediately, without succumbing to trauma and the fear of additional consequences. Having been traumatized and facing the incredibly flawed investigative and judicial systems stacked against her – not to mention misogynistic social structures — the rape or sexual assault victim suffers many times over when bringing the accusation forward after a sometimes-long temporal delay that to various degrees erodes memory. It is not just the victim’s memory that may suffer in regards to the sort of details that the law demands; it may also be that of the primary and secondary witnesses, for whom the assault was not central.

But as Ford herself wrote in her statement, some details regarding the assault may have faded or disappeared, but certain details remain indelible:

I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to. But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult. (Dr. Ford in her statement to the Senate, September 26, 2018)

Still, regardless of whatever happens during and after the Thursday hearing, even if we have in the past week made some progress in regards to a mass popular belief that women who bring forward accusations after forensic evidence has long disappeared are virtually always telling the truth, rape and sexual assault victims will continue to have their credibility questioned because of the perfect storm of incentives to not report, and the inevitable erosion of memory of some details. So – setting aside the ruthless agenda of the GOP- it is particularly tragic that we live in a culture (maybe more so in the U.S. than in some other countries) where the denial of the psyche is so absolute. How is the general public supposed to understand – without any understanding of psychical processes, let alone surrounded by an anti-intellectual social contempt for such processes – why some traumatic details may not be fully recalled, and others from the same event can be recalled with crystal clarity?

The positivism of some of the arguments against Ford and the other accusers – that if they had really suffered they would have reported immediately, or that if they are telling the truth they would have more precise details that could be corroborated – has to be read as a refusal of the unconscious. Because the unconscious has its own logic, which may well appear irrational to a court of law or, in this case, a court of public opinion, which right-wing politicians can then exploit in circumstances like these. And that refusal of the unconscious is not only present in our judicial system, our policing, and our political system. It is deeply embedded even in the institutional history of therapeutic training in the U.S., which has always privileged consciousness and the will and, in the last decades, pharmacology. The unconscious is nowhere to be found in that training, with the exception of a small community of psychoanalysts practicing in the U.S., often derided by the general public and other types of practitioners.

Even in the fields of art and art history, a psychoanalytic approach is not valued in the U.S. In art history it is thought to interfere with a focus on art, and in art practices…well, that would require another post.

I’ve thought for decades that feminism cannot be advanced without a psychoanalytic framework, for many reasons, one being the myriad of ways in which women are not taken seriously as narrators. But the events of the past week have made it clear that justice itself cannot take place without a psychoanalytic framework. And therefore, democracy…

Feminists will be engaged for a long time to come in what Juliet Mitchell has called “the longest revolution.” Hopefully, it’s breadth will be extensive enough to include a legitimation of the psyche.

*Postscript to come.