jeudi 28 mars 2013

Why genocides? (the psychoanalytical theory of genocide)

"Crime against humanity is the outcome of a totalitarianism one of the structural aspects of which is abolition of individual consciousness." Mazarine Pingeot

Circumcision is a push towards genocide

            Of the thirteen genocides of modern times: Congolese (1870), Hereros (1904), Armenians (1915), Jews (1942-45), Tziganes (1942-45), Biafrans (1966-68), Hutus (1972), Kurds (1988), Tutsis (1990), Bosnians (1991-95), Bengalis (1990-2000), inhabitants of Darfur (2003), Rohinghyas (2012), twelve involved circumcised peoples on at least one side and three on both sides. Six genocides have been perpetrated by "un"-circumcised (intacts) and six by circumcised, of which three against intacts and three upon other circumcised. Only that of Tziganes has been perpetrated between intacts. But the Tzigane exception is not quite an exception since a minority of Tziganes are circumcised. We are forced to report the great narrowness of the link between circumcision and genocide.

            Among human sciences, psychiatry will speak of collective madness without explaining anything but psychoanalysis can enlighten us. Indeed, Freud stated a theory of the racism generated by circumcision, a theory that pushing it up at its end enables to understand the madness of genocide:

"The hypothesis that a root of those hatreds of the Jews which occur in such primary ways and lead to such irrational behaviour among the nations of the West, must be sought here too, seems inescapable to me. Circumcision is unconsciously equated with castration."[1]

            This view can be transcended because the unconscious, according to Freud, likens the part to the whole. Therefore, a threat of castration is also a threat of death. Now, exerted on a whole ethnic group, an individual threat of death becomes, through addition, a threat of extermination of the whole group, immediately projected upon the adverse group by the unconscious. So, circumcision is a push towards reciprocal genocide.

            Psychoanalysis explains that the abolition of consciousness (Hannah Arendt's triviality of evil) noted by Mazarine Pingeot is in reality a submission to the unconscious that, run by rules as rigorous as that of ethics, ignores good and evil. The banality of circumcision is directly responsible for the multiplication of genocides of which two, reciprocal and atomic, presently threaten, still in contact with circumcision: in Palestine and in Korea.

[1] Freud S. Moses and monotheism. 1936. London: The Hogarth press ltd.; 1964. S.E., XXIII, p. 91.

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