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Fantasy and Social Movements
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List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
References 273
Index 288
v
Figures
vi
Acknowledgements
The roots of this book lie in the nine years I spent in the Department
of Sociology at the University of Essex as an undergraduate, post-
graduate and teaching fellow. Though hopefully my arguments have
moved on, this book is still very much anchored in my Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded doctoral research and all the
acknowledgements made there must still apply. A few should be reiter-
ated. I would not have undertaken the doctorate, let alone completed
it, were it not for the guidance of Eamonn Carrabine. I must thank
all those members of the pro-space movement who helped me dur-
ing my research. It was through reflecting on discussion with Kevin
Hetherington and Mike Roper, who examined my thesis, that I came
to see the potential for this book. The greatest thanks must be reserved
for Peter Dickens, whose engagement with my writing transformed my
thinking during my doctorate, and has continued to do so ever since. He
also provided much needed comments on a very early draft of this book.
The book has, however, been developed from within the School of
Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton. I have been lucky
enough, in particular, to teach an undergraduate course for several years
on the sociology of social movements, as well as a newer course on
the sociology of the universe. It is impossible to identify the numer-
ous ways in which my understanding of both areas of sociology has
changed as a result of teaching such engaged students on these and
other courses. I also owe a debt to my academic colleagues, especially
those who have commented on my ideas as they were clumsily pre-
sented at our Festivals of Humanities and Social Sciences. I have also
benefitted from presenting work at a number of inspiring conferences,
especially the Annual Conference of the Association for the Psycho-
analysis of Culture and Society, the International Conference of the
Utopian Studies Society, the Conference of the Psychosocial Studies Net-
work, and the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference at
Manchester Metropolitan University. Working on this manuscript I have
benefitted from encouraging exchanges with other academics work-
ing on fantasy and politics, especially Keith Jacobs and Jason Glynos.
Together with Wendy Hollway, Jason Glynos provided important com-
ments on the draft manuscript for this book without which it would be
vii
viii Acknowledgements
much the poorer. The same is true for the comments of two other refer-
ees looking at the original book proposal. I am grateful to Nicola Jones,
Maryam Rutter and especially Elizabeth Forrest at Palgrave Macmillan
for all their help and patience.
Please note that parts of this book have previously been published
as part of the following papers (reproduced with permission): Ormrod,
J. S. (2012), ‘Leader Psychobiography and Social Movement Studies:
A Kleinian Case Study of Bruce Gagnon and the Outer Space Protec-
tion Movement’, The Psychoanalytic Review, 99(5): 743–779; Ormrod,
J. S. (2011), ‘ “Making Room for the Tigers and the Polar Bears”:
Biography, Phantasy and Ideology in the Voluntary Human Extinc-
tion Movement’, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 16(2): 142–161;
Ormrod, J. S. (2009), ‘Phantasy and Social Movements: An Ontology
of Pro-Space Activism’, Social Movement Studies, 8(2): 115–129 (www.
tandfonline.com); Ormrod, J. S. (2007), ‘Pro-Space Activism and Nar-
cissistic Phantasy’, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 12(3): 260–278.
Introduction: Fantasy and Social
Movements in Context
What part does fantasy play in social movements? This may appear to
be an odd question to ask. It stirs up some of the most fundamental
dichotomies in the history, not only of social movement theory but
of the social sciences in general: collective/individual; real/imagined;
action/escape; rational/irrational. Social movements have commonly
been defined as collective enterprises responding to real social condi-
tions and acting to change them in some positive way, and in most
recent theory they have also been understood as expressions of (albeit
perhaps ‘bounded’) rationality on the part of their participants. Fantasy,
on the other hand, is often thought of as private and therefore highly
individual, and as representing a turn away from reality and social
action. As Knafo & Feiner (2006, p. 1) define them, ‘fantasies are our
own private form of psychodrama, where we are both author and pro-
tagonist’. And insofar as this book engages with psychoanalytic notions
of fantasy specifically, and psychoanalysis generally acknowledges the
existence of both unconscious fantasies and conscious fantasies or day-
dreams, it might be seen as threatening to associate activism with the
unconscious, the irrational and even the pathological. It is certainly gen-
erally accepted that fantasies are not ‘chosen’ by the fantasizer. The most
fundamental argument of this book is that fantasy does nonetheless
play an important role in activism. Considering the existence of fantasy
within social movements challenges us to engage with these dualisms as
more than clear-cut oppositions. But I am not alone in making such a
point in recent years. As Rose (1996, p. 2) has argued, ‘if fantasy is private
only, revelling in its own intimacy out of bounds, then however outra-
geous its contents, it will be powerless to affect or alter the surrounding
world’. And yet social bonds are indeed based on fantasized identifica-
tions and wishes, and so fantasy ‘is not therefore antagonistic to social
1
2 Fantasy and Social Movements
is less a social possibility than the very disguise that makes [fan-
tasy’s] cultural appearance possible: something like a non-figurative
system of ornamentation and elaborate decoration which simulates
impersonality and offers an abstraction in which everyone can acqui-
esce: a more perfect society ‘that no one shall go hungry any longer’,
‘happiness for everybody, as much as you want’.
The violent exclusion of the Other has been the basis for a number
of critiques of classical utopianism, but Bauman suggests this is not
avoided by contemporary utopianism. And yet despite Bauman’s obvi-
ous concerns about the ‘ressentment’ and unwillingness to confront the
Other that are apparent in this hollowed-out utopia (if this is still the
appropriate term), his hope for the rebuilding of ethics is based on
the individualization from which it emerged. His hope for a ‘solidar-
ity of strangers’ is based on ‘our acquired skills of living with difference
and engagement in meaningful and mutually beneficial dialogue’ (2008,
p. 256).
Left. Its guilt, she suggests, comes as a result of the Left’s many com-
promises and betrayals. In one sense this represents a loss of desire, but
at the same time ‘for such a left, enjoyment comes from its withdrawal
from responsibility’ (p. 87).
One suggestion is that movements are now less concerned with
challenging the external social and political structures they inhabit
and more concerned with the inner lives of their participants. This
is no doubt a correlate of the emergence of a ‘post-material politics’
(Inglehart, 1977) and of the rise of the so-called new social movements.
If Touraine (1994, p. 168, cited in Castells, 1994, p. 22) is right that ‘in
a post-industrial society, in which cultural services have replaced mate-
rial goods at the core of production, it is the defense of the subject, in its
personality and in its culture, against the logic of apparatuses and markets,
that replaces the idea of class struggle’, or if Melucci (1989, pp. 177–8)
is right that a ‘freedom to have’ has given way to a ‘freedom to be’,
then it is hardly surprising that the new social movements were seen
by some as more introspective. But this was not how everyone read
them. Indeed, some, including Habermas (1981), had seen in the new
movements the potential for an interrogation of the foundations of the
modern industrial order that had even more far-reaching implications
than what had been demanded in previous eras of radical politics (even
if their emergence was initially reactive).
Turner (1994) makes an indicative historical distinction between
‘institutionals’ and ‘impulsers’. Institutionals think their identities
through traditional social roles and structural positions, and ‘recognize
their real selves in their achievements, in their pursuit of ideals, and, for
many, in altruistic self-sacrifice’. Impulsers, on the other hand, seek an
identity distinct from such constraints, finding themselves ‘in freeing
their behaviour from the constraints of reason and social norms so as
to act strictly on impulse, and in establishing relationships with others
within which they can safely speak and act on impulse’ (p. 88). This
was not merely permissible, but culturally demanded (see Craib, 1994).
Turner’s distinction captures the tension within contemporary move-
ments between mobilizing social/collective identities and establishing
personal/self-identity within the space provided by a movement (see,
for example, Larana et al., 1994).
This dimension maps imperfectly onto another relating to whether or
not reason and social norms (including those norms established within
a movement) constrain the pursuit of individual wishes. In the 1970s
Daniel Bell suggested that ‘the post-modernist temper demands that
what was previously played out in fantasy and imagination must be
Introduction 9
acted out in life as well’ (1976, p. 53). Sennett (1974) also argued that
there was a cultural demand for self-expression and self-gratification.
By the time Turner was writing, the supposed ‘acting out’ of fan-
tasy had become a central component of late or postmodern culture.
One aspect of this was a refusal to conceptualize the self through its
dependency on others (arguably distinguishing the ethos of contem-
porary activism from its May 1968 precursors). Another element was
that these movements were taking place in the context of widespread
acceptance that activists were not acting on some authentic, previously
repressed enjoyment, but that through expressing their ‘impulses’ they
were simultaneously creating themselves as subjects.
Though there are key differences between Turner’s work and Bell’s (see
Hetherington, 1998), an early indicator of these shifts came in Lasch’s
(1979) description of the new type of activist. One of the starting points
for Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism is the observation that clinical psycho-
analysts were now dealing with chaotic and impulse-ridden patients
who ‘ “act out” their conflicts instead of repressing or sublimating them’
(1979, p. 37). When Youth International leader Jerry Rubin claimed that
wearing judicial robes to attend court proceedings was ‘a way of act-
ing out fantasies and ending repressions’, Lasch responded by saying
that ‘[a]cting out fantasies does not end repressions, however; it merely
dramatizes the permissible limits of antisocial behaviour’ (1979, p. 83).
From reading Susan Stern’s Weathermen memoirs he realizes that her
need was to establish an identity through her activism, rather than ‘to
submerge her identity in a larger cause’, something he seems to asso-
ciate with previous (mass) movements. The past few decades have no
doubt witnessed a shift in the orientations of social movements in the
Western world from both the mass movements of the 1930s/1940s and
the radical movements of the 1960s, and there have been many attempts
to capture the nature of these changes. For Lasch, the Weathermen,
like other supposedly radical movements, bore the mark of their parent
culture. They lived, says Lasch, in ‘an atmosphere of violence, danger,
drugs, sexual promiscuity, moral and psychic chaos – derived not so
much from an older revolutionary tradition as from the turmoil and
narcissistic anguish of contemporary America’ (1979, p. 8).
Rubin’s memoirs describe life as a participant in the ‘inner revolution
of the seventies’ (cited in Lasch, 1979, p. 15), and the ‘spiritual’ con-
sumption that became so much a part of it: ‘I directly experienced est,
gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, rolfing, massage, jogging, health foods,
tai chi, Esalen, hypnotism, modern dance, meditation, Silva mind
control, Arica, acupuncture, sex therapy, Reichian therapy, and More
10 Fantasy and Social Movements
from politics at all but the beginnings of a general political revolt’, the
result of a ‘healthy scepticism about a political system in which public
lying has become endemic and routine’ and a growing ‘unwillingness
to take part in the political system as a consumer of prefabricated spec-
tacles’ (1979, p. xv). Rallying as this optimism is, Frank Furedi (2004)
argues that political disengagement is reflected not just in our relation-
ship to institutionalized politics but also within social movements. In his
understanding, ‘political engagement involves action directed at influ-
encing aspects of life of a wider communal project’ (p. xiv), an aspiration
against which the ‘live and let live’ attitude of self-expressive politics just
does not hold up. Alain Touraine (1981, p. 1) claimed that ‘at the heart
of society burns the fire of social movements’, which were becoming
‘more than ever the principle agents of history’ (p. 9). If Furedi is right
about the emphasis social movements are now placing on media pub-
licity at the expense of actual change, however, then in the so-called
‘social movement society’ (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998) this fire is producing
little heat, even where protest events and campaigns succeed in illumi-
nating particular social issues (which for some is now their central and
proper function). Activists become little more than ‘proverbial canaries
in the mine, except they sing out rather than quietly expire’ (Jasper,
1999, p. 13).
biting satire, irony and parody, the dark side of humour, may represent a
genuine political challenge, though these are not necessarily the central
focus of Shepard’s study.
There are, however, other ways in which the carnivalesque can be
efficacious. Shepard points out how much harder it is for authorities to
retain legitimacy when repressing the kinds of colourful, light-hearted,
playful protest he has in mind: ‘Jesters carry no weapons; thus they
apparently offer less of a threat to the power-that-be’ (2011, p. 21). This
is no doubt true, but it is what, if anything, lies beneath the surface
of this appearance, that needs unpicking. Even if they do not carry the
threat of violence, or even of numbers (see Della Porta & Diani, 1999,
on ‘logics of protest’), a protest must represent some kind of threat. That
this can be the case in protest organized around the logic of bearing wit-
ness is evident in the claim that the toppling of Ben Ali in Egypt could
be traced to the self-immolation of a single street vendor (Jacinto, 2011).
This is a far cry, of course, from the ‘larking about’ of anarchist street
jesters. The danger, of course, is that such antics become a substitute for
more direct forms of protest.
Ehrenreich (2007, cited in Shepard, 2011, p. 3) notes that gratification
cannot be deferred until after the revolution. But, in Marcusian vein, we
might ask whether pleasure experienced within a movement, initially
perhaps a ‘coping mechanism’ (Shepard, 2011, p. 21), becomes a form of
repressive satisfaction. If one conception of play in social movements is
that they should add flavouring to complement a campaign (‘without a
little seasoning the stew of social protest becomes bland’, Shepard, 2011,
p. 2), it is important to track the danger when excessive spice masks
problematic or absent substance. Such a conceptualization of play as
supplement sells it short, however. At points, Shepard seems to reduce it
to the kind of camaraderie that necessarily accompanies any form of col-
lective action. Citing McAdam’s (1988) work on Freedom Summer, for
example, he points to the ‘social eros, dancing, beer drinking, singing,
hooking up and an unbridled sense of social connection’ (p. 18). Yet this
was all quite distinguishable from the campaign itself, and this was very
different, therefore, from movements wherein play is the protest.
A final avenue for discussion of playfulness in contemporary move-
ments is the possibility that play can be used as a ‘mechanism to
cultivate creativity, solve problems, and generate ideas’ (Shepard, 2011,
p. 12). The benefits of play, understood this way, have much in com-
mon with the supposed benefits of fantasy. And yet play has the crucial
advantage that fantasies and utopias are ‘tried out’ in relation to the
material objects of the ‘real world’ so that they might in principle be
16 Fantasy and Social Movements
The book is conceived in three parts. These parts, and the chapters
within them, are intended to stand alone to some extent, though
my argument also builds throughout the book. The parts are writ-
ten without assuming too much prior knowledge. Part I focuses on
psychoanalytic understandings of fantasy and its relationship with real-
ity, the unconscious, action and the collective. Readers familiar with
psychoanalysis will find some of the chapters in Part I cover well-
worn territory, but it is hoped that new interpretations and syntheses
are drawn out, and their relevance to activism foregrounded, especially
through the work of social theorists engaging with the psychoanalytic
theories covered. Part II focuses on social movement theory, and the
place of psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic understandings of fantasy
more specifically, within it. Readers familiar with social movement the-
ory will no doubt recognize some of the history and critique of the
field presented. But, again, it is hoped that some original arguments are
forged out of this, and convincing connections with the psychoanalytic
literature are made. Part III presents a case study of the pro-space move-
ment in which the arguments and concepts developed earlier in the
book are applied. It is argued that the contemporary pro-space move-
ment represents a ‘hostile craze’ according to my typology. I hope
to draw attention to the role of fantasy within the movement, but,
moreover, how fantasy is worked over within a movement to produce
particular forms of mobilization.
Within Part I, Chapter 1 begins with Sigmund Freud’s account of
how fantasy emerges during the infant’s development. This begins as
hallucinatory satisfaction, as the infant suffering from discomfort hal-
lucinates a satisfying object. But due to the inadequacies of such a
response, the infant develops the apparatus needed for ‘reality-testing’
and secondary process thought, and ultimately for finding the satisfying
object in reality. Hereafter, Freud makes an essential distinction between
fantasying, still a response to an unsatisfying reality but an activity car-
ried on in the context of ‘reality-testing’, and hallucinatory satisfaction.
I argue that there are a number of subsequent ambiguities in Freud’s
Introduction 19
external world. Whilst Klein herself avoided extending her work into
the realm of social theory as Freud had done, the chapter examines the
work of psychosocial theorists who have drawn on her work. In dif-
ferent ways, Rustin and Alford both valorize the depressive position as
the grounds for political action and, intentionally or not, associate rad-
ical activism with paranoid-schizoid subjectivity. Elliott’s work, on the
other hand, provides a strong argument that it is in the combination
of paranoid-schizoid and depressive mechanisms that our best hopes
for the future lie. This is important for thinking about which mode
of fantasy represents the greatest possibility for progressive activism.
I later suggest that what Elliott is talking about brings us close to the
interventionist mode of fantasy.
Chapter 3 engages with Jacques Lacan’s return to Freud. This involved
a radical reworking of the notion of fantasy, which is seen as belonging
to the register of the imaginary, set against both Lacan’s symbolic under-
standing of social ‘reality’, and the Real that lies beyond the symbolic
and imaginary. It also meant accepting that fantasy was not simply an
image of the fulfilment of a pre-existing wish, but something that tells
the subject what it wants in the first instance. Fantasy is constituted
not from biological instinct but from intersubjective social experience.
Insofar as fantasy is seen as central to the constitution of the subject’s
identity, and essential for action because it tells the subject what it
wants, Lacan’s understanding has important implications for the pos-
sibility of abandoning fantasy in activism. Persuasive and important
though Lacan’s arguments are, especially at turning our attention to the
ways in which the symbolic fails the subject, I argue that his account
of neurotic fantasy relates only to one relevant mode of fantasy, namely
the narcissistic mode. This is the case because Lacan assumes that sub-
jectivity is founded on the fantastic attempt to recover the jouissance
lost as the infant enters the imaginary and symbolic as part of normal
development. I think it is possible, in something like Klein’s depressive
mode, for the infant to accept that it will be failed by the external world,
and to develop a mode of fantasy in which whatever is fantasized about
is not invested in as the source of total enjoyment and full identity.
This opens up space for a more positive social engagement on the basis
of fantasy. The Lacanian notion of ‘traversing the fantasy’ comes close
to recognizing this, but there are subtle and important differences. The
chapter also looks at how social theorists, including Laclau, Stavrakakis
and Žižek, have grounded their understandings in Lacan when look-
ing at social movements. Again, this body of work provides important
insights. But it has tended to approach fantasy from the angle of the
Introduction 21
the basis of their (narcissistic) mode of fantasy. Against Lasch, who views
space colonization as a survivalist fantasy, I argue that pro-space fan-
tasies can potentially sustain the subject, provided consumer fantasies
are not made too readily attainable, an issue I return to later in the book.
Chapter 10 provides an analysis of pro-space discourse. I begin by
noting that in order to articulate persuasive political demands, the
movement cannot attach value to the spacefaring fantasy itself, and
so must legitimate it in relation to established discourses. I argue that
the contemporary pro-space movement is dominated by a libertarian
Right discourse which articulates together concepts such as consump-
tion, growth, prosperity, freedom, inspiration and peace. The fantasy of
a spacefaring civilization serves to sustain such an ideology from the
outside through the promise of future satisfaction. The chapter also out-
lines the way in which pro-space discourse itself can be supported by a
sociobiological fantasy about human nature, and by the romanticizing
of the frontier.
Chapter 11 looks at the political organization of the pro-space move-
ment, and the ways in which it might function to shape the movement
as a hostile craze. It is argued that this involves the management of
fantasy and enjoyment for narcissistic activists. This includes consid-
eration of processes working to both sustain fantasy and channel it
towards concrete political objectives. The chapter discusses the ‘sup-
plementary’ creation of the movement’s ‘spacefaring culture’, which
takes place through social parties and the reproduction of filk music
and space art. It is argued that this has contributed to a shared social
imaginary necessary for investment in the movement. It is also argued
that the hierarchal organization of the moment serves to sublimate the
pro-space fantasy, providing a new source of enjoyment through inter-
nal politics. It also examines the tensions between narcissistic forms
of leadership, which it argues are central to supporting activists’ own
narcissism, and pragmatic forms of leadership, which become neces-
sary when the promises of narcissistic leaders appear to be failing but
which also provide a source of enjoyment for activists as they resent the
approach of such leaders. It finishes with a consideration of the ways in
which the pro-space movement is evolving, and what its fate might be
in the future given its commercialization.
Part I
Fantasy in Constellation: Fantasy,
Reality, the Unconscious, Action
and the Collective
29
30 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
Freud makes it clear that he believes the unconscious contains the same
mental processes associated with consciousness, but those which are
prevented from reaching consciousness (or more correctly the, unre-
pressed but not conscious, pre-conscious system). The unconscious does
not properly consist of instinctual impulses, but of ideas that represent
instincts. Central to these are wishful impulses (1915b, p. 186). These
wishful impulses are attached to objects that have been experienced
as capable of satisfying instinctual impulses. Wishes do not, therefore,
pre-exist their objects.
Freud argues that once satisfaction has been experienced,
the next time this need arises a psychical impulse will at once emerge
which will seek to . . . re-evoke the perception itself, that is to say, to
re-establish the situation of the original satisfaction. An impulse of
this sort is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the presentation
is the fulfilment of the wish.
(1900, p. 566)
In his topographical model of the psyche, Freud makes clear the lim-
itations of the unconscious system (1915b, p. 188). It knows neither
reality nor time. The unconscious system is unable to distinguish
between an idea or wish and a perception (Freud, 1917a). Nor is it
capable of action in the real world, except through reflexes. These
assertions came together in Freud’s theory of hallucinatory satisfaction
Fantasy in Freudian Theory 31
Freud asserted that the unconscious mental processes are ‘primary pro-
cesses’ governed by ‘the pleasure principle’. They seek to maximize
pleasure and minimize ‘unpleasure’. These processes are unable in them-
selves to postpone or forego satisfaction. Hallucinatory satisfaction is
the only way the unconscious is able to relieve the tension caused by
the infant’s needs intruding on its pleasurable state of psychic rest. And
yet it is not able to actually fulfil these needs in the long term. The
infant therefore develops the necessary ability to orient itself to the
32 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
real world and act within this world in order to obtain more complete
satisfaction.
‘The reality principle’ does not, however, displace the pleasure princi-
ple, but rather safeguards it by ensuring that in the long term pleasure
is actually experienced. ‘A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results,
is given up, but only in order to gain along the new path an assured
pleasure at a later time’ (Freud, 1911, p. 223). The ego works in close
relationship with the sense organs in order to achieve this. The sense
organs survey reality and create memories against which internal needs
are compared when they arise (1911).
The conscious system has to decide if ideas are real or not. It does
this by comparing the idea against reality. Freud puts together a the-
ory of how this process is achieved, beginning in ‘Instincts and their
Vicissitudes’ (1915a), where he explains how internal needs and exter-
nal stimuli are distinguished. Both are felt as stimulation, which Freud
associated with ‘unpleasure’. To distinguish them, the infant learns to
evaluate the effects of its actions on the stimulation. If physical flight
removes the stimulus then it must be an external one, and if it per-
sists (as instinctual needs always do until satisfied), then it is internal.
It is impossible to just physically turn away from internal needs in the
same way it is from sources of external irritation. Freud thus places an
implicit emphasis on the materiality of pain, which cannot indefinitely
be denied by any illusory means. Similarly, in giving up hallucinatory
satisfaction, the ego uses this process of ‘reality-testing’ to distinguish
a wish from perception, monitoring the effects of our actions on our
perceptions. Freud introduces the term in scare quotes, and this can
be taken as signalling an important distinction between the subjective
process he is referring to and attempts by others to objectively deter-
mine their reality basis. If the perception is unaltered by action, then
the perception must originate from inside the subject (1917a, p. 232).
Aware of the discrepancy between our wishes and reality, the ego is
capable of fulfilling these wishes through deliberate physical actions.
These actions are constrained and directed by secondary process think-
ing. This postpones immediate motor discharge by staging conscious
mental ‘experimental kinds of acting’ (1911). Much later he added that
‘judgment’ signals a choice of action based on this, and marks the transi-
tion from thinking to acting (1925b, p. 238). In short, rather than simply
taking an image of the satisfaction of a wish as if it were reality, the ego
plans means to achieve its true satisfaction.
From this point on, the activity of phantasying is distinguished from
that which undergoes ‘reality-testing’:
Fantasy in Freudian Theory 33
The phantasy is not therefore the wish in a purely regressive form, but a
wish cast into the future based on the present situation. Though I prefer
to stick with Freud’s notion of phantasy formed in the pre-conscious sys-
tem than their notion of the ‘present unconscious’, Sandler & Sandler
(1995) put it as follows: ‘The unconscious wish as it first arises in the
present unconscious is modelled on the inner child’s wishes, phantasies
and internal relationships, but the objects involved are objects of the present’
(p. 72). Phantasy is capable of providing a path forward for the libido,
rather than a regressive path (see also Freud, 1918). Freud gives the
following example to illustrate these points:
Let us take the case of a poor orphan boy to whom you have given the
address of some employer where he may perhaps find a job. On his
way there he may indulge in a day-dream appropriate to the situa-
tion from which it arises. The content of his phantasy will perhaps
be something like this. He is given a job, finds favour with his new
employer, makes himself indispensable in the business, is taken into
his employer’s family, marries the charming young daughter of the
house, and then himself becomes director of the business, first as his
employer’s partner and then as his successor. In this phantasy, the
dreamer has regained what he possessed in his happy childhood – the
protecting house, the loving parents and the first objects of his affec-
tionate feelings. You will see from this example the way in which the
wish makes use of an occasion in the present to construct, on the
pattern of the past, a picture of the future.
(1908a, p. 148)
36 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
vulture visited him in his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail.
Freud’s analysis rests on Da Vinci having been raised by his mother
alone, having heard myths about how vultures reproduce, and using
the tail as a penis substitute; it is a fallatio phantasy. In the footnotes,
Freud carries on an interesting dialogue with Havelock Ellis about how
likely this memory is to have been based on reality, or at least have
some basis in reality later distorted by the mother. Freud notes that
childhood memories are always elicited later, and ‘put into the service
of later trends’ (p. 82). But despite whatever distortion has taken place,
Freud argues that these still represent the past of the subject. They are
the memories through which the subject is founded (see also Erikson,
1975, pp. 125–8).
At one point Freud (1918, p. 55) says unambiguously that ‘a child, like
an adult, can produce phantasies only from material which has been
acquired from some source or other’. He therefore explores the possi-
bility that the Wolf Man’s phantasies were a ‘reproduction of a reality
experienced by the child’, but that perhaps this was a memory of seeing
dogs copulating which was then transplanted onto a real scene with his
parents. But Freud forces himself to address phantasies that could not
have been witnessed by the infant. The question then becomes where
these phantasies came from if they were never experienced or conscious.
His solution was the controversial concept of ‘primal fantasies’ (a con-
cept used differently by Laplanche & Pontalis). These are phantasies
formed from memories of events experienced by ancestors, rather than
the individual. Freud described them as a ‘phylogenetic endowment’
(1917b). Freud suggests that such phantasies are inherited but does not
describe the mechanism involved in such inheritance. In his theory of
unconscious phantasy, as in so many places, Freud was speculative and
hedged his bets.
The most important conclusion to be drawn is that there is a two-way
relationship between unconscious and conscious phantasies. As Infante
(1995) says, repressed conscious or pre-conscious phantasies ‘function
exactly like the memory of instinctual satisfaction and can supply the
ideational content for impulses’ (p. 54). These repressed once-conscious
phantasies are thus capable of providing the model or mould for sub-
sequent day-dreaming. Sandler & Nagera (1963, cited in Blum, 1995)
argued that conscious phantasies both derive from and have contributed
to unconscious phantasy. Freud (1933a, p. 25) alludes to this inter-
change when later discussing the relationship between dreams and
fairytales: the former recall the latter, but in doing so throw light on
what created fairytales in the first place, even if they evolve over time.
38 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
Given that Freud has argued that phantasies are formed in the pre-
conscious system, it is worth taking a detour through his theory of
perception in order to understand exactly what the relationship might
be between pre-conscious images and the unconscious and conscious
thought. In The Ego and the Id, Freud situates consciousness as ‘the sur-
face of the mental apparatus; that is we have ascribed it as a function
to a system which is spatially the first one reached from the external
world’ (1923b, p. 19). He goes on to say: ‘All perceptions which are
received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within – what we
call sensations and feelings – are Cs. from the start.’ In other words
they cannot be repressed from the beginning. But in this he is not
saying that these perceptions are thought. Thought processes are ‘dis-
placements of mental energy that are affected somewhere in the interior
of the apparatus as this energy proceeds on its way towards action’.
The issue is then how these become conscious, or rather preconscious.
Freud’s answer is clear at this point – through a connection to ‘ver-
bal images’. These verbal images are memory residues that were once
perceptions. Verbal residues are derived from auditory perceptions – the
heard word – through reading, for example (1923b, p. 20). So thoughts
become conscious through connecting perception to the sound of the
word that has been connected with them.
But Freud here allows for another possibility. He says that thought
processes can also become conscious ‘through a reversion to visual
residues, and . . . in many people this seems to be a favourite method’.
Here what are significant are ‘optical memory-residues’ – things not
words. He goes on to say of dreams and preconscious phantasies that what
becomes conscious is
only the concrete subject-matter of the thought, and that the rela-
tions between the various elements of this subject-matter, which
is what specially characterizes thoughts, cannot be given visual
expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incom-
plete form of becoming conscious. In some way too, it stands
nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and
it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and
phylogenetically.
(1923b, p. 21)
of the essential relations between the elements in the image (what might
be called the meaning of the image) unless this image is thought in
words. Again, Freud points to a distinction – this time between fully
conscious thought and a kind of semi-conscious phantasy-directedness.
Analysis, says Freud, involves this putting into words.
But where in early writings the compromise is between past and present
interests, Blum (1995) believes that in later work day-dreams are under-
stood as compromises between the tripartite structures. In the structural
model it is the ego that is forced to renounce objects and aims, but
these are retained and kept free from ‘reality-testing’ in phantasy as
‘every desire takes before long the form of picturing its own fulfil-
ment’ (Freud, 1917b, p. 372). As mature beings we alternate between
an ‘animal of pleasure’ and a ‘creature of reason’, with day-dreams (the
‘best-known productions of phantasy’) flourishing ‘all the more exuber-
antly the more reality counsels modesty and restraint’ (1917b, p. 372).
Freud suggests that this withdrawal of libido from real satisfaction to
phantasies can be called ‘introversion’ in one sense of Jung’s term. He
returns to the nature reserve analogy, except that now he concedes that
what is preserved here in phantasy is not only what is pleasurable, but
also what is ‘useless’ and ‘noxious’.
The superego, says Freud, maintains the attitude that the infant both
ought to be like his father and not like his father (because it is his father’s
prerogative to be the way he is). Freud thus characterizes the superego
as both a deposit of object-choices (such as the mother) and a reaction-
formation against them. In this way the child erects some obstacle to the
realization of Oedipal wishes within himself, in the form of the parents.
In the Controversial Discussions, Payne, Sharpe & Brierly proposed a
different name for Oedipal phantasies that acknowledge reality, on the
one hand, and primitive phantasies, on the other (Infante, 1995). This
obstacle is derived from auditory impressions, but its energy comes from
the id, as a reaction-formation against it. However, guilt emerging from
the superego can also be repressed, leading to ‘unconscious guilt’ (or
rather unconscious criticism, since guilt is conscious). Freud’s image of
Fantasy in Freudian Theory 43
In this account all three agencies – id, ego and superego – are involved in
the genesis of the final phantasy. The third stage ‘arouses activities of the
imagination which on the one hand continue the phantasy along the
same line, and on the other hand neutralize it through compensation’
(1919, p. 195). He also notes that ‘it was always a condition of the more
sophisticated phantasies of later years that the punishment should do
the children no serious injury’ (1919, p. 180). Witnessing real beatings
gave the patient no pleasure, and was even intolerable. One final point
to take from these case notes is that Freud believes that these phantasies
originated pre-school, but were likely modified as school books gave
them new impetus. Infants then ‘competed’ with books to produce their
own phantasies.
44 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
continuity in this respect between his work and that of Klein and Lacan
(see, for example, Leader, 1997). Confusion stems at least in part from
Freud’s insistence on a ‘psychic reality’. Largely to buttress the standing
of psychoanalysis as a discipline, Freud posited that the unconscious
mind was of the same ontic standing as the material world (see also
Rose, 1996, p. 3). The following comes in the context of another dis-
cussion of whether the infantile experiences brought to light in analysis
should be considered true or false:
we should equate phantasy and reality and not bother to begin with
whether the childhood experiences under examination are the one
or the other . . . The phantasies possess psychical as contrasted with
material reality, and we gradually learn to understand that in the world
of neurosis it is psychical reality which is the decisive kind.
(1917b, p. 368)
But whilst asserting the importance of psychic reality, this makes it clear
that he nonetheless retained the dualism between psychic reality and
material reality. As Hartmann puts it, the contents of psyche are real but
not realistic (cited in Adams, 2004, p. 8). Furthermore, whilst accept-
ing phantasies ‘possess a reality of a sort’ (1908a), Freud also excluded
more transitory ideas, such as day-dreams, from his definition of psychic
reality, therefore denying them the same standing as either the material
world or the unconscious.
In a countermove to the recent turn away from Freud’s dualistic think-
ing, Knafo & Feiner (2006) have sought to defend and reinstate it at the
heart of a theory of phantasy. They aim to ‘elucidate the ways in which
fantasy joins with reality in order to create a model that gradually comes
to include more realistic modes of attaining what is missing’ (p. 26).
It is important to acknowledge, however, that when Freud refers to the
subject turning away from or ‘testing’ reality, he is referring to their
perception of reality rather than material reality itself. Freud accepted a
Kantian view of perception as subjectively conditioned (1915b, p. 171).
He even goes as far as to say that ‘internal objects are less unknowable
than the external world’. It could therefore be argued that the world that
is turned away from is the subjectively unsatisfying world, rather than
a world in which the subject’s ‘real’ needs are not met. And yet, for all
this, Freud held on to the possibility that such perceptions of the world
are, at least in principle, distinguishable from phantasy. It might rea-
sonably be said that Freud’s theory of phantasy stands or falls on such
a belief.
46 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
The energetic and successful man is one who succeeds by his efforts
in turning his wishful phantasies into reality. Where this fails, as a
result of the resistances of the external world and of the subject’s
own weakness, he begins to turn away from reality and withdraws
into his more satisfying world of phantasy, the content of which is
transformed into symptoms should he fall ill. In certain favourable
circumstances, it still remains possible for him to find another path
leading from these phantasies to reality, instead of becoming perma-
nently estranged from it by regressing to infancy. If a person who is
at loggerheads with reality possesses an artistic gift (a thing that is
still a psychological mystery to us), he can transform his phantasies
into artistic creations instead of into symptoms. In this manner he
can escape the doom of neurosis and by this roundabout path regain
his contact with reality.
(1910a, p. 50)
The real world, which is avoided in this way by neurotics, is under the
sway of human society and of the institutions collectively created by
it. To turn away from reality is at the same time to withdraw from the
community of man.
(1913a, p. 74)
Freud was clear that the move from phantasy to reality was not only
possible in therapeutic practice, but also socially desirable. Addressing
concerns that individual patients might suffer from the removal of their
symptoms, Freud argued that
Here any possible connection between fantasy and real action for
social change seems to be denied. The ontological distinction between
phantasy and reality is undoubtedly the biggest sticking point in Freud’s
theory. I believe this is best resolved by acknowledging the distinctive
existence of unconscious phantasies, conscious phantasies and material
conditions.
Indeed, Freud says clearly above that ‘what was presented in the mind
was no longer what was agreeable but what was real’ (1911, p. 219). This
seems to suggest that in accordance with the reality principle our men-
tal ‘presentations’ are constituted solely of our perceptions, rather than
phantasies. Freud very much appears to be saying that we can either
be phantasizing or perceiving, but not both. It can certainly be argued
that it is impossible to pay conscious attention to what we are perceiv-
ing whilst at the same time day-dreaming of something else. And in
his paper ‘Some Additional Notes on Dream-Interpretation as a Whole’
(1925a) Freud again distinguishes two types of mental activity. On the
one hand are those with a useful aim, involving intellectual judgements
and a more circuitous path to pleasure. On the other, there are those –
including play, phantasy and dreaming – which provide an immediate
yield of pleasure. He makes very clear that the latter are not concerned
‘with the tasks of daily life before us’, nor are they ‘seeking to find a
solution for the problems of our daily work’ (p. 126).
Even if it is accepted that moments of phantasy temporarily suspend
action, this does not rule out the possibility of a temporal relationship
between day-dreams, on the one hand, and perception and secondary
process, on the other. Many have argued that phantasy is an essential
component of thinking (as ‘trial action’, for example) but that this was
ignored in Freud’s treatment of phantasy. Blum argues that:
Such a view finds support in Freud’s later work. In the short essay,
‘Negation’ (1925b), whilst making the point that what we wish for is
always based on a memory of satisfaction, Freud says that ‘The first
and immediate aim of reality-testing is not to find an object in real
perception which corresponds to the one presented, but to refind such
an object, to convince oneself that it is still there’ (1925b, p. 237).
Here he appears to be saying that ‘reality-testing’ involves both pre-
sentation of a desired object and attention paid to perception, like the
detective searching for a missing person with a photograph in hand.
Such a notion of ‘motivated looking’ can be taken further. Blum (1995),
for example, notes that in Freudian theory ‘the possible developmental
influence of the persisting daydream has only been hinted at, though
some patients attempt to live out their daydreams or protect against
their worst fantasies as major life themes’ (p. 44).
and found a golden age is much less likely. Whether one classifies
this belief as an illusion or as something analogous to a delusion will
depend on one’s personal attitude.
(Freud, 1927, p. 31)
But one can do more than this: one can try to re-create the world, to
build another in its place, one in which the most intolerable features
are eliminated and replaced by others that accord with one’s desires.
As a rule, anyone who takes this path to happiness, in a spirit of des-
perate rebellion, will achieve nothing. Reality is too strong for him.
He will become a madman and will usually find nobody to help him
realize his delusion . . . Of special importance is the case in which sub-
stantial numbers of people, acting in concert, try to assure themselves
of happiness and protection against suffering through a delusional
reshaping of reality.
existence of the factors to which it owes its origin’. And in the New
Introductory Lectures Freud argues that materialistic conceptions of his-
tory underemphasize ‘ideologies of the superego’ in perpetuating the
past, so that history is not just determined by economics (though rec-
ognizing that society’s motive for restraining instinct came from the
economic imperative of work). Having said this, Engels acknowledged
the dialectical importance of the ‘constitution of the individual’ as well
as ‘economic conditions’, the existence of unconscious motives, and the
necessity of repression for social life (in a letter to Mehring, cited by
Osborn, 1937, p. 173).
As justification for combining these approaches in such a way, Osborn
points to their ontological similarities. Both can be described as realist,
and both recognize dialectics (though Freud only implicitly). Further-
more, Freud, like Marx, was ‘a thoroughgoing and uncompromising
materialist’ (Osborn, 1937, pp. 134–5), and also an empiricist (at least
in the broadest sense). As Osborn quotes approvingly, Freud believed
the aim of science (including psychoanalysis) is
Elsewhere Freud (1927, p. 31) argues that ‘scientific work is the only
road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside ourselves’.
And importantly for his understanding of the extent to which ‘reality-
testing’ can be suspended, he says ‘in the long run nothing can
withstand reason and experience’ (p. 54). We all, after all, abandon
the illusions we had of others as children (Freud, 1930). Because he
understands our mental apparatus to have developed through our
engagement with the external world, he sees it as a part of that exter-
nal world. If nothing else, therefore, science can tell us something about
the external world through its understanding of the psyche (see 1927,
pp. 55–6).
Engels outlines a common-sense distinction between phantastic and
real objects. In terms of his understanding of the relationship between
imagined and real objects:
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn
to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive
56 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
Society presented nothing but abuses; to remove them was the task
of reflective reason. It was a question of inventing a new and more
perfect social order and of imposing it on society from without, by
propaganda and wherever possible by the example of model exper-
iments. These new social systems were foredoomed to be Utopias;
the more they were worked out in detail, the more inevitably they
became lost in pure fantasy.
(1880, p. 52)
Fantasy in Freudian Theory 57
The problem was, first, that the path to utopia did not emerge from
sufficiently extensive knowledge of existing socio-historic conditions.
Secondly, in the case of the three prominent proponents of utopian
socialism mentioned above,
These utopian visions, as emanations most often from the minds of the
bourgeoisie themselves, failed to identify and speak to the agents of his-
torical transformation. Further to this, it is possible to read into Engels
a distaste for the phantasies produced by such imaginations, which he
believed (despite leaving it to the ‘literary small fry to quibble solemnly
over these fantasies’) were always unjust. It is certainly true that the
model settlements that Engels detested so much represented not only a
version of socialist ideology, but also the narcissistic phantasies of their
philanthropic creators (see also Darley, 1975).
Marx’s and Engels’s own relationship to utopianism has since been
disputed (see Jameson, 2005). And the subsequent development of
utopian Marxism has emphasized that the utopian need not be opposed
to real political action, thus bringing the concept of utopia closer to
the politics endorsed by Marx and Engels. This has furnished us with
a number of concepts including Bloch’s (1959) ‘concrete utopias’. This
expressed Bloch’s endorsement of a utopianism ‘rooted in objective pos-
sibility’, and ‘grounded in the ascending forces of the age’ (Geoghegan,
1996, p. 37). As emphasized by more recent writers (such as Friere), this
represents a form of praxis rather than a blueprint for the future. In such
praxis can be seen a ‘foreglow of future possibilities’ (Geoghegan, 1996,
p. 37). Jacoby (2003) locates Bloch within a tradition of iconoclastic
utopianism in this respect; one that eschews the details of the perfected
utopia.
which, as another’s phantasy, would repel the reader. Lest proof of this
was needed, Jameson convincingly notes that any discomfort on read-
ing More’s Utopia comes not from the plan, but from the ‘narcissistic
punctum’ of details such as the gold chamberpots. The writer’s egois-
tic phantasies are therefore altered and disguised so that everyone can
acquiesce in them.
Jameson goes on to say:
principle of its own, intent on not making things too easy for itself,
accumulating the objections and the reality problems that stand in its
way so as the more triumphantly and “realistically” to overcome them’
(2005, p. 83). This is certainly reflective of Freud’s later understanding
of phantasy as a ‘compromise formation’. Second, Jameson is well aware
of the inherent painfulness of realizing utopia/phantasy. Because of the
importance of the phantastic project in constituting identity in the first
place, the realization of phantasy has to be equated with loss of iden-
tity. Jameson argues for the need to capture ‘the dimension of Utopian
desire which remains unsatisfied, and which cannot be felt to have been
fulfilled without falling into the world and becoming another degraded
act of consumption’. LeGuin’s City of Illusions
Adorno accepts this can happen even in mild cases. The problem thus
shifts from correcting the stereotype (we can reasonably say ‘phantasy’)
by experience, but of needing to ‘reconstitute the capacity for hav-
ing experience’, in other words the subjective proclivity to interrogate
phantasy, which is the sense in which ‘reality-testing’ should be under-
stood. If there is hope that this can happen it is reflected later in
Adorno’s insistence that ‘the prejudiced subject is dimly aware that the
content of the stereotype is imaginary and that his own experience rep-
resents truth’ (1950, p. 628). What Adorno thus seems to be saying is
that on one level the subject is always aware of the reality of their expe-
rience as well as their phantasy perception. This changes the field of
possibility considerably.
Summary
67
68 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
Phantasy as endogenous
Analytic work has shown that babies of a few months of age cer-
tainly indulge in phantasy-building. I believe that this is the most
primitive mental activity and that phantasies are in the mind of the
infant almost from birth. It would seem that every stimulus the child
receives is immediately responded to by phantasies, the unpleasant
stimuli, including mere frustration, by phantasies of an aggressive
kind, the gratifying stimuli by those focusing on pleasure.
(Klein, 1936, p. 290)
She is thus very clear that we do not need to have seen something, or
to understand it, to phantasize about it (giving the example of burning
or drowning the mother with urine, which she argues is independent of
experience and not primarily because of the mother getting cross when
the child has wet the bed).
The second argument is whether phantasy emerges only with ‘reality-
testing’. As I argued in Chapter 1, there is a good case to be made that for
Freud phantasying should be distinguished from hallucinatory gratifica-
tion on precisely this basis, and there is an issue with Klein’s conflation
of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and phantasy (see also Hayman, 1989,
p. 110). Freud therefore makes a distinction around the mode accord-
ing to which we relate to phantasy, and in working with this distinction
some bridge can be opened up with Kleinian thinking. I return to this
theme below and in Chapter 2.
‘The satisfied infant feels he has taken the good breast inside, while if
hunger rages unabated, he feels he has a bad attacking breast inside and
wants to get rid of it’ (Hayman, 1989, p. 107).
Hayman (1989) draws out from the Controversial Discussions an even
deeper argument about the centrality of phantasy to the Kleinian model
of the unconscious. This is that for Kleinians phantasy is the ‘primary
motor’ (to use the term employed by Foulks in the Discussions) of the
psyche. Hence, phantasy was not seen as the result of introjection or
the defence mechanisms, but as their driver. Again, the ontogenetic
primacy of phantasy underpins this assumption. Everything else that
happens in the psyche is derived from the existence of instinctual
phantasies. Seen this way the very structure of the psyche emerges from
phantasy relations. Isaacs’s point here is that phantasy is a means by
which an id impulse is transmuted into the ego mechanism, such as
introjection (1952, p. 104). The mechanism is ‘always experienced as
phantasy’ (p. 106). Hence repression takes the form of a phantasy of
putting an object in a can with a lid, for example (Segal, 1992).
Isaacs asserts that the external world intrudes on the infant from the
very beginning, within the first 24 hours of birth, and that therefore
‘reality-testing’ is there from the beginning. Here she seems to equate
‘reality-testing’ with exposure to material conditions, which does not
capture the proclivity to ‘reality-testing’ that seems to me crucial. But
it is from this that she develops her remarks about the continued
importance of phantasy to ‘reality-testing’ itself:
(1946, p. 40). Julia Segal has emphasized the importance of this aspect
of Klein’s theory:
Listening to her son Erich at the ages of 4 and 5, with the insights
of Freud’s work on dreams, Klein found that he saw his mother
and the other people around him through ‘phantasies’ which were
constructed from external reality modified by his own feelings and
existing beliefs and knowledge. His perception of his mother was
clearly influenced by his own emotional state. When he was angry
with her, he saw her as a witch threatening to poison him. When he
was happy and loving towards her, he saw her as a princess he wanted
to marry.
(1992, p. 28, emphasis added)
Taking things one step further, Segal outlines the relationship between
the role of phantasy in both perception and motivation, arguing that
phantasy actually steers us towards particular things in the external
world: ‘Seeking confirmation of our goodness or badness, we find peo-
ple and situations which tell us we are good or bad’ (2000, p. 31).
Phantasy can therefore become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but through
symbolization in which we search for representatives in the external
world of objects in the internal one (Segal, 2000, p. 54). Our interest
in the outside world exists by virtue of symbol-formation and subli-
mation. We are interested in objects in so much as they represent the
objects of unconscious phantasy. It is important to recognize here that
Klein is a profoundly dialectical thinker. There is a dialectic at work
between the external world and the internal world of phantasy. But
the two are not conflated. Isaacs argues that, whilst the ontological sta-
tus of unconscious phantasy must be accorded as much importance as
external reality, one issue for psychoanalysis is to identify when and
under what conditions the two are in harmony. Kleinians adhere to the
project of trying to disentangle what in a person’s perception comes
from their inner world, and what from reality. What is crucial though
is that phantasy is not to be considered something set aside from either
perception or action in the external world, but as something guiding it.
The phantastic nature of perception links closely to another concept
Klein takes from Freud and extends in significance, and that is ‘pro-
jection’. Again, this is used in various ways (see Spillius et al., 2011).
In general terms it refers to the attribution of something internal to an
object in the external world, or perhaps more properly to a phantasy of
having expelled something bad into the external world. Abraham made
the link between projection and anal expulsion (Spillius et al., 2011).
The thing projected could be a bad internal object phantasied as the
cause of somatic pain such as hunger, or a part of the ego. Segal says
that through projection ‘perception is distorted so that, for example, if
someone or something is defined as bad, any goodness in them is simply
not seen’ (1992, p. 34).
However, our actions in the real world, and therefore the interven-
tions we make in it, always push back into our internal world, even
if these are prone to a phantastic reworking in themselves. A dialectic
is established between introjection and projection. But it is important
to remember that this is a dialectic that could not exist were it not
for the part played by the external world from the ‘outside’. If there
is a bar to this, it arguably exists only in the form of projective iden-
tification. This is a controversial term in Kleinian theory. Spillius, on
76 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
the one hand, argues that in current usage by British analysts, there is
no distinction between projection and projective identification, as all
projection involves identification with the projected attribute (see, for
example, Spillius et al., 2011). Segal (1992, p. 36), however, distinguishes
projective identification from projection as follows:
One of the major differences is that what is projected into the other is
deeply denied in the self. There is therefore more of a sense that this part
of the self exists in the other person, and at the same time a decreased
ability to see the other person for what they really are (see also Bion,
1959, as cited in Spillius et al., 2011).
For Klein (1952, p. 202), hallucinatory satisfaction is denial and arises
because of frustration in the external world. Isaacs’s (1952) discussion
of hallucinatory satisfaction draws heavily on, and does not contradict,
Freud’s own discussion of the subject. Isaacs suggest that in the very
young infant phantasy has an omnipotent character. It is expressed not
as ‘I want to’, but as ‘I am’. ‘The wish and the impulse, whether it be
love or hate, libidinal or destructive, tends to be felt as actually fulfilling
itself, whether with an external or internal object’ (p. 85). Rudimen-
tary phantasies are characterized by primary process thought only. This
she relates directly to Freud’s hallucinatory gratification. Isaacs adds that
when hallucination inevitably breaks down, just as it does in Freud’s
account, loving phantasies turn to aggressive ones, which Isaacs then
links to what she sees as Freud’s (1911) discussion on projection in the
same paper. But projection of the bad object does not abate pain either.
She goes on to echo Freud by saying, ‘it is only slowly that he learns to
distinguish between the wish and the deed, between external facts and
his feelings about them’ (Isaacs, 1952, p. 85). This process can also be
prolonged through auto-eroticism and masturbation, which attempt to
deny loss.
Isaacs explains that with the development of perception, vision is
no longer related to the somatic (in other words, we do not see what
we feel). The bodily elements in perceiving and phantasy are thus
repressed, and vision is de-emotionalized. ‘It is “realised” that the
Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 77
objects are outside the mind, but their images are “in the mind” ’ (1952,
p. 105). However, crucially, these perceptions do not lose contact with
phantasy completely. Perceptions influence the mind ‘from their repressed
unconscious somatic associates in the unconscious world of desire and
emotions, which form the link with the id; and which do mean, in uncon-
scious phantasy, that the objects to which they refer are believed to be
inside the body, to be incorporated’ (1952, pp. 105/6). Again, uncon-
scious phantasy serves as a model that shapes perception. Segal (1922,
p. 43) gives the example of when a child calls their teacher ‘mum’. This
shows that the ‘internal good mother-phantasy is used to relate to and
understand other women as well as the mother’.
Believing she is following Freud, she argues that words exist in the con-
scious mind only, and as the unconscious mind pre-dates the conscious
one, so phantasies must pre-date words. A much-discussed example is
that of the flapping shoe. A pre-verbal infant had screamed at the sight
of a flapping sole on her mother’s shoe. Only later did she ask where the
shoe had gone, and express verbally her fear that it might have eaten
her up.
Some methodological points should be made here. Isaacs is clear that
the existence of unconscious phantasy can only ever be inferred. But, as
she says, psychoanalysis is based on inference in any case. Isaacs identi-
fies a number of ways in which the existence of unconscious phantasy
can be inferred by the analyst, including observation of: emotions of
which the patient is unaware, what is not being said, inappropriate
emphasis, repetition, inconsistency, idiosyncrasies of speech, how the
patient selects relevant facts, denials, changes of affect, posture and
gait, handwriting, bodily accidents, as well as the more familiar analytic
tools – dreams, associations and the transference. Children’s play is also
seen as revealing phantasy in the same way as adult dreams and symp-
toms; it represents adaptation to reality as well as expressing phantasy.
Furthermore, Isaacs goes as far as to say that our adult character, per-
sonality and attitudes are also manifestations of unconscious phantasy.
Drawing on Freud, ‘as if’ behaviour or reactions are also indications of
unconscious phantasy (if the patient is acting as if they believed their
mother was dead, for example). For Isaacs, part of analysis consists in
revealing to the patient the unconscious phantasies that underpin these
observable manifestations.
Isaacs’s one omission, surprising considering she refers to day-
dreaming in setting up her definition of unconscious phantasy, is the
patient’s conscious fantasies. This could, of course, be taken as an
Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 79
Here the point is again about the mode by which we relate to phantasy.
If a person lives life through phantasies that colour their perceptions,
then we might talk of abnormal development, and expect signs of dis-
turbance. If, however, we relate to our phantasies in ways that allow
80 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
contact with the real world, then normal and healthy development is
possible.
This might bring to mind Freud’s distinction between primary and
secondary process thinking. However, the distinction Klein is making is
not necessarily simply between hallucinatory satisfaction and healthy
adjustment. She allows, much more than Freud, that we are capable of
living life through phantasy without adjusting ourselves to external real-
ity (though perhaps not indefinitely). Maturely, a person will engage in
‘reality-testing’, which ‘involves examining the results of such phantasy
operations on others as well as discovering the limits of the effectiveness
of such phantasies’ (Segal, 1992, p. 31). The child’s ability to mate pre-
conceptions (phantasies) with reality depends on their ability to tolerate
frustration in the external environment (Infante, 1995). If it cannot tol-
erate disillusionment, then it may resort to omnipotent phantasy, then
projective identification and then psychosis.
are then seen as signs of malicious intent or revenge on their part. The
infant projects their own anger onto the parent, and what might be
benign neglect is reworked through phantasy into deliberate attack.
Klein can therefore be taken, following the lines of the original
Freudian controversy, as emphasizing the child’s own phantasies in the
genesis of childhood anxiety, rather than real parental behaviour. Segal
(1992, p. 29) puts it as follows: ‘Klein thought that the importance of
parents’ actual behaviour lay in the way it was taken by the child as con-
firmation or disproof of existing phantasies’, and ‘however well or badly
parents behaved reality was less monstrous than the child’s phantasies’.
It is the anxiety associated with such phantasies that is counterposed by
phantasies of a positive nature.
Later, she says:
Here it is clear how both kinds of phantasies are involved in what she
calls the ‘splitting’ of parental introjects. Initially this splitting occurs in
relation to part-objects so that both a good and bad breast are phanta-
sized. Later, the parent might be integrated, but still introjected as two
contrasting imagos of the same parent; as both frightening and highly
idealized (Klein, 1958, p. 241). Segal illustrates this with an analysis of
Cinderella’s fairy godmother and wicked stepmother (1992, pp. 29–32).
But Klein believes that making splits between different people persists even
longer (Klein, 1948). She argues that the contrast between persecutory
and idealized objects is ‘the basis of phantasy life’. One implication
of this is that the imago that provides pleasure and the imago that
withholds pleasure can each be constructed only in relation to the
other (a point loosely shared by Lacanian theory; see, for example, the
reference to Klein’s theory of splitting in Stavrakakis, 2010).
Such a concept of the function of phantasy brings us to Isaacs’s com-
ments about the relationship between phantasy and wish-fulfilment:
Isaacs then suggests that the content of various urges is all represented
through phantasy; not just wishes, but also anxieties, triumphs, love or
sorrow.
In the quote previously mentioned Klein also draws attention to the
ego being split along with the object. The ego develops in relation
to both good and bad imagos and these parts are also kept separate.
Though necessary initially, in the longer term this is liable to cause ‘deep
splits in children’s perception of themselves’ (Segal, 1992, pp. 49–50).
Klein says:
Potential problems also arise from how parents deal with the child’s
phantasy:
Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 85
The stress in analytic work on the processes of one’s own mind and
feelings, and the insistence in Kleinian work on the individual’s tak-
ing responsibility for his or her emotions, undermines certain forms
of political commitment and action. This tends of its very nature
to attribute agency and responsibility in a collective way, and to
generate, as its normal response to perceived wrongs, activity that
is external in its objectives, if open to other interpretations as to
its inner motivation. Such externalisation of feelings can become
frenetic, and one’s experience can be deeply structured by a split
between the idealisation of the project of change and denunciation
of the many evils of the present. Such powerful preconceptions are
not infallible guides to realistic understanding and action. This is a
frame of mind in which the events described by the morning news-
papers can produce almost daily indignation and the impulse to
take place in activities – meetings, demonstrations, magazines – that
respond to these. The patient work of mastering the detail of a field of
understanding, or even the apparently less demanding task of main-
taining an organisational form which can achieve such ends, can be
casualties of such an impassioned activism.
(pp. 9–10)
Summary
Whilst Freud’s theory was itself inherently social (Craib, 1994), Lacan
is often credited with the most radical development of psychoanalysis
in respect to our understanding of society and politics (e.g. Stavrakakis,
1999). His influence on contemporary social and cultural theory means
he cannot reasonably be ignored (Homer, 2005, p. 1). This is particu-
larly true in this book, as it is within Lacanian political theory that the
relationship between fantasy and social movements has most directly
been addressed. For Lacan and Lacanian theory, fantasy lies at the very
heart of subjectivity. The only true alternative to fantasy is psychosis.
For Lacan’s disciples, his revision of Freud in respect to fantasy means
that the latter’s ‘view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psychoanalytic
theory’ (Evans, 1996, p. 60, emphasis added). In particular, those who
work with the classical dualism between fantasy and reality are likely to
be branded as guilty of ‘naïve realism’ (Žižek, 1989, p. 47). Glynos (2011,
p. 83) refers to earlier theories as reflecting ‘staid “false consciousness”
conceptualizations of fantasy’.
Those who use Lacan’s philosophical topologies as the basis for social
and political theorizing have quite reasonably introduced him as a
philosopher first and foremost (Žižek belongs in this camp). On the
other hand, there are those who remind us, usefully, that his work
emerged from a psychiatric clinical background. The abstraction of
his clinical model of subjectivity in order to serve social and political
thought is tackled later in this chapter. I begin with Lacanian theory
itself, attempting to trace the ontological constellation of fantasy, col-
lectivity, the unconscious, reality and action in Lacan’s own peculiar
lexicon.
As is often bemoaned, Lacan came to express the relationship between
the numerous terms he redefined and invented through algebraic
98
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 99
S/ ♦ a
Lacan’s entire model of the Subject begins with a hypothesis about the
experience of the newborn infant that is remarkably orthodox. The
infant does not make a distinction between itself and the outside world.
In particular the mother is not experienced as separate from the infant
as she is continually close and attentive.
The foundation of Lacan’s theory lies in the belief that the existence
of such a state can only ever exist as a retrospective hypothesis. Cru-
cially, it is a state that can never be adequately imagined or captured in
language. The nature of this state is precisely that it exists before imag-
ination (which is based on relations of similarity and difference) and
before language. It is broken by these very things, and therefore can-
not be recovered through them. As Fink (1995, p. 24) puts it in one of
the most highly acclaimed accounts of Lacan’s theory of subjectivity:
‘Thinking always begins from our position within the symbolic order;
in other words, we cannot but consider the supposed “time before the
word” from within our symbolic order, using the categories and filters
it provides.’ We are therefore necessarily only ever aware of this undif-
ferentiated nirvana as something we have emerged from, but which we
could never know. It is, inasmuch as birth itself involves the ultimate
perception of difference and the first spur to consciousness, that an
argument can be made that this state only truly exists in the womb.
It is in not being amenable to symbolization that marks this state
as belonging to the ‘register’ or ‘order’ of ‘the Real’. The Real, for Lacan,
exists in opposition to, whilst also being necessary for, the other registers
of ‘the Imaginary’ and ‘the Symbolic’. Four points of clarification are
important here.
First, the Lacanian Real (which is often capitalized to underscore pre-
cisely this point) is not the same as ‘reality’ as it is used in everyday
language. Reality as we usually speak of it is precisely the world we can
comprehend and articulate. It is socially constructed through language.
For Lacan, reality is Symbolic. Every concept used by social science is
necessarily Symbolic (including, for Butler, ‘the Real’ itself!). The Real,
by contrast, is that which stands outside of, or resists, symbolization. For
reasons discussed later, the Real can never be integrated into language.
That is to say that language will never provide the words to capture
every aspect of the universe. Even if it is possible to talk of a ‘progres-
sive symbolization of the Real’ (Fink, 1995), as more and more words are
invented to try to capture new dimensions of difference, the Real will
still always be there.
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 101
In Lacan’s later work there is little room for entry into the Imaginary
without the operation of the Symbolic, and it has been noted that the
Mirror Stage takes place at the same time the infant begins to grasp
language (though before it can speak itself). Lacan’s criticism of Klein
focuses on her giving too much independence to the Imaginary (Evans,
1996).
Leader’s (1997) critique of Isaacs hinges around her assumption that
meanings come before words; ‘her notion of phantasy rested on the
supposition of meaningful but nonverbal experiences’ (p. 86). Isaacs
uses the example of the flapping/biting sole to show that phantasy
existed before language. But Leader says it shows the opposite; the sole
functions as a signifier. Lacan rebukes Klein for ignoring the signifier
and confusing phantasy with imagination (see also Evans, 1996, p. 61).
In the Lacanian view, fantasy is an ‘image set to work in a signifying
structure’. Whilst fantasy may not be in the form of words, it takes on
significance only through what is not captured/understood in words:
‘words really are the scaffolding of phantasy, even if, into this scaf-
folding, a non-linguistic object is inserted’ (Leader, 1997, p. 91). The
idea that the imaginary can exist without such scaffolding remains a
contentious issue.
The leap into the Imaginary occurs when the infant is first able to
recognize itself in the mirror (or other reflection). Such a recognition
is encouraged by parents who hold the infant in front of the mir-
ror, and support it verbally by naming the reflection in the mirror as
the child (and this is one sense in which the Symbolic is already at
work). The infant’s ‘narcissistic’ fascination with its mirror image is as
104 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
The idea of le petit autre (the other in the mirror) emerges in relation to
other people who are also seen as ‘little others’, imagined to be more
or less similar to the self, and the objects of projection and identifica-
tion. It is at this point that the mother’s presence or absence is properly
perceived as the presence or absence of an object. As other psychoanalysts
would agree, the mother’s ‘failure’ as an object, whether necessary for
the infant’s longer-term happiness (for example, the need to work to
provide food) or because of other things that pull her away from the
child (such as siblings, or the father), is deeply disturbing. The issue goes
beyond the experience of displeasure to indignation at why the mother
is failing the child at all. It is the existence of the drives, as distinct from
biological needs, that means we want more from the mother than the
removal of discomfort. Our want is for the mother who existed only
for our pleasure, and not as a separate object. Meeting our needs in a
perfunctory way is not enough.
It is the mother’s apparent failure to love in this sense that must
be explained and it is from this that the imaginary phallus originates.
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 105
As a way out of its uncomfortable position, the child imagines that its
mother herself is incomplete and needs or lacks something; something
she sometimes finds in the child but other times elsewhere. Here the
term phallus does not refer to the biological penis; it is a category term in
Lacanian theory named after something that generally fulfils this posi-
tion in patriarchal society. The phallus exists in a pre-Oedipal triangle
between the Subject and Mother all the time the infant can imagine it
has or can be the phallus. It is in this sense that Lacanians hold that
desire is always the desire of the Other (the desire to have what the
other desires in order to be desired oneself). Lacanian theory emphasizes
the importance of the ‘che vuoi’ question; the infant is obsessed with
the question of what it is the mother wants (from them), and which
they therefore want to possess. A clear distinction is sometimes made
between this pre-Oedipal phase, which Lacan refers to at one point as
the ‘first time of the Oedipus complex’ (Evans, 1996, p. 150), and the
Oedipus complex itself, and this in some interpretations involves the
castration of the Imaginary phallus with the arrival of the Symbolic
Phallus (see Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 51).
In later work, Lacan suggests that the Symbolic Phallus is a signifier:
‘the signifier of the desire of the Other’ (1986, p. 290, cited in Evans,
1996, p. 142). But it is a signifier for the mother’s desire; a desire that
cannot be conceptualized in positive terms. The object of the mother’s
desire could not be imagined prior to the arrival of the Symbolic Phallus.
It is therefore also a signifier for a lack of a signifier in the Other
(in Evans, 1996, p. 143), and therefore a signifier without a signified
(Leader, 1997). In any case, imagining one has the phallus is not suffi-
cient for healthy social adjustment, and is associated with fantasies of
omnipotence, narcissism and psychosis. Normal development requires
the entry of the child into the Symbolic register through Lacan’s version
of the Oedipus complex proper.
such entry would anchor the whole of the rest of language, but no such
‘transcendental signifier’ (to use a term central to Derrida’s thought)
exists.
A paradox emerges from this; the word that names that beyond
words (for another formulation see Fink’s, 1995, discussion of Bertrand
Russell’s paradox of the ‘catalogue of all catalogues that exclude them-
selves as entries’). Of course this place is never occupied by the Symbolic,
only by the Real. The Real, Fink thus suggests, therefore always chinks
through as a paradox in the symbolic order.
There is a further implication of this. In any pair of oppositional terms
(such as heterosexual/homosexual), each term relies on the other to give
it meaning and they therefore have something in common; it is together
that they make sense. For any oppositional terms, it is necessary to ask,
‘what is the name of the totality of which these two opposing terms are
the component parts?’ This question points to the necessity of another
signifier; a signifier for the totality itself. However, as Saussure identi-
fied, this signifier must rely on its own oppositional term in order to be
meaningful. And so we are forced to admit to an ‘outside’ to this fun-
damental antagonism (this can be seen in the expansion over time of
the acronym LGBTI, which ‘Q’ aims at halting). Any language used to
describe the totality of social relations is therefore flawed and incom-
plete, or in Lacanian terms irretrievably lacking the signifier that would
complete it. One consequence of this in post-structuralist analysis is that
it is the construction of the oppositional terms themselves that is much
more interesting than which of the two terms is chosen (the deconstruc-
tive trick is to reveal the third, hidden, choice on which an apparent
choice is founded).
This means that the alienated or lacking subject can never find
him/herself in language (can never find the signifier that captures their
identity). Instead, their lack is reproduced in a linguistic system that is
itself lacking (Stavrakakis, 1999). No symbolic identification can there-
fore ever be a positive one; it can never refer directly to the essence
of the subject (or its ‘singularity’, Stavrakakis, 2010). It merely locates
the subject’s symbolic identity within the universe of signifiers (in other
words, within society). A realist objection at this point might be rightly
derided as naive. There will always be a bar between the subject and
their ‘identity’. But of course any attempt to name this gap in lan-
guage merely shifts this problem around. It is precisely this slippage
that language allows that opens up the possibility for metaphorical
and metonymical operations, which, as we will see, are crucial for the
infant’s development.
108 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
The unconscious
unspoken), but this is never truly the object we are felt to have lost. This
explains how ‘we can both want and not want one and the same thing,
never be satisfied when we get what we thought we wanted and so on’
(Fink, 1995, p. 7). In fact, in different ways the hysteric and the obses-
sional both prevent attainment of the object of desire precisely so as
to maintain it. For the subject desires desire itself more than the object
that temporarily sustains desire. The hysteric keeps the desire unsatisfied
(and often denies satisfaction to others), whilst the obsessional ensures
the desire is impossible to realize (see Leader, 1997).
Another way to think about this is that desire manifests the wish
that the demand did not have to be made in the first place. The infant
who has been through the painful process of separation might make
demands of its parents, which may indeed be met, but its wish is always
that it did not have to demand in the first place. That is to say it is
a wish that harks back to the hypothesized state in which its mother
was so intently focused on it that demand was unnecessary. To make a
demand is to accept that the authority to which we make the demand is
indeed separate from us. Even its compliance with our demands cannot
erase this.
1997, p. 24). If there is (as there necessarily always is) a gap in the Sym-
bolic order, then fantasy fulfils the function of giving form to that gap so
as to support the Symbolic. One of Žižek’s points is that should fantasy
stray too close to the Symbolic (too close to the articulable) then it can
no longer fulfil such a function. The incomplete, and therefore contin-
gent, nature of the Symbolic structure would be revealed. In a footnote
(1997, p. 34), Žižek refers to historical moments when fantasies become
speakable as ‘ideologico-political “regression” ’. Translating this into the
language of ideology (defined ‘in the popular sense [as] the politically
instrumentalized legitimization of power relations’), he goes on to argue
that ‘an ideological identification exerts a true hold on us precisely when
we maintain an awareness that we are not fully identical with it’ (1997,
p. 27). The provocative conclusion he draws from this is that it is the
idea of a ‘rich human person’ beneath ideology that is the very form of
ideology itself. All ideology needs reference to some ‘trans-ideological
kernel’. Without this, no ideology could have more grip on us than any
other.
The seventh feature concerns the relationship between fantasy and
empty gestures. We are forced by virtue of being born into language to
accept the terms of the choices it offers us, and yet these choices are
never exhaustive (there is always ‘that other choice’). Because of this,
when presented with choice, one has to be ruled out by some means
so as to bracket the actual options available and to stop them expand-
ing indefinitely. Fantasy ‘closes the actual span of choices’ whilst it also
‘maintains the false opening’; the idea that the choice was open. ‘Fan-
tasy designates precisely this unwritten framework which tells us how
we are to understand the letter of the Law’ (1997, p. 38). Žižek illus-
trates the ‘empty gesture’ with social situations in which we are offered
a choice, but where one option is an empty gesture that cannot actually
be taken. One of Žižek’s political arguments is that the most subversive
thing one can do is not necessarily to critique the choices available and
attempt to add others, but to take the existing rules too seriously and
accept the empty gesture. This can prove truly traumatic to the Symbolic
order.
Fantasy for Lacan can never be fulfilled or removed without obliter-
ating the subject. Having said that, the grip of fantasy can be loosened;
a technique Lacan referred to as ‘traversing the fantasy’. As Fink (1995,
p. 25) says:
Historicizing Lacan
As Elliott (2009, p. 93) argues, Lacan’s work struck a chord at the time
because of ‘growing experiences of dislocation and fracture’. It is not
hard to see why Lacan might have viewed this form of subjectivity as
universal. This can be attributed to his immersion in the cultural avant-
garde of Paris’s left bank where he kept company with Andre Breton,
Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso amongst others, and by his professional
work in psychiatry. It has often been the case that psychologists have
been accused of universalizing a psychology peculiar to their times (see,
for example, Cushman, 1995). But to point to the social conditions
under which knowledge was produced does not necessarily invalidate
them. It is not enough, therefore, to dismiss Lacan as having constructed
a theory of the Subject that reflects the social conditions in which he
was writing. What must be done is to show where it is in Lacan’s theory
that he might have overlooked a possible way in which things might,
in other circumstances, play out differently, and in doing so to create a
framework capable of explaining alternative forms of subjectivity.
Central to Lacan’s theory of the Subject is the idea that the mother
necessarily fails the child, instigating the child’s imaginary construction
of the objet petit a and their entry into language. From this point on,
the desperation with which the child clings to the idea of an object that
explains the mother’s failure is lodged in the core of the subject (as an
absence). In Kleinian terms this represents a paranoid-schizoid solution
to the problem posed by the mother’s failure. In order to preserve the
idea of a good mother (the mother dedicated to the child’s enjoyment),
a fantasy is conjured up to explain her failure. In accepting the paternal
metaphor, the child gives up on being the phallus for the mother, but
not on the idea of the mother never failing the child. This is due to
Lacan’s assumption about the drives, and their inability to accept limits
to jouissance.
For Klein, however, the healthy personality develops a non-schizoid,
depressive functioning in which the child accepts the mother will
inevitably fail the child some of the time. In coming to terms with this,
the child comes to see the mother as a single flawed whole, rather than
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 119
keeping two fantasy mothers separate from one another. Any attempt at
explanation for why the mother is absent is an attempt to preserve the
good ‘if only’ mother. Such an acceptance does not seem possible for
Lacan because of his understanding of the nature of the drives. Freud’s
and Klein’s understanding of developmental possibilities is more open
from the start because they conceive of drive differently.
I believe Lacan provides us with a useful account of a narcissistic mode
of relating to fantasy, but that this is not the only mode. The depres-
sive, of course, still fantasizes, but retains a distance between herself
and her fantasy. There is not the same sense that the object will com-
plete the subject, and an awareness that the object exists only in fantasy.
This enables a different form of engagement with the world, and brings
us close to the Lacanian notion of traversing the fantasy. But one dif-
ference is that for Lacanian theory this traversing never concedes the
importance of the object to identity, whereas the Kleinian version allows
for the excessive object to be discarded in favor of an object providing
real security, and enabling attention to the well-being of others (made
possible through the good enough environment).
Over the past few decades a movement has emerged in political science
using Lacan’s ontology as a way of understanding political antagonism
and social structure, and it is from this group that the most devel-
oped accounts of the role of fantasy in social movements have emerged.
Stavrakakis (2007) identifies Žižek, Laclau, Badiou and Castoriadis as the
key thinkers in this ‘Lacanian Left’, to which we might reasonably add
Stavrakakis himself, Jason Glynos and a number of others.
Stavrakakis (1999) provides the clearest statement of how Lacan’s
work might be used as a framework for understanding political iden-
tities, including those emerging in social movements. His bold claim
is as follows: ‘Since the objects of identification in adult life include
political ideologies and other socially constructed objects, the process
of identification is revealed as constitutive of socio-political life’ (p. 30).
Contrary to how most people understand the political, for Stavrakakis
then, politics is all about the process of making identifications (see also
Laclau, 1994). As he makes clear, this politics of identification is not,
however, the same as identity politics. This is because none of the polit-
ical identities on offer is ever complete and can ever express the essence
of the subject. Thus identification is understood as a continual politi-
cal activity. As he says, ‘if I need to identify with something it is only
120 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
because I don’t have a full identity in the first place, but also because
all my attempts to acquire it by identifying with a supposed full Other
are failing’ (Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 41). The impossibility of this full iden-
tity is what fantasy exists to resolve. It is the promise of ‘the imaginary
elimination of [symbolic] lack by recapturing the lost real’ (p. 45).
This outside is not incidental. Were it not for this, then the antagonis-
tic camps would simply be the negation of each other (A would mean
‘not B’, and vice versa), and there could be no dialectic solution to their
contradiction. The possibility of truly heterogeneous elements (‘truly’
122 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
It is easy to see how, on the basis of this, the Lacanian Left might
come to see in Duncombe’s observations and directions, hopeful polit-
ical praxis. Stavrakakis anticipates (if not necessarily neutralizes) the
criticism that this leaves the Lacanian Left politically impotent in its
critique of the existing order, whilst also leaving the terrain open
for undesirable utopian programmes (citing critiques by Rustin, 1995;
Homer, 1996; Collier, 1998). Stavrakakis argues that these criticisms
all reduce the political to utopianism, when political action can be
achieved through pursuit of an anti-essentialist democracy. An alterna-
tive political conclusion is provided by Žižek, as discussed later in this
chapter.
Laclau would doubtless agree with Stavrakakis’s argument that ‘it is
the same subject as lack that introduces division into human collectiv-
ity’ (p. 40). But one lacuna in their work is the failure to discuss the
history of the subject prior to the formation of demands. Laclau notes
that for Freud overdetermination depended on personal history (2005,
p. 236) but he does not pursue this. Whilst he appears to accept that the
isolated demand is not indivisible as a unit of analysis, very little is said
about how isolated demands come into being. Even if Laclau is right that
the hegemonic logic follows the same logic as the logic of the object a,
it is important to recall there nonetheless exist two ‘angles’ on the prob-
lem, one psychoanalytic, the other political. He is concerned with how
demands are articulated together and less with the initial emergence of
demand.
and this object cause of desire – which becomes the sublime object
of ideology – holds the subject in place in fantasy . . . . The symbolic
coordinates of fantasy are therefore at work well before we assume
a position in ideology through interpellation, and those symbolic
coordinates explain why the interpellation succeeds.
(Parker, 2004, p. 86)
What is being suggested here is that the subject is ‘primed’ (for want
of a better word) for a particular symbolic identity by virtue of the way
they have been constituted through fantasy. This seems to imply a ‘fit’
between fantasy and ideology.
This arguably follows Lacan’s notion of fantasy as ‘set to work in a
signifying structure’. Fantasy fills in where ideology leaves off, but it
fills in in such a way as to support the ideological. Stavrakakis states
very clearly that fantasy is imaginary, but with a signifying function.
The object a ‘performs a symbolic function (supporting the lacking
fullness of the symbolic) by promising an imaginary mastery of the
impossible real’ (1999, p. 47). But I think a question hangs over the
extent to which fantasy’s arrival within a particular political framework
is predetermined.
One of the reasons for this apparent fit is that Žižek, as a social the-
orist, tends to view fantasy from the perspective of ideology. A good
example is his (1997) analysis of the Ku Klux Klan (bearing in mind this
is presented as a ‘historic’ example of the relationship between fantasy
and ideology, contrasted to the relationship between pleasure and ide-
ology in contemporary capitalism). The fantasy Žižek identifies behind
the ‘official’ KKK ideology is that of raping and lynching black men and
women. The grip of KKK ideology relies on the promise of jouissance
staged in these fantasies. Were the official KKK discourse about good
Christian patriotism all there was to the KKK then it would have no pur-
chase. In Lacan’s view fantasy belongs to the imaginary, and in Žižek’s
view the fantasy cannot become too articulable within an ideology or
it loses its ability to support that ideology from the outside. Likewise,
in conservative populism, he argues that the sexist and racist message
is ‘between the lines’; it cannot be articulated or reality will cease to
function.
Žižek emphasizes elsewhere that this ‘other’ reason is not secret at
all; it is the foundation on which the ideology is based. Identifying the
fantasy is not therefore to be understood as uncovering the truth of
the subject’s desire masked by ideology, but as uncovering the truth of
the ideology itself, as inscribed in the subject’s desire. But one issue as
126 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
I see it is that the lynching fantasy retains a distance from the sym-
bolic only in relation to official public discourse. In other spheres, it is
of course clearly speakable (and Adorno’s discussion of the layers of ide-
ology is useful here). The same issue comes up when Rose (2005, p. 54,
in Glynos, 2011, p. 81) argues that ‘Messianism, as unconscious inspi-
ration, is in the air and soil of Israel’. Again, Messianism is perfectly
speakable at other times, perhaps just not in official discourses of Israeli
nationhood. The organization of gang rapes and lynchings can, or even
must, take place at the symbolic level.
Žižek talks about the ‘dark underground of unconscious fan-
tasies . . . revealed in myths, dreams, slips of the tongue, symptoms and
its direct perverse realization’ (2008, p. xiii). Žižek often directs us to
the world of material social practice; a world where the ideological is
apparently suspended in favour of the supposedly utilitarian, but is
actually given over to the materialization of an ideologically laden imag-
inary. The material world thus ‘reveals inherent antagonisms which the
explicit formulation of ideology cannot afford to acknowledge’. Archi-
tecture is a favourite example, from Soviet architecture to Ceauşescu’s
polluted river beneath the clean one on the surface, to the organization
of the Fritzl house.
The choice of the term ‘dark underground’ seems dubious here.
As Parker says, Lacan himself ‘refuses notions of “depth” to charac-
terise what is happening beneath the symbolic, and instead describes
the mutually implicative registers of the symbolic, the imaginary . . . and
the real’ (2004, p. 64). It is a mistake to think of any fantasy as ‘belong-
ing’ to the unconscious. It is only in relation to other signifiers that it
has a life in the unconscious. Glynos avoids the analogy of depth but
in referring to fantasy as providing ‘a schema that mediates between
publically affirmed ideals on the one hand, and the darker side of those
aspirations and aims on the other hand – a side that subjects would
rather not consciously or officially affirm’ (2011, p. 71), he elides the
difference between ‘consciously’ and ‘officially’ affirming. An activist,
for example, can very well articulate how they have altered what they
‘really think’ for the sake of political expediency, but this expediency
makes sense based on their already having established a subject position.
The politically expedient ideology is therefore in one sense ‘chosen’ by
the subject. Here the lines between unconscious and conscious links get
blurred. For fantasy to operate in its purest form it cannot be rational-
ized in the terms of the ideology it supports. From the perspective of
the subject the fantasy is thus elevated to part of the equivalential chain
rather than retaining its distance from it. As Rose makes clear, fantasy
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 127
Elsewhere Elliott says of Lacan that ‘in presenting desire as entirely and
linguistically pre-structured, Lacan effectively strips the subject of any
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 129
This is the grounds or givens for the discourse. This ‘apolitical’ element
is fantasy.
The question then is how the category of women continues to func-
tion as the basis for a political identity when its meaning is the one thing
that cannot be established within historical or political discourse. It is
here that Scott introduces the term ‘fantasy echo’. An imaginary iden-
tification between women (she identifies two versions of this fantasy in
feminist history: as orators and as mothers) becomes the basis for saying
something about ‘women’, but the category itself is ‘retrospectively sta-
bilised’ through this very talk (2001, p. 290), recalling Laclau’s argument
about the signifier retrospectively constituting its referent. Because we
hear the voices echoing we assume there are subjects doing the echoing.
Scott’s important contribution is to question whether this echo merely
reproduces sound (in which case we are left with the problem of origins
and futures), or whether a distortion occurs between the original sound
and its resonances, in which case we must consider ‘the role of time in
the distortions heard’ (2001, p. 292). There is, I would argue, a fantasy
space suspended biographically between reproductions of the symbolic.
A notion similar to the fantasy echo can be seen in Dean’s portrayal
of Alain Badiou’s notion of the eternal nature of communism underpin-
ning various ‘communist invariants’ and consisting in ‘the egalitarian
passion, the Idea of justice, the will to end the compromises with the
service of goods, the eradication of egoism, the intolerance towards
oppression, the desire for the cessation of the state’ (Dean, 2013, p. 90,
citing Badiou, 2011, pp. 277–8). Dean criticizes Badiou, however, for
emphasizing the individual’s decision to incorporate themselves into
the communist ‘body of truth’. For Dean, the communist desire is
marked by its collective nature in the first instance; those who ‘relin-
quish their attachment to an imaginary individuality’. It also recognizes
a gap, but both collective and gap are left open, hence the strength of
Occupy Wall Street’s ‘we are the 99 per cent’.
In concluding, Scott argues that ‘fantasy echo has much wider appli-
cability, and not only to movements built on collective identities’ (2001,
p. 304). My own analysis in Part III will hopefully demonstrate the
validity of such a statement.
Summary
During this part of the book I have repeatedly returned to the notion
of ‘modes of fantasy’. This signals that fantasy does not always play the
same role within the psyche. I think Glynos’s call to pay more attention
to modes of relating to fantasy (such as the distinction between ‘closed’
and ‘open’ modes) is worth heeding. In the preceding chapters a num-
ber of distinctions between modes of fantasy were implied. These have
become the basis for making more general distinctions about psycho-
logical positions (such as Klein’s distinction between ‘paranoid-schizoid’
and ‘depressive’ positions). There have been some typologies that have
134
Modes of Fantasy 135
NARCISSISTIC
Fatalistic Interventionist
Summary
These six modes of fantasy have been suggested as ideal types towards
which individuals may tend. They each manifest the relationship
between fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action and the collective, in
different ways. It would, however, be dangerous to suggest that activists
could be ‘diagnosed’ according to such a model as exhibiting one par-
ticular mode of relating to fantasy. The argument that will be further
developed in Part II is that all of these modes can be present in social
movements, broadly conceived, but that the overall constitution of
movements in this respect leads to very different types of movement.
Part II
Fantasy and Social Movement
Theory
At the turn of the century [the field of collective behaviour] was dom-
inated by higher status theorists threatened by social change. In the
1950s, its spokesmen were more or less detached researchers. These
have given way to an increasing number of more activist researchers,
who view the study of collective behaviour as a way to encourage
social change.
141
142 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
Action is very rarely oriented solely to the one or the other type. Sim-
ilarly, these types of orientation are in no way exhaustive in respect
of types of action, but are instead created for sociological ends, con-
ceptually pure types to which real action more or less conforms, or,
more often, are compounded in reality. Their utility for us is judged
by results.
(1922, p. 331)
Affective activism
lies not in its success, but in the particular form taken by the action
itself. He who acts according to emotion seeks instant revenge,
instant enjoyment, instant dedication, instant contemplative bliss, or
146 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
Weber describes affective action as lying ‘at the boundary, and often
beyond, what is consciously “meaningfully” oriented; it can be unin-
hibited reaction to some external stimulus’ (1922, p. 330). It is therefore
possible to speak of affective behaviour to which no ‘intended’ mean-
ing is given. As we will see, this is where Weber pays a debt to the
tradition of crowd psychology. But there are also situations in which
we can understand the ‘subjectively intended meaning’ of action, but
it might nonetheless be ‘emotional, and therefore in this sense irra-
tional’ (1922, p. 316). The action is affective because it is determined
by these emotions, and not by a premeditated purpose, by adherence
to particular values or by habituation. However, Weber does also rec-
ognize that affective behaviour can be ‘sublimated when affectually
determined action involves the consciously controlled release of feel-
ing; in which case it usually, but not always, finds itself on its way to
“value-rationalization”, or to instrumental action’ (1922, p. 330).
Affective action therefore embraced a huge spectrum from behaviour
that occurs as an uninhibited emotional reaction to action determined
in the first instance by emotion, but about which the actor is reflex-
ive, and which he or she has consciously channelled towards a goal,
or in accordance with the values to which they adhere. In this section
I attempt to cover crowd behaviour, collective behaviour and social
movement theories that cover a similar range.
similar ideas (see Borch, 2006, p. 85). Despite their differences, such
theories are often grouped together under the heading not only of
‘crowd psychology’ or ‘mass psychology’, but as theories of ‘psycho-
logical expressivism’ because of their emphasis on the suspension of
rationality, ‘convergence theories’ (Turner & Killian, 1972) because of
their emphasis on how individual differences are dissolved in the crowd,
or ‘agitator theories’ (Barker et al., 2001) because of their emphasis on
manipulation by leaders.
The Crowd (1895) was marked by a deep concern about the growing
threat of the revolutionary crowd, and Le Bon historicizes his account in
the context of the rise of the distinctively modern crowd, which sought
a transformation of society rather than the redressing of grievances in
accordance with tradition (see Nye’s preface to Le Bon, 1995, p. 6). This
was no doubt the result of his own interest in maintaining the unstable
hierarchy of French society at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune. Le
Bon was 30 years old as he watched the crowds burn Paris whilst he
was chief of the ambulance service (Reicher, 1982). As Widener (1979,
p. 14) writes, Le Bon was a member of the old elite whose associates
were republican politicians attempting to secure the allegiance of the
new electorate against radical leaders.
Le Bon’s anti-socialism becomes even clearer in his subsequent work,
such as The Psychology of Socialism (1899). He later stated that
The really unhappy one is he who can be persuaded that his con-
dition is miserable. It is on this basis that leaders proceed to make
revolutions.
Mental contagion is the most powerful factor in the propagation of a
revolutionary movement.
In certain men, the revolutionary spirit is a mental condition inde-
pendent of the object on which it is exercised. No concession could
appease them.
Great social reforms are not the work of revolutions. These oper-
ate, as in geological upheavals, through a slow accumulation of little
causes.
148 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
mental unity of crowds (1895, p. 47), which means they can be treated
analytically as a single entity. He identifies three mechanisms through
which the crowd mind is created and, more importantly, controlled. All
have been subject to much debate. The first is the feeling of both power
and diffused responsibility experienced by members of the crowd, based
in part on anonymity. Reicher (1982) notes, however, that anonymity is
only experienced in respect to those outside the crowd, and the indi-
vidual remains identifiable within the crowd. Hence more attention
needs to be drawn to understandings and norms operating to control
behaviour within the crowd itself by virtue of social identity (see also
his critique of Zimbardo).
The second is that emotions and behaviour spread amongst the crowd
through contagion. Turner & Killian (1972) have attempted to pull apart
exactly what Le Bon means by ‘contagion’. As they note, it is a metaphor
borrowed from medicine, but Le Bon does not identify the mecha-
nism by which it takes place if not by bacteria or virus. Possibilities
are provided by Tarde’s law of imitation, Blumer’s concept of ‘circu-
lar interaction’, Wheeler’s ‘social facilitation’ of Sherif & Sherif’s work
on suggestion, to which tradition Turner & Killian’s own work belongs
(these problematic metaphors resurfaced in relation to the 2011 London
riots; copycat rioting, the viral spread of information through Blackberry
Messenger and so on).
Ultimately, for Le Bon contagion is an effect of the third mechanism:
suggestibility. As the individual will is weakened, the crowd member
becomes more easily swayed by suggestion, either by the ‘magnetic
influence given out by the crowd’ (1895, pp. 7–8) or from ‘hypnotic’
leaders. A common quotation from Le Bon is as follows:
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from
evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error
seduced them.
(1895, p. 52)
Whilst emphasizing that the mental capacity of the crowd was always
less than that of its constituents, Le Bon also believed the crowd to be
a potentially powerful, if dangerous, force given the acts of heroism of
which it was capable. Moreover, this crowd could be manipulated in the
service of good as well as bad (1895, p. 53). Because of these insights
Le Bon was widely read, and by leaders as diverse as Theodor Roosevelt,
Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler (Widener, 1979).
As mentioned, Weber uses work on ‘mass psychology’ and Le Bon
specifically as illustration of action that might not be considered
meaningful. What he takes from this volume of work is as follows:
The reason for this instability is to do with the fact that orientation
to the behaviour of others and the meaning of one’s own action
cannot be established unambiguously, or is unconscious, and rarely
completely conscious. Mere ‘influence’ and meaningful ‘orientation’
are for this reason not always easily distinguishable.
(1922, p. 329)
the object does and asks for is right and blameless’ (Freud, 1921, p. 113).
In this condition, in principle the same as hypnosis or being in love,
there is an absence of criticism of the object. Hence Freud arrives at his
definition of the primary group that was of interest to crowd psychol-
ogy: ‘a number of individuals who have substituted one and the same
object for their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves
with one another in their ego’ (1921, p. 116). This identification takes
place on the basis of what they have in common, that is their tie with
the leader. Each member of the group is forced to renounce their exclu-
sive demands on the leader. Freud suggests that in so much as there is
a ‘herd instinct’ (Trotter, 1915) it is to be understood as the necessary
limitation of rivalry by the demand for equality in respect to the leader.
Freud’s parting shot is to demand the move from ‘herd’ to ‘horde’ as
he reintroduces the hypothesis of the primal horde as a possible expla-
nation for the group’s thirst for obedience, but this is by no means a
necessary component of his theory.
The conversion of such ideas and emotions into action is likely to take
place because of their perceived legitimacy due to their group origin
(coupled with greater feeling of power). Whilst Reicher’s theory helps to
establish limits to contagious suggestion based on identification (some-
thing he also praises Freud for), his account of the mechanisms involved
in crowd psychology does not necessarily progress our understanding.
However, Reicher does at least raise one important point. He takes
from Tajfel that there is no ultimate standard of ‘rational’ behaviour
against which the irrationality of crowd behaviour can be judged. He
is completely right when he suggests that when outside observers have
reached conclusions about the irrationality of crowd behaviour, this has
often been based on a narrow understanding of their economic inter-
ests (as in Le Bon’s comment about acting against their own interests).
Tajfel emphasizes instead that the contrast should be between irrational
and social-cognitive behaviour. When we understand the way in which
identifying with a crowd can change an individual’s ideas, we can under-
stand why behaviour in a crowd might contradict behaviour elsewhere.
The conflation of pursuit of material interests with rational action has
been a sticking point for social movement theory.
Borch (2006) sees in much of the work subsequent to Blumer’s a more
radical retreat from the semantics associated with studying ‘the crowd’.
This, he believes, involved a move away from the ‘double discomfort’
engendered by talk of crowds: first, an association with ‘suggestibility,
femininity, immaturity, in short, irrationality’, and second an incom-
patibility with methodological individualism. Borch’s argument is that
much is lost when the distinctiveness of crowds disappears as they are
reduced to rational phenomena. Marx & Wood (1975) are surely right
when they say that this distinctiveness must be acknowledged, so long
as it can be explained from within the same overarching framework as
other, more routine, forms of social behaviour. Borch’s own inclination
is towards the ‘new vitalist’ perspective that has drawn renewed inspi-
ration from Tarde in particular due to its emphasis on indeterminancy
and emergence.
Laclau notes that Freud (1921) is talking only about primary groups,
deliberately side-lining the kinds of organized groups that McDougall
has identified (marked by temporal continuity, the idea of the group
itself, the idea of an outgroup, a binding to each other and to the group
by tradition, and the internal differentiation of the group). These latter
are groups that have acquired the characteristics of the individual that
were ‘extinguished in him by the formation of the group’. Laclau’s argu-
ment is that the logic supposedly operating here and the logic of the
primary group operate in all social groups and merely represent poles
of a continuum. Freud allows for this different logic when he accepts
that sometimes the group member’s ego and ego ideal are not separated
that much. It is precisely this minor concession of Freud’s that Laclau
believes determines the social-political alternatives emerging from the
group. So whilst he agrees with Borch-Jacobsen’s argument that for
Freud the social is dependent on the political (i.e. on leadership or hier-
archy), he does not accept that this is necessarily purely authoritarian,
and allows for the possibility of democracy. For when group members’
egos and ego ideals are not so far removed, Freud notes that leaders do
not have to be so exceptional. The consequences of this, says Laclau, are
that, first, identification within the group does not take place purely on
the basis of the tie to the leader, but on the basis of some quality the
group is seen to have in common, which is also present in the leader.
Secondly, that identification with the leader becomes possible. Thirdly,
that the leader is not purely narcissistic, for he is part of the group as well
as its leader. A more democratic leadership is thus made possible. Freud
is therefore seen by Laclau as capping a progressive movement towards
recognizing that social homogeneity and social differentiation exist as
a duality rather than a dualism. The joint operation of these two logics
becomes the basis for Laclau’s distinction between logics of equivalence
and logics of difference. He is particularly inclined towards Tarde’s later
work in which he moves from emphasizing the role of unilateral sugges-
tion towards interaction within physically separated publics (although
these can descend into crowds). Here, one persistent social division is
replaced with ‘incomplete and variable segmentation whose limits are
blurred, in a process of perpetual renovation and mutual penetration’
(Laclau, 2005, p. 47).
assessed and ways for acting on them devised. Agents can discuss,
for example, whether their feelings of impatience are reasonable, and
if they decide they are then they may elect to act upon them.
(Crossley, 2002, p. 108; see also Tarrow, 1998)
I think this is absolutely true. But Weber’s point (also Adorno’s) stands.
It must not be inferred from this that the rationality by which agents
debate their emotions is somehow independent of the source of the
emotion itself. To use one of Freud’s analogies, the ego is not a rider
in control of his mount (the id), but is more often than not forced down
the path the id dictates whilst maintaining a semblance of control.
Sixthly, it is argued that emotions can be manipulated in social move-
ments, and especially by leaders. Again, there is something in this
which it is hard to refute. And here Goodwin & Jasper’s emphasis on
movement leaders meets the tradition of Le Bon’s agitator theory. One
difference, however, is that where Le Bon thought leaders themselves
were half-deranged, Jasper (2007, p. 592) presents them as though they
manipulated emotions only to win converts: ‘It is affects and emotional
responses that political organizers appeal to, arouse, manipulate, and
sustain to recruit and retain members.’
Goodwin and Jasper use these assumptions to rejuvenate understand-
ings of social movement ‘frames’, recruitment through networks, and
collective identity, making three main points. One is to see the posi-
tive emotions associated with collective action as an auxiliary incentive
to the achievement of social change itself (a ‘solidary selective incen-
tive’ in the terminology explained below; see also Shepard, 2011, as
cited in the Introduction). There is no doubt that emotions such as joy,
love, loyalty and so on exist within social movements and help sus-
tain them. But there is an issue here which, as discussed later in this
chapter, presents a problem with all attempts to rationalize movement
participation. To the extent that theories like Goodwin and Jasper’s
acknowledge these rewards of participation, which are in themselves dis-
connected from the movement’s aims per se (the same emotions might
be present in any movement), then the theories merge with the collec-
tive behaviour accounts they are trying to get away from. Any theory of
emotions and social movements cannot treat solidary emotions as sep-
arate from, and auxiliary to, the motives that attract individuals to the
cause.
The second point is that emotions can alert us to the fact that
something is socially ‘wrong’ in the first instance. Thus the origins of
activism lie not in a cognitive assessment of a social situation, but in
Types of Action 165
Affective loyalties such as love might blind us in this way, for they are
more likely to frame the interpretation of new information, making
us less adaptable and thus less rational. But since these affects are very
close to moral values and basic goals, a commitment to them is hard
to dismiss simply as irrational.
(2007, p. 591)
ends’. In its purest form this exists ‘when the end, the means, and the
secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed’. He
then makes it clear that in this process the weighing of ends must in
fact be interrelated; it involves ‘rationally estimating the relations of
means to ends, that of ends to the associated consequences, as well
as that of the various ends’ (1922, p. 330). The impact of pursuing
one end on the attainment of another must be taken into account,
and the impact of different means on this balance will be decisive.
Weber unambiguously distinguishes this from affective and tradition
action.
To this point, we have assumed that the entrepreneur and his clients
are economically self-interested. This, of course, greatly idealizes the
value structures of individuals, for we know that people respond to a
complex assortment of incentives in virtually every area of social life.
Moreover, as regards group activities in particular, studies of small
groups and larger voluntary associations have consistently suggested
that values other than economic self-interest are often important
determinants of individual behaviour.
(1980, p. 113)
The other option, which Crossley identifies with Laver’s (1997) work,
is to reduce every action to a single set of basic human motivations.
All action is seen as somehow, no matter how circuitously, a means to
these ends. Here, all apparent ends are reduced to mere means to some
other end. Crossley’s point is that simply asserting this again tells us
nothing. It is the social shaping of desire that is the issue of sociological
interest. Crossley is pointing to something very important here, which
is the possibility that the fate of all ‘means’ is to become ‘ends’ in them-
selves. This is something Weber (1904b) uncovered historically in the
Protestant Ethic Thesis. It is also central to the contemporary Lacanian
interest in the repetitions of history. Speaking of the Left’s melancholia,
Jodi Dean (2013, p. 89) says: ‘Over time, as its process – its failure to hit
its goal – is repeated, satisfaction attains to this repetition and the prior
object, the lost object of desire, is abandoned, useless.’
Another issue arises here when it comes to the blurring of the bound-
ary of costs and rewards. It has been noted that often when the ‘costs’
of activism increase, activism actually rises rather than falls (see Gould,
2004, on high-cost, low-reward movements). This of course completely
confounds the expectations of rational choice theory. Yet, again, this can
be understood through psychoanalytic, and especially Lacanian theory.
We can make sense of this once we understand that the prohibition of
some object is what sustains desire in the activist and provides moments
of jouissance in the midst of conflict. It is through repression and fail-
ure that enjoyment is made possible. The more ferociously the object
is defended, the greater the hypothesized jouissance were that barrier
removed. This also helps make sense of what is known about ‘career
activists’ who move from cause to cause, looking to sustain desire.
Value-rational activism
Other translations give the first line as ‘action of persons who, regardless
of possible cost to themselves, act to put into action their convictions’ (see
Weber, 1978), which gives an altruistic inflection to the action. In his
discussion of zweckrational action, Weber acknowledges that the actor is
often presented with competing and conflicting aims and consequences,
but he suggests that the ranking and weighing of respective ends (as dis-
cussed previously) is not the only way of determining action. His
inference is that sometimes the individual is in no position to ‘choose’
to order these competing ends on a subjective basis, but feels them to be
a set of already ordered duties imposed from the outside. In these cases,
Weber says, ‘only the means are selected by instrumentally rational
criteria’ (1922, p. 330).
But, finally, Weber says:
Traditional activism
Summary
One of the aims of this chapter has been to recount the history and
present of social movement theory, paying particular attention to the
forms of action attributed to activists. This includes affective action
(arguably best represented in Le Bon), instrumentally rational action
(as derived from Olson), value-rational action (as in Melucci) and tradi-
tional action (as is a key feature of Crossley’s work). My argument is that
none of these models suffices as a universal model of social movements.
In order to provide a more complete model of activism, some attempts
have been made to work other forms of action into such theories. This
has, as Crossley in particular recognizes, meant that the logic of each
model has to be extended to a point where it collapses into the other
models against which it has established itself. Weber’s typology of action
provides a useful tool in making sense of this as he appreciates that his
ideal types are only that, and that real social actions only ever approach
these forms as horizons of action, contaminated by, and easily morph-
ing into, other forms. I would argue that social movements can also
be characterized by typical forms of action. Changes over time are par-
ticularly affected by processes occurring within movements themselves;
processes on which contemporary social movement theory has often
focused, but without the more complex ontology this book attempts to
outline. The unconscious and fantasy play a central part in this ontol-
ogy, and Weber’s typology of action allows that the concept of modes of
fantasy can illuminate processes at work in social movements where the
current alternatives on offer seek to stifle such an understanding.
6
Smelser’s Theory of Collective
Behaviour
184
Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 185
enables actors to make sense of a strain, what has caused it, and what is
to be done about it. This sometimes takes precedence in Smelser’s writ-
ing, for example when he writes that ‘the central defining characteristic
of an episode of collective behaviour is a belief envisioning the reconsti-
tution of some component of social action’ (1962, p. 11). Crossley says
that this dimension has been taken up by framing theorists like David
Snow, and others like Bert Klandermans and Doug McAdam.
4. But mobilization still does not take place in the absence of ‘pre-
cipitating factors’ – those ‘dramatic events’ which trigger an outbreak
of collective behaviour. He gives the example of racial tensions being
ignited by the arrival of a black family in a white neighbourhood. Here
the reactive view Smelser has of social movements becomes most appar-
ent. Crossley suggests that McAdam’s concept of ‘suddenly imposed
grievances’ is the best attempt to capture this in contemporary the-
ory. Smelser (1972) himself later suggested this determinant might be
dropped as it merely added a time dimension to other determinants.
5. The next determinant is the ‘mobilization of participants for action’;
in other words, the movement from feelings and ideas to action.
Crossley (2002) suggests this stage is undertheorized by Smelser, espe-
cially in terms of how agency is accounted for. Smelser’s emphasis on
the role of leaders recalls earlier agitator theories. Crossley suggests this
focus has been extended by the resource mobilization theory tradition
in social movement theory, as well as Tilly’s and Tarrow’s work on
networks, and Gamson’s work on communication channels.
beliefs can be classified with respect to the degree to which they are
exaggerated and irrational, as against realistic and rational, and the cor-
relates of various types of beliefs should be examined’ (p. 408). Crossley’s
(2002, pp. 47–8) objection to the suggestion that the ecology move-
ment’s philosophically grounded critique of existing practices represents
a ‘clumsy’ or ‘impatient’ attempt to bring about change nonetheless
seems reasonable.
Crossley rightly argues that it is possible to abandon the ‘short-
circuiting’ assumption without damaging Smelser’s basic framework.
I would add, however, that it is possible to still accept the existence
of the ‘irrational’ even when the movement itself represents a neces-
sary (and desirable) mechanism for social change. Smelser’s acceptance
of the irrational component of psychology fits neatly with his short-
circuiting thesis, and so the two are easily attacked together. I think it is
necessary to distinguish them, however, so that one is abandoned whilst
the other can be salvaged. The issue can be clarified by distinguishing
between two levels at which the charge of irrationality might be lev-
elled at social movements. These correspond to the two levels Smelser
distinguished in subsequent work, as outlined later in this chapter. One
is ‘irrationality’ at the level of the social system; in other words, collec-
tive action responding to social strain in a way that does not represent
the most efficient way of restoring what has been lost (social integration
and regulation). Here the appropriate term should really be ‘functional’
rather than rational. The other is irrationality at the level of the indi-
vidual; in other words, action that fails to live up to Weberian standards
of instrumentally rational action. But it is important to recognize that
these do not necessarily map onto one another. Individual behaviour
can be irrational whilst socially functional. And, on the other hand,
individual behaviour can appear instrumentally rational whilst being
socially dysfunctional (as in the actions of individual capitalists).
[T]he future state of social bliss, peace, and harmony that is fre-
quently envisioned by adherents to a cause . . . tap very vivid Oedipal
and sibling-destruction fantasies of what the world would look like if
only the hated objects were obliterated and the child could have the
loved object to himself or herself.
(1969, p. 65)
His analysis of the splits identified between the movement and its oppo-
nents has clear Kleinian undertones, although he does not cite Klein
until much later in his work, and only in passing. He goes on to say: ‘The
protest movement is typically an occasion which permits the repressed
elements of [Oedipal and sibling] crises to emerge and be gratified,
though certain other defenses continue to operate’ (1969, p. 67). Fan-
tasy clearly remains in operation here, and yet there is very little detail
as to how the fantastic elements relate to the more ideological com-
ponents of norm- and value-oriented beliefs. And in particular there is
no attention paid to how isolated fantasies are articulated into general-
ized beliefs. The latter seem to appear spontaneously (the root of Snow’s
criticism).
In line with the hydraulic analogy that once inspired Freud, Smelser’s
arguments imply that the pressure expressed in an episode of collec-
tive behaviour seeks the easiest path to release. Therefore, ‘if facilities
conducive for (say) a craze are available for a distressed group, energy
will be diverted away from norm-oriented attempts to modify exist-
ing structural arrangements’ (1962, p. 285). Smelser’s assumptions are
the reverse of those theorists of Utopia who suggest that the Utopian
impulse attached to the most perfect reorganization of society is forced
downwards into increasingly less perfect forms; sometimes referred to
in the critical utopian tradition as ‘opportunistic utopianism’.
The mode of analysis that Smelser adopts bears the mark of Parsons.
Ian Craib (1992) refers to Parsonian functionalism as a ‘filing cabi-
net’ approach to sociology. Social systems are broken down into their
constituents, which are then classified and cross-referenced with other
component parts. Theory of Collective Behaviour (Smelser, 1962) is marked
by the construction of rigid hierarchical typologies, which are then
Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 191
broken down taxonomically into their component parts (Marx & Wood,
1975, who refer to Smelser’s method as ‘systematic comparative illus-
tration’, provide a very detailed account of the taxonomic tradition
in collective behaviour theory). Each of the five types of collective
behaviour is broken down into its six determinants, and Smelser some-
times then provides a commentary on how specific determinants relate
to other determinants. There are two possible levels of critique here. The
first relates to style alone. Many might think the study of social move-
ments should occasion a lively, passionate and engaging analysis, yet
Smelser’s theory of social dynamics can seem dry and laborious. This
does not in itself, of course, deliver him further from the truth. It does,
however, relate to a more serious point of academic critique.
Smelser’s model is sometimes described as overly mechanistic
(Crossley, 2002). In one sense it is an ironic criticism given that the aim
of his value-added model was to demonstrate that the form an episode
of collective behaviour takes is contingent on the particular combina-
tion of factors. The final form is not determined by the structural strain
itself, therefore, but unfolds through the accumulation of causes. How-
ever, when a single episode of collective behaviour, or one component
of an episode, is made the object of analysis, one thing that does disap-
pear is agency. When talking about the analysis of generalized beliefs,
he says:
Even though accepting other determinants will come into play, there
seems little room for interpretive process. And, more importantly, con-
tingency itself disappears when working backwards from any realized
mobilization. As Staggenborg (2008) argues, it is always possible to trace
a mobilization to some kind of strain. It is hard to imagine a movement
occurring without its participants experiencing any strain in their lives.
Weeber & Rodeheaver’s (2003) analysis of citizens’ militia move-
ments in the US illustrates this pitfall. Weeber & Rodeheaver set out
to test empirically what various commentators had presupposed to be
the determinants of the citizens’ militia movement (for a review of
192 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
other attempts to ‘test’ Smelser’s theory, see Marx & Wood, 1975, who
argue for more quantitative research). They concluded that Smelser’s
determinants were present (with the exception of the effects of social
control, which they dismiss as less important), and hence support
Smelser’s theory. One of their research questions is precisely whether
activists experienced strain ‘prior to or during their tenure in the mili-
tia’. Of course the answer is yes. The study is further weakened by its
methodology, consisting of interpretive analysis of online discussions.
This meant taking participants’ self-reports of ‘strain’ as evidence of
strain. Discussions of ‘fear of the United States federal government’,
for example, is taken as evidence of strain, when it is much closer to
what Smelser would call a generalized belief. Smelser might emphasize
that strain must be experienced or felt in order to result in collective
behaviour, but the point is that strains are ‘felt’ before their causes and
solutions are constructed. Without this it would be impossible for move-
ments to short-circuit change; they would respond directly to whatever
strain they were experiencing. Belief and motivation must be separated
(see Marx & Wood, 1975, p. 383). Moreover, there is a flawed assumption
that if the determinants of collective behaviour can be identified, then
Smelser’s theory must be proved. The critique Staggenborg makes high-
lights that in practice all Smelser’s determinants will always be found
if we look for them. The subtlety that is lost is that Smelser’s theory
is about the way in which determinants combine to shape the form of
collective action. It is not enough to run off a checklist of whether deter-
minants are present or not, empirical work needs to demonstrate how
they combine. Whether or not a detailed theory can ever be predictively
useful, as Weeber & Rodeheaver suggest theirs is, is debatable.
Crossley accepts that Smelser’s is not a model that portrays collective
behaviour as a reflex response to strain. He appreciates Smelser’s empha-
sis on intersubjective expectations and the interpretation of strain
(2002, p. 187). Despite this, Crossley attributes its mechanical qual-
ity to Smelser’s basic assumption that in anomic situations ‘the agent
regresses to a level of “primary” psychological processes’, which ‘evacu-
ates any sense or reason from it’ (2002, p. 48). It is mechanistic in that
it does not account for agency. That is to say, it employs a ‘reductionist’
model of psychology which does not give enough credence to the actor’s
ability to apply reason. Smelser himself might not have recognized this
criticism. In later work, he says that he had previously ‘assumed that
no special motive or mentality (such as psychological regression) neces-
sarily characterizes the participants in episodes of collective behaviour’
(1969, p. 48), and criticizes Freud on those grounds. Whilst going on to
Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 193
many who have written about collective behaviour have stressed the
uncontrolled and impulsive behaviour of participants. But it should
not be forgotten that such behaviour is continuously conditioned by
the operation of personal controls.
(1969, p. 63)
The charge that Smelser’s model is mechanistic is not helped by his fail-
ure to ground his work in any detailed empirical research. He is very
much a historian of movements, and where empirical cases are referred
to, they are hand-picked illustrative snippets from accounts of signifi-
cant events and contextual factors. The emphasis is on the abstract logic
of the model, and Smelser is just about as close to being an epistemologi-
cal rationalist as you get within sociology. Weeber & Rodeheaver’s (2003,
p. 202) praise is quite telling here; Smelser’s theory ‘provides a theoret-
ically grounded, logical, and temporal rationale for the appearance of
a movement’. But the absence of empirical detail does not necessarily
mean a place cannot be reserved within it for the complex interplay of
social determinants and individual psychology. Indeed, if the model fol-
lowed a purely structural logic, then it would undermine Smelser’s ideas
about short-circuiting, and would look more like a cybernetic model.
Smelser’s model does imply the need for a sophisticated model of the
actor; he just does a poor job of illustrating this in practice in Theory of
Collective Behaviour. This is not surprising as, in setting up the problem
the book addressed, he says:
contest issues that do not appear on the horizon of the lifeworld, see
Ormrod, 2013).
In a post-positivistic era of sociology, Smelser’s synthetic approach
seems less radical than it might once have done. Exactly how social
and psychological meanings and determinants should be combined in
cases of collective behaviour has, however, been far from resolved. It is
important to remain open to the different ways in which personality
and ‘structural determinants’ interact in social movements. Some of
Smelser’s examples suggest a dualistic thinking about the interrelation of
structure and personality. Indeed, he refers to his double-description as
taking place on ‘parallel conceptual levels’ rather than convergent ones.
He could be seen therefore as upholding the distinction between the
disciplines of sociology and psychology even as he calls for their integra-
tion. This is particularly true where he relies on the idea that structural
change might simply activate a latent predisposition, but without much
attention to how or why. Take, for example, his analysis of prison riot-
ing in 1952 and 1953 (also of race riots, 1969, p. 54). He notes that the
social causes of the riots lay in prison reforms, with riots clustered in
those prisons that had undergone reform. But, he notes that
within these prisons, not every inmate rioted, even though all were
presumably affected in some degree by the reforms . . . . To account
for this differential involvement, recourse must be made to psycho-
logical determinants. According to some accounts, the rioters were
composed mainly of psychopathic and homosexual inmate leaders,
and more passive individuals who feared reprisal or loss of favour in
the eyes of the riot leaders.
(1969, p. 56)
Summary
Hedonistic movements
Hedonistic movements are those associated with hallucinatory forms
of satisfaction. These are rarely movements in which all social action
is suspended, but rather where action oriented towards change is sus-
pended. Within hedonistic movements the emphasis is on celebration
of what is perceived to be a space within which wishes are fulfilled and
there is no limit to enjoyment. Because the feeling of satisfaction can
never be maintained, such movements can only ever be short-lived.
Most often they represent the collapse of other projects, and towards
their end attempts are usually made to avoid slipping back into another
200
A Typology of Social Movements 201
HOSTILE CRAZES
Millenarian Prefigurative
Hostile crazes
The name for this type of movement hybridizes Smelser’s ‘craze’ and
‘hostile outburst’. There are good reasons for doing this. Smelser him-
self acknowledged their interdependency, as did Freud, Klein and Lacan.
The object that is the centre of the craze can only sustain action so
long as it is considered to be withheld by some group (in its broad-
est sense). Hence this group is posited as the obstacle to enjoyment,
failing to fulfil its proper role within social organization. Such a fan-
tasy always gives rise to a form of pleasure obtained from actions to
eradicate this group. Such a movement is associated with the narcis-
sistic mode of fantasy. That is to say that objects are pursued in the
hope of ‘magically’ returning the self to a state of former jouissance,
and are associated with fantasies of omnipotence and unity. These fan-
tasies are paranoid-schizoid to the extent that they employ splitting
202 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
Institutionalized movements
Institutionalized movements are those which distinguish between their
fantasies and political realities. Fantasy may still be acknowledged, but
it is decentred from their politics. Utopian ideals and fantasies deemed
‘unrealistic’ are compromised by what are seen as the cold realities
of political life. Often such movements remain committed to radical
political ideals in the abstract, whilst their actions are routinized. Insti-
tutionalized movements are associated with the depressive mode of
fantasy. There is a realization that the ideals, and impediments to those
ideals, are but useful fictions; necessary for the semblance of a politi-
cal project but ultimately to be betrayed. They may be characterized by
melancholia related to the lost idealized object, and therefore by guilt,
and they may cling to an idealized version of the past. Alternatively
they may have accepted the empty nature of the object, and have disin-
vested in it, whilst still using it to guide their actions. Institutionalized
movements should not be associated with Machiavellian politics, which
is better associated with the attempts by narcissistic activists to infiltrate
the sphere of formal politics for their own advantage. Activists within
institutionalized movements are more likely to identify with others
within the movement, and within political institutions more generally,
appreciating their relations of co-dependence.
Millenarian movements
Millenarian movements are associated with the fatalistic mode of fan-
tasy. Millenarian movements make predictions about the future closure
of the social system, whether this takes on a horrific or beautific hue
(to use Glynos’s, 2011, terms). They may thus construct doomsday or
‘end times’ scenarios, or scenarios in which they are saved by gods,
aliens and such like. They are often identified as cults, and have been
the subject of extensive sociological research. As in hostile crazes,
fantasies are constructed on the basis of paranoid-schizoid splitting;
A Typology of Social Movements 203
Escapist movements
Escapist movements are associated with the dissociative mode of fan-
tasy. They are typified by movements in the creative arts, especially
literary movements, and fandom. These are ‘hallucinatory’ insofar as
they stage wish-fulfilment in the ‘here and now’ through the creation
of a world within a world wherein disbelief is suspended. But they
are depressive insofar as activists are capable of distinguishing between
their artistic creations and the world beyond them, and recognize their
fantasy products as fictions. Insofar as the movement recognizes itself
in these productions whilst accepting they are not real, it disinvests
from political action. The processes of softening fantasy are necessarily
involved here, but always to a degree that risks betraying the uncon-
scious in favour of something aesthetically pleasing. This is not to
say that such literature is apolitical. In Veldman’s (1994) study of the
romantic movement, she argues that fantasy represents a protest, and
in Tolkien expresses ‘the escape of the prisoner’ rather than the flight
of the deserter. Such literature can be a force for change, even if not
through the movement that generated it. This is not to say that all lit-
erature produced by activists is necessarily ‘escapist’ in any case. It is
merely to say that to the extent that a movement tends towards being
escapist, it will tend to present desire as fulfilled in a creation that
204 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
Prefigurative movements
Prefigurative movements exist in tension between hostile crazes and
institutionalized movements. They are motivated by an attachment to
a fantasy, but at the same time are able to forgo wholesale attempts
to secure the object of fantasy in favour of accepting local and tem-
poral partial manifestations of fantasy. It is acknowledged that this is
a necessary step in realizing fantasy more fully later. It involves some
recognition of political realities, and often spatially uneven develop-
ments, and is able to take these into account whilst not abandoning
their attachment to an object. I associate prefigurative movements with
the interventionist mode of fantasy in which alterations are made in
the real conditions of existence on the basis of fantasy, whilst activists
retain an understanding that their actions do not represent the fulfil-
ment of fantasy, or even necessarily a particularly certain step in the
right direction. They involve an engagement with other people, espe-
cially as these are understood to be necessary to the realization of goals.
Yet rather than see fellow activists or opponents as mere tools or bar-
riers to the subject’s realization of fantasy (and to idealize or demonize
them), they are imagined as capable of transformation in the process of
working towards collective goals. This recalls again Winnicott’s notion
of ‘potential space’, and Erikson’s arguments about the construction of
reality through collective engagement with the external environment.
Summary
This part of the book aims to demonstrate how the theoretical argu-
ments of Parts I and II can feed into a case study; in this instance of
the pro-space movement (see also Ormrod 2007, 2009). Other illustra-
tions can be found in my work on the Voluntary Human Extinction
Movement (2011b) and outer space protection movement (2012).
Since the 1970s (though with their precursors) a number of citi-
zen ‘pro-space’ organizations have been established to promote human
activity in outer space. Some groups/activists are devoted to exploration
(human or robotic) or tourism, whilst others set their sights on develop-
ing resources and space settlement. While most are for the exploration
and development of space in general, some have specific targets like the
Moon or Mars, or imagine artificial space colonies. There have always
been differences in the movement about which particular activities and
goals are worth pursuing (Bell, 1985b, 1985c). The movement talks
about the creation of a ‘spacefaring civilization’, and recent rhetoric
states that ‘space is a place not a program’. There is variation in their
political activity, but many groups regularly lobby governments about
space issues. Outside of this, most groups also promote space activ-
ity by sponsoring research, holding scientific discussions, supporting
private sector projects, educating the public and producing news maga-
zines for their membership. They also organize trips, parties and other
social events. National organizations convene only once or twice a year,
whilst gatherings are much more frequent amongst local chapters of
these organizations and local groups affiliated to them.
The movement has never been particularly large in social movement
terms. Membership is generally formalized through joining one or more
pro-space organizations (costing roughly US$30–40 a year). Yet surveys
of membership in recent years have been limited. The last record as of
1985 suggested there were 150,000–200,000 citizen pro-space activists
206 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
influence. Its best-known member was Werner von Braun who worked
on the V2 rocket for the Nazis, and was later taken to work on the
US space programme as part of Operation Paperclip. He established the
National Space Institute (NSI) in 1974, part of the second wave of pro-
space groups. The AIS was most similar to the organizations established
in the second wave. With backgrounds in science fiction, their inter-
est was more in imagining and legitimating human spaceflight than
actively achieving it themselves.
The 1940s and 1950s are often called the golden age of science fic-
tion, and as Kilgore demonstrates, this was interwoven with popular
science. But, with a few exceptions, the second wave of pro-space orga-
nizations would not emerge until after the 1969 moon landing, and
until that point the American Rocket Society (which emerged from the
AIS) continued to dominate space advocacy with thousands of indus-
try members. The space group boom of the 1970s’ post-Apollo era saw
the birth of many organizations to which current groups can trace their
heritage. The most noteworthy of these was the L-5 Society, inspired
by Princeton academic Gerard K. O’Neill. O’Neill designed an orbiting
space colony using current science and technology, worked out the costs
mathematically, and linked his colonies with a revision of the Limits to
Growth thesis. Though their plans would supposedly be capable of gen-
erating profit, the L-5 Society still placed a lot of faith in NASA to realize
them. In 1986, the organization merged with Von Braun’s National
Space Institute to become the National Space Society (NSS).
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the emergence
of a number of new pro-space organizations, formed as membership
of the older organizations had dropped. These had a clearer focus
on supporting small, entrepreneurial, private space ventures, the own-
ers of which were often considered part of the pro-space movement
themselves (referred to as the ‘NewSpace’, ‘alt.space’ or ‘private space’
movement, see Bereinstein, 2002), and/or on promoting the space
tourism industry (arguably a distinct space tourism movement, see
Ashford, 2002; Spencer & Rugg, 2004). The lobbying group ProSpace,
formed in 1994, and the Space Frontier Foundation, formed by Rick
Tumlinson in 1998, are good examples of organizations belonging to
this third wave. I have heard Tumlinson introduced as ‘the dark side of
space advocacy’, and he uses the Jolly Roger as a symbol. Other new
organizations, like the Mars Society, formed by Robert Zubrin in 1998,
combined a NewSpace focus with other features familiar from older
groups. At the same time, the NSS, once thought of as a NASA fan club,
also started a campaign of support for NewSpace ventures. Michaud
208 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
actually noted the third wave emerging as early as 1986, saying that
‘in a sense, the new, young space entrepreneurs are a subculture of the
pro-space movement’ (Michaud, 1986, p. 269, also Bell, 1985c).
this was irritation with the welfare state. For Gerard O’Neill it was the
‘malling of America’. For Ben Bova, it was exasperation with the limits
to growth thesis. Kim Stanley Robinson’s challenge was made more gen-
erally at the direction and methods of late capitalism, whilst Vonda
McIntyre saw problems in institutions regarding race and gender. These
of course relate to different prognostic frames regarding the politics of a
spacefaring civilization.
It is often easy to see the influence of right-wing science fiction
writers like Robert Heinlein, Pournelle and Bova in the pro-space move-
ment. However, Kilgore emphasizes the existence within astrofuturism
of images of space colonies founded on radically different socialist
solutions to differently framed problems:
Psychosocial methodology
Chapter 8 makes the case for the central importance of fantasy in the
movement, and illustrates three typical formations of pro-space fantasy:
weightlessness, conquering space and viewing the Earth from space.
Chapter 9 looks at how particular social conditions, often identified with
a ‘culture of narcissism’, might have affected activists’ mode of fantasy,
which I characterize as predominantly narcissistic. Chapter 10 analy-
ses the relationship between the collective spacefaring fantasy and the
movement’s libertarian Right ideology. Chapter 11 explores the organi-
zation of the pro-space movement, and the way in which a ‘spacefaring
culture’, hierarchical organizational structure, narcissistic leadership and
opportunistic politics combine to give the movement its form as a
hostile craze.
8
Fantasy in the Pro-Space Movement
215
216 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
Pro-space activists are generally fairly well able to articulate when they
became activists. The formal membership basis for the movement assists
in this. Most see the first time they signed up to an organization
or attended an event like the International Space Development Con-
ference for the first time as marking a transformative moment. The
‘hook’ can also often be identified, and might be reading a book by
the leader of the organization, for example. Gerard O’Neill’s (1989) The
218 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
his father had died, and where more expensive leisure activities were
unaffordable. It is possible here to emphasize the contingent nature of
the child’s love of science fiction. In some of these fragments of stories
there is nothing intrinsic to science fiction that appealed to the child;
it merely served to fix an identity where previously there was none.
Especially where it represented the acceptance of parental financial con-
straints, it is possible to see how this might represent the desire of the
other, but moreover the desire to desire.
In addition to science fiction, when discussing how they got ‘into’
space, nearly all pro-space activists will mention something about their
memories of watching space missions. Again, it is childhood memories
that are the most pertinent. Amongst those I interviewed were people
whose first memories ranged from the Soviet Sputnik I, the first satel-
lite to be put into space in 1957, to the first launch of the American
Space Shuttle in 1981, though a large cohort grew up during the Apollo
era. Usually this meant being huddled around the family TV, although
sometimes the launch and ascent of rockets was witnessed in person.
In either case, the presence of family members who were also excited by
the launch was either made explicit or could be inferred. In a couple of
cases, activists had become interested in space through building back-
yard rockets with their fathers, or being given a telescope. Little work is
needed to imagine that in all of these instances the child was encour-
aged to watch and enjoy what was happening by their parents, and that
this formed a crucial education in desire. Again, these memories came to
play a crucial role in establishing identity. One activist said that Sputnik
was ‘the thing that defined everyone’s life back then’. Another, when
asked to tell his life story whilst putting space aside, began ‘OK. I was born
the year before Sputnik and as a consequence of that, grew up at a time
when all of this sort of thing was in the news.’ Another, when asked to
do the same, said: ‘I’m 53 years old, I was 18 when they landed on the
moon, I was interested in space before that. Oh, you said leave space
behind! (laugh) Whoopsee!’ These were, it seems, moments of entry into
the social order that provided coordinates without which activists’ lives
become unnarratable.
It was made clear that these ontogenetic accounts represented the end
of the road for any explanatory logic. This is how one activist responded
to the question of why he wanted to travel into space:
For the fun of it or for the . . . It’s hard to say it’s just been a dream
of mine to be in space, you know. So, why do you want to be in
space; it’s exciting, you know, it’s not something that everybody does
220 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
but still it’s not trying to beat the Joneses or anything. It’s just one
of those desires you grow up with from when you’re a kid, it’s just
a strong desire so you kind of lose track of the original reason . . . .
So let me think about that, I might be able to answer you better in
the future, but it’s not one of those things . . . It’s sort of like asking
somebody ‘why do you scratch your head up here instead of over
here?’ It’s like ‘I just got into the habit of doing it’.
What this also illustrates is that fantasy maintains a distance from its
symbolic sources. Benjamin did not simply identify with the NASA mis-
sions. She used the images they produced to stage her own desire.
The creative aspects of science fiction fandom have been the subject
of considerable attention in cultural studies (see, for example, Jenkins,
1992).
be attributed to the father, siblings and so on. The result of this frustra-
tion is the discovery that one is dependent upon others. For Freud, in
normal development libido is withdrawn from the self and invested in
an anaclitic attachment to someone else on whom the infant depends
(the mother or father and those who subsequently take their place).
At the same time, the infant’s self-love is displaced onto an omnipotent
ego-ideal; an idealized self against which the ego is evaluated, creating
a gulf between ego and ego-ideal ‘that he (sic) will spend the rest of his
life trying to bridge’ (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1975, p. 7; following Freud,
1914, p. 95).
The alternative, Freud argues in On Narcissism, is development into
secondary narcissism – a stage at which a love object is chosen that
resembles or represents the self. This is distinct from primary narcissism
on the grounds that a specific object has been chosen. Secondary narcis-
sism is a result of the infant’s failure to properly follow the experience
of frustration with a realization of dependence.
Lasch argues that narcissists sustain themselves through fantasies of
either omnipotence or unity (the latter added in the 1991 afterword).
These are denials of dependence that promise to magically resolve the
pain of frustration in different ways. The desire for unity in the face
of the necessary separation from the mother has been associated with
conscious religious convictions and beliefs (Lasch, 1991; see also Frosh,
1991, p. 75).
Omnipotent fantasies in which the fantasizer is totally self-sufficient
represent both a desire to return to a state of unity and a denial of this
wish (see also Lasch, 1984). Lasch associates this with fantasies about
technology and control (see also Elliott, 1996). In the depressive posi-
tion, Klein (1937) argued that the young child experiences an active
desire to reject the mother as well as to cling to her. This desire for
separation exists precisely because the infant finds its own dependence
frightening and fears the loss of the mother (p. 326). The healthiest way
to emerge from the depressive position is arguably a balancing of the
two conflicting desires (Lasch, 1984; see also Keller, 1986).
Fantasies of omnipotence are a direct and, according to many the-
orists, normal response to the realization of human vulnerability and
dependence (see, for example, Ellman & Reppen, 1997). This is arguably
accentuated for men in patriarchal cultures (and men constitute the
majority of pro-space activists) because of the demands placed on
them to separate themselves as individuals, whilst women maintain
a closer relationship with the mother (Keller, 1986). Subsequent fan-
tasies develop around the male need to deny their dependence on
Fantasy in the Pro-Space Movement 223
Fantasies of weightlessness
Bainbridge (1976) reports that the early rocket pioneers like Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky had a fascination with weightlessness. A number of activists
told me about their own desire to become weightless. The best example
of this came from an activist who was at her first pro-space event when
I interviewed her:
activists have described in great detail plans to mine asteroids and other
bodies in space for precious materials. Others have also imagined how
they would construct settlements on the Moon or Mars from such mate-
rials. A peculiar fantasy came from the head of one organization, who
suggested that his organization would no longer be necessary when he
got to play nine holes of golf on the Moon. Fantasies about terraforming
(altering the climates of other planets to make them Earthlike) are very
common.
It is here that language does a clear injustice to the fantasy, but I have
previously referred to these as fantasies about owning, consuming, tam-
ing or conquering outer space. Of course these terms are not present in
the fantasy, and to some extent reinscribe the fantasy scene within my
own discourse. Some of these articulations might be more ‘obvious’ than
others. Buying plots of land or altering a planet’s climate might repre-
sent control in a more transparent way than jumping up and down on
something or playing golf on it. But all in some way represent modernist
fantasies (in Elliott’s broad sense).
Space objects are first created in fantasy as objects beyond the indi-
vidual’s control. In pro-space fantasy the object is brought back under
control. One activist said to me about the Moon, ‘I don’t want to look
at it up there, I want to walk on it’. This identifies both the imagined
gap between subject and object, and the way in which enjoyment will
be released through being reunited with the object.
I have elsewhere outlined a Kleinian interpretation of the biographic
development of one fantasy of the pro-space pioneer Barbara Marx
Hubbard (Ormrod, 2011b), but I want to present a slightly different
interpretation of it here. Marx Hubbard’s mother developed, and even-
tually died from, breast cancer, and as a result had a mastectomy. In her
autobiography Marx Hubbard describes her horror on walking in on
her mother undressing and seeing the absent breast. Describing a fan-
tasy she had during a trance she calls her ‘cosmic birth experience’, she
suggests ‘the cosmic child had touched the breast of the moon’ (1989,
p. 95). It is not difficult to see here the intersubjective nature of desire.
The mother was clearly understood as lacking the breast, and in her
fantasy Marx Hubbard sees herself as gaining the breast her mother so
wanted. Interestingly, a common theme in pro-space writing about col-
onization is the idea that rather than taking building materials and fuel
with us, we will live off the planet itself (see, for example, Zubrin, 1996).
The object brought back under control is thus synonymous with the
nourishing and providing parent. It should be noted that within dif-
ferent discursive formations this fantasy about re-establishing a sense
228 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
There are many lenses through which this could be understood. One,
suggested in previous work (Dickens & Ormrod, 2009) is Jung’s (1968)
myth of the hero. The journey into outer space could be read as a par-
allel to an internal, psychic journey. For Jung, myths were particular
cultural manifestations of underlying universal ‘archetypes’; shared rep-
resentations of the unconscious. For him, all hero myths seek to express
the human psychic journey, charting the emergence of ego conscious-
ness in adolescence and eventually death and a return to the womb to
be reborn in immortal form. The passage often involves a period of sep-
aration and wandering, symbolizing a longing for the lost object that
cannot be possessed. In this sense, a journey away from Earth into space
represents the necessary break from the mother. Return to Earth then
becomes a much desired return to the womb, a ‘re-entry’ to use the
space terminology. My issue with such an interpretation is that the fan-
tasy does not seem to reconcile activists to this psychic journey. To me
it appears as another attempt to deny loss.
There are some details within the formation of these fantasies that
point in such a direction, through emphasizing the omnipotence of the
fantasizer. White explains how astronauts on their return have sought
desperately to communicate their experiences of unity to the rest of
the world (with, it must be said, little impact). These astronauts have
cast themselves in the role of saviours; having transcended Earth and
obtained a ‘God’s eye view’, they see their role as Earthly salvation.
The fantasy is one of humility on the one hand and aggrandisement
on the other. The gaze from space represents an omniscient relationship
with Earth. This was only heightened in the detail of one activist’s fan-
tasy in which the Earth was so small that it could be covered by their
thumb. Mother Earth is therefore ‘under the thumb’ and subservient.
In extreme cases of adult narcissism, Ernest Jones (1913) pointed to
a ‘God Complex’, characterized by identification with an omnipotent
God-figure and excessive phantasies about one’s own omnipotence. This
is particularly pertinent as one commentator on the pro-space move-
ment has argued that activists often confuse outer space and heaven
(Fulda, cited in Bell, 1985a, p. 98). Certainly a lot of Jones’s notes on
this personality type seem to apply to pro-space activists. Of course they
are very much concerned with the future and prediction (though quite
accepting of new technology, contrary to Jones’s description). Most of
them are atheists, which Jones believes results from an inability to tol-
erate the existence of any other God. It should also be noted that Jones
talks about fantasies of the birth of a new planet where everything is
‘remoulded nearer the heart’s desire’ (1913, p. 222).
230 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
Summary
231
232 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
though easily missed. I believe for Lasch the root of both the dom-
inance of the narcissistic personality and the cultural practices with
which it is recursively associated is a transition in the structural orga-
nization of capitalism: from its early competitive stage to the era of
monopoly capitalism. This is necessarily accompanied by trends towards
managerialism and the extension of bureaucratic control of the corpora-
tion, which are methods by which profitability is prolonged. Lasch notes
that these trends brought into being a new managerial elite to replace
the traditional bourgeoisie. Most corporations now include not only a
hierarchy of team and line managers, but a host of other positions that
involve working with other employees in order to maintain their pro-
ductivity, rather than directly producing profit themselves. Lasch does
not provide a list, but it might include: personal assistants, secretarial,
administrative and ‘support’ staff, personnel departments, payroll and
pensions, health and safety, childcare workers, counsellors and security
personnel in their role of protecting staff rather than premises. In addi-
tion there is a plethora of professionals who make a living as consultants
to such corporations: equality and diversity trainers, team-building cen-
tres, life coaches, professional development and image consultants, and
employment lawyers.
These all point to the increasing management of the workforce.
Lasch’s argument is that such practices at some point extended into
the management of ‘private’ lives, including our management as con-
sumers rather than producers, through the interference of professionals
employed either privately or by the state. Such a list would include
social workers, probation officers, advertisers, beauticians and therapists.
Where Lasch is weak, and he appears to accept this, is in explain-
ing exactly how this transposition from the workplace to private lives
occurred. A classical Marxist reading is possible, in which the new man-
agerial elite imposed new forms of cultural authority on an unwilling
public (and this is to an extent reflected in his discussions of changes
to the criminal justice system). My preferred reading, however, is a
Gramscian one. The rise of managerialism in the more ‘legitimate’
domain of work had naturalized it before it extended its reach in
other aspects of social life. And many of these intrusions in the work-
place appeared, commonsensically, to operate in the worker’s favour;
improvements around childcare provision through the workplace, for
example. This blurring of the boundaries between ensuring productiv-
ity and social care was further heightened by a reverse transposition as
care previously provided by the state was privatized, often as part of
employment packages, and therefore came to be thought of as a bonus
234 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
had given way to the values of the id. In other words, in the absence of
traditional structures of authority, the individual’s superego had failed
to develop, leaving the id unchecked. What was left was an individual
seeking instant gratification, with little concern for the well-being of
others. Lasch makes it clear in the 1991 afterword that he does not view
his book as simply another ‘jeremiad’ against self-indulgence or com-
mentary on ‘the “me” generation’. Lasch had in any case been critical
of Jules Henry who talks about ‘the collapse of ancient impulse con-
trols’ and the drift ‘from a society in which Super Ego values (the value
of self-restraint) were ascendant, to one in which more recognition was
being given to the values of the id (the values of self-indulgence)’ (cited
in Lasch, 1979, p. 177). Despite superficial similarities, the culture of
narcissism is not a culture of hedonism (see Bell, 1976). The narcissist,
for Lasch, is not without superego. Lasch distinguishes the primitive
superego from the social superego. The social superego is the result of
the internalization of social norms, and this is what has been eroded
for Lasch. What is left over, however, is a primitive superego based on
very early phantasies of the parents as unpredictable and as harbour-
ing violent intent towards the child (for Klein, this being the result
of the infant’s own violent phantasies towards its parents) (Reich’s,
1954, ‘archaic superego precursors’). These superego introjects con-
stantly attack and devalue the narcissist. In 1991 Lasch drew on Klein
to explain the important difference that the social superego punishes
through guilt, but the primitive superego punishes through fear.
Lasch’s narcissist is therefore continually anxious given that he is con-
stantly interrogated but without norms to guide proper conduct. He is
characterized by self-loathing rather than self-love or arrogance, which,
as he rightly says, imply a strong sense of selfhood. The idea that nar-
cissism is associated with self-love is one that Lasch associated with
Erich Fromm. This is not quite fair. Fromm actually explicitly refused the
term ‘self-love’ in relation to the narcissist, referring only to ‘self-regard’,
which has a very different meaning (1972, p. 151).
Matt Adams (2007) argues that classical psychoanalysis lays responsi-
bility for narcissism on chronically cold mother figures, and that Lasch’s
understanding reflects this. Even if true, this also has the potential to
be misleading. The notion of a cold mother can conjure up images
of a neglectful or distant mother who fails to invest in her child.
In fact, Lasch’s picture of the narcissistic mother who produces nar-
cissistic children is of somebody who acts mechanically towards her
children, rather than coldly. She may appear cold to the child, but this
is because her response ill fits the child’s needs. Her reliance on manuals
236 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
on childrearing has left her doubting her ability to parent, and thus
applying the advice of experts without allowing herself to respond to
the child’s needs more naturally (and she cannot do this even when
instructed to). But far from being detached from the child, the child is
overinvested in emotionally. Because the child is seen as a source for val-
idating the mother’s own self-worth, she projects her own needs onto it,
rather than responding to it on the basis of its needs. As Colombi, 2010
puts it, the intrusion of the ‘hyper-present’ mother is as much a prob-
lem as absence (p. 1081), especially if the mother says, ‘You must not
be afraid; you are marvellous and nothing could ever happen to you’
(p. 1082). This manifests itself, says Lasch, in parents lavishing praise
on the child, and showering it with material gifts, lest it should feel dis-
appointed in the mother (or ‘deprived’ as Frosh, 1991, p. 100, puts it).
To the outside world (as well as the mother) this may well appear to be
warm, generous parenting, though of course it is not this either.
Nobody has done more to explore the mother’s role in gently
introducing the child to frustration than Winnicott. His concept of
‘good-enough mothering’ refers to mothering that allows the infant to
gradually relinquish their omnipotence. The danger, as Frosh describes
it, is: ‘If the mother fails the child too early, the self will never be
formed, or will be hidden away behind a mask; if she fails too late,
or too suddenly, the boundaries of selfhood will always be confused –
grandiose, but insecure’ (Frosh, 1991, p. 98). Though the temporal dis-
tinction between failing the child too early and failing the child too late
can be useful, the narcissist is actually failed both too early and too late.
The child’s real needs, including the recognition of those needs by the
mother, are failed very early on. This leads to a fear of their own needs.
At the same time, the infant learns that through embracing the illusory
self projected by the mother onto him, he can maintain her love, enthu-
siasm and interest. The failure to provide a ‘good enough’ environment
in the past leaves little middle ground for the narcissist between engulf-
ment and omnipotence. Dependence is frightening moreover because
the narcissist fears their inability to meet the demands of others.
It is generally assumed, and I think correctly, that Lasch’s book is pri-
marily about the effect of socio-economic change on the personality.
However, this is complicated by the attention paid to specific sociocul-
tural institutions, and in particular the family. As he makes clear at least
at one point (1979, pp. 176–8), the family plays a central role in trans-
lating structural change into the socialization of the adult personality:
‘Other institutions – for example, the school and the adolescent peer
group – merely strengthen earlier patterns by satisfying expectations
Pro-Space Movement and Social Structure 237
created by the family’ (see critique in Valadez & Clignet, 1987). And
yet sociocultural institutions, including the family, are seen as express-
ing as well as generating or reinforcing narcissistic traits. The family is in
a bind because narcissistic parenting produces narcissistic personalities
in children. Other institutions in which similar dynamics take place are
therapy culture and the culture of celebrity.
The way out of this negatively spiralling dialectic is not altogether
clear within the book, especially since (as outlined in the Introduction)
even progressive social movements are becoming narcissistic. Commen-
tators have often resorted to associating Lasch with the desire to return
to more traditional forms of social organization; a view he explicitly
rejects. We also know, however, that the Marxism underpinning his
understanding of the culture of narcissism is not carried forwards into
his politics in any straightforward way. His hope is expressed only in the
development of what he calls ‘communities of competence’.
It should be noted that Lasch is not the only theorist to account for the
culture of narcissism using psychoanalytic theory. Kovel (1980, p. 199)
had argued at the same time as Lasch that ‘pathological narcissism is
a pox of late capitalism’. I have already mentioned the contribution
of Dean (2000). Dickens (2003) identifies three factors: insecurity and
individualism in the labour market, the rise of virtual communication
and advanced consumerism. Writing together, we have referred to a
condition of ‘adult infantile narcissism’ in which there is a failure to
‘adequately grow up’ (Dickens & Ormrod, 2007a, p. 613). This empha-
sizes continuity with primary narcissism, and points to the ways in
which disorganized capitalism might quite genuinely postpone expe-
riences of frustration. Thus where other authors point to the cultural
fostering of illusions of omnipotence, Dickens can be read as pointing
to real social changes.
This brings me to another theorist of the culture of narcissism whose
work I have found useful, Drew Westen (1985). Westen’s account has
many overlaps with Lasch’s and was written at a similar time, but also
has divergences. For one thing, Westen traces the culture of narcissism
to its origins in modernity (and he thus makes more theoretical use of
classical theory, whereas Lasch makes only ontological use). He does
not deny the dynamism of modernity, but does not identify the same
historical rupture that Lasch does. In addition, whilst Lasch theorizes
narcissism through the concept of the superego, Westen does it through
238 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
The Culture of Narcissism was written about the US. There has been
considerable debate about its applicability outside of the US. Perhaps
more importantly, it has been argued that Lasch was describing a
middle-class phenomenon, and that amongst less privileged groups
his observations did not ring true (more personal attacks have also
been made suggesting the book was influenced by Lasch’s own nar-
cissism). Sennett (1974) identifies a culture of narcissism within the
quasi-technical, quasi-routine, middle classes who identify themselves
on the basis of personality qualities. What Westen’s analysis also makes
us more sensitive to is some of the demographics that might make a
difference to narcissism. Pro-space activists can be located within this
demographic.
As noted previously, the pro-space movement is largely a US phe-
nomenon. Indeed even with the US it has historically been concentrated
in the West and Southwest, as well as California (which has been
attributed to either greater political or greater economic support, see
Michaud, 1986, pp. 150–2, and Millward, 1980, respectively, although
equally this could be explained by greater exposure to images of space
Pro-Space Movement and Social Structure 239
Summary
243
244 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
This will be my 8th March Storm, and I come to the March Storm
because of love. Love for people, love for freedom and love of oppor-
tunity. I have 7 kids, I’d like to leave them the kind of world where
they’re safe and have the opportunity for prosperity. I love my fel-
low man, I like to see them happy and prosperous and having a good
246 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
time. Without the kind of opportunity that comes from the resources
and materials of space I don’t see that opportunity being as wide as
it could be otherwise. I love freedom. I love the possibility that they
can go off into the Universe and make their own kind of lives in
their own ways without interference by any quantity of other folks
who have decided what is best for them. . . . So I come to Washington
to help us unleash the power of the market to change the operating
paradigm of space.
We could begin to unpick this rather dense passage from any number
of points. But I begin with that most floating of signifiers, ‘freedom’.
What freedom means depends, of course, on its place within a particular
discursive formation. It is a term that has been understood very differ-
ently in different social and political discourses (see Berlin, 1969, and
Marcuse’s, 1970, very different takes on this history). The way in which
it is used in contemporary libertarian Right pro-space discourse relates
to what Berlin called ‘negative’ freedom. This relies on the contradictory
notion of a social order in which individuals are free from interfer-
ence by the state or other individuals that might limit their choices or
‘opportunity for action’.
Insofar as this form of libertarianism tends to collapse freedoms
into market freedoms (however full of contradiction this might be), it
transmutes into a more broadly hegemonic neoliberal discourse about
consumption. This relates to the arguments made around the impor-
tance of unlimited access to resources. Because resources on Earth are
understood to be becoming increasingly scarce (including minerals,
fuel and land in particular), there is a fear of increasingly restric-
tive controls on individual freedoms to appropriate these resources.
As Rick Tumlinson (co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation)
has said;
What was that when the guy said that greed is good? Who was that?
I would like to turn that . . . maybe rephrase that to say that growth
is good because it’s been the growth of, let’s say, human knowledge,
acquisition . . . growth of acquisition of resources, growth in terms of
the range of products that are available to us that has led to the con-
tinual improvement in the quality of life of the human species. And
all good capitalists are always looking for new markets and new ways
in which to grow, and it seems to me that in terms of long term
economic reasons, that is a natural progression of the direction that
the human species has been going in since day one. And I would
248 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
suggest that there are going to be many more long term economic
reasons that we can’t even begin to imagine what those might be
today, because growth leads you into entirely new arenas of endeav-
our. We cannot envision that, but I think it’s pretty certain that if we
stop growing we’re doomed.
Of course, nobody would deny the necessity of growth for the capital-
ist system, and the likes of David Harvey (2006) have made very clear
that geographic expansion is central to attempts to sustain this growth
dynamic (his acknowledgement that these ‘spatial fixes’ are not actually
permanent resolutions to capitalist crisis reflects, as Howard suggests, his
understanding that they are fantastic even though they are materially
real and have real material effects). What this discussion reflects more
significantly is the equation of a stagnant economy with a ‘moribund’
society (see Sklair’s critique, 1970). It is argued within this discourse that
societies that grow have survived and prospered, whilst societies that
have not grown have become extinct. Of course, whilst it may well be
true that non-expansive cultures have fared less well than their coloniz-
ing others, it is not known how such cultures would have fared in the
absence of ‘growth’ societies.
Such discussion also outlines activists’ concerns about becoming an
introspective and virtual society with no ‘real’ growth, drawing on
developments such as reality television as an example. Since the end of
Pro-Space Movement and Ideology 249
the golden age of space exploration in the 1960s and 1970s, many pro-
space activists point to what social theorists might call the postmodern
disintegration of the modern worldview (though not discussed in these
terms). Their ‘progressive’ ideals are being threatened by a decline
in faith in progress, social disintegration, inward-looking narcissism,
present-time orientation and an emphasis on simulation rather than
real projects on nature (Benjamin, 2003). Space development represents
to them a project that will remedy this sad situation, inspiring youth
and giving meaning to people’s lives. One activist at the Mars Society
UK Conference cited Bertrand Russell to the effect that all societies need
a non-destructive adventure in order to survive. Pro-space intellectual
Frederick Turner says:
Turner sees a world lacking in meaning, with people crying out for social
integration and a sense of grandeur of the human condition. Interest-
ingly, Turner contrasts this Martian enterprise with the goals of personal
wealth or national prestige. This therefore represents a potential splin-
ter point in the discourse, as whilst the idea of inspiration is articulated
within the libertarian Right discourse of the contemporary movement,
it is the object of considerable hegemonic challenge. The idea of a
grand societal project (on nature) provides the trans-ideological fantas-
tic support for Dark’s (2006) argument that the pro-space movement is
fundamentally a modernist movement aimed at reclaiming notions of
progress.
As in the quote from Turner above, social fears are articulated espe-
cially in relation to youth. Many pro-space activists attribute youth
problems to the absence of a grand inspirational project. Realizing that
space holds special appeal to children, pro-space activists believe that
renewed space activity is vital to inspiring kids and encouraging them to
take an active part in society, ideally in science- and technology-related
250 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
A1: You have a lot of people who don’t see the immediate future as
positive.
A2: Yeah, right, and in fact in DC itself, in the schools there, surveys
say that a lot of the kids don’t think they’re gonna live beyond
age 21 or something like that, they’re just gonna be killed on the
street. So it really changes your attitude if you don’t think you’re
gonna live that long, how you’re acting, how you’re . . . when you’re
thinking about anything.
I: Yeah. Do you think you can get kids who don’t think they’re gonna
live that long to then care about space which is even longer . . .
A2: Even longer, yeah. Only if somehow it really looks like a brand
new opportunity to start over and you can personally . . . there aren’t
these big barriers involved. If you can somehow get them feel-
ing that they can be personally involved and get themselves help
actively doing something in space.
The world situation has never been really stable, it’s becoming more
unstable again as it was back in the early sixties again and I think
we really need to keep the human race alive. I think turning outside
of our small environment on Earth and opening up these possibil-
ities of the world, the Universe, to kids will take a lot of stress off
these . . . I know to the people that are fighting them do not seem
petty wars, but over land, over religion.
Where the pro-space fantasy risks being drawn too closely into the ide-
ological framework it supports, another ‘apolitical’ element enters into
this discourse which has a long history in supporting the libertarian
Right. That element is sociobiology and especially the arguments made
within that tradition about the naturalness of human acquisitiveness
and inquisitiveness. Sociobiology was built on the Darwinian theory
of evolution and, more dangerously, the teleological theory of Wallace
(who in 1907 also wrote about the possibility of Mars being habitable),
and was developed by Edward O. Wilson. More recently it has been asso-
ciated with the contributions of Richard Dawkins. Sociobiology posits
that the origin of all human social behaviour, like animal behaviour and
physical characteristics, is the result of natural selection. Behaviours that
252 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
for this idea. For Sagan, the exploration of space was as significant as
the first time fish left the water for land. In Tsiolkovsky’s analogy to the
human life cycle the Earth was the cradle of humanity ‘but one cannot
live in the cradle forever’. A slightly different version was propounded
by Henson (1985, cited in Michaud, 1986), who believed that the desire
to explore space was a specific ‘meme’; a term coined by Dawkins to
describe the reproduction of ideas by analogy to genetics.
It is ‘natural’ for humans to explore and settle other places. As a fan-
tasy echo, this holds together the version of human history recounted
in the pro-space movement as the history of exploration: Columbus and
the discovery of the Americas, the Pilgrim Fathers and the settlement
of the US, Lewis and Clarke and the opening of the American fron-
tier, and Neil Armstrong and the Moon landing. Exploration is therefore
founded on assumptions about human nature, and then reproduces for
successive generations the symbolic framework for the same fantasy.
Because the socio-political impetus to explore relies on the biological
‘need’ to explore, the two can be confused. Take this exchange during a
panel debate at the ISDC in 2004:
A1: I really think I’m the kind of personality that if I was born in 1840
I’d have been saying ‘gee ma I’m going to get the next wagon train
out west’. It’s there, it’s adventure, it’s excitement, it’s a frontier.
I think humanity always has people who are naturally drawn to the
frontier even though it’s probably going to get them killed.
I: Not necessarily everyone
A1: Not everyone, there’s always a certain percentage of people and
within the next six days you will see a very large percentage of peo-
ple in this organization are of that type. Some are into space for
other reasons, I think you’ll find a lot of latent frontiersmen here.
...
A2: I suspect that the adventure gene in humanity is a minority gene,
like a real significant minority gene and always has been and always
will be.
Summary
257
258 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
A spacefaring culture
Parties are often held during events such as the ISDC. I attended one
such party thrown by the Huntsville Alabama L-5 Society in a reception
room at the hotel where the conference was taking place. A row of chairs
lined the right-hand side of the wall and was occupied by activists chat-
ting in pairs, with paper plates of buffet food in their hands and maybe
a glass of wine or bottle of beer. Stretching down the left-hand side of
the room was a long buffet table. At the far end of the thin channel that
remained in the middle of the room was a fridge where a few activists
were readying drinks. The channel itself was populated by small cliques
engaged in conversation. These cliques were hard to break into because
of the technical language used to describe fantasies. Where the talk was
not of the latest electro-propulsion technology, it was of who Burt Rutan
was working with in the Mohave Desert, what engines he was using and
so on. The party seemed to be a space in which old friends were sought
out in order to renew conversations started many months ago, or over
the internet, and to share very elaborate fantasies together. There was a
complex dynamic involved in these fantasies. On the one hand, the very
act of articulating fantasy in technical language softened their ‘fantastic’
and repulsive elements so that they could engage in conversation. But
at the same time, over-elaboration in technical language made much
of what activists had to say boring, especially to those with no shared
interest.
Another medium through which the pro-space collective imaginary
is renewed is filk music. Filk music is folk music (music of the peo-
ple) about the exploration, development and settlement of space (it can
arguably also include fantasy folk music about dragons and such like,
which pro-space activists generally dislike). The word filk came about, so
legend has it, as the result of a simple typographic error on an announce-
ment at a space event where there was to be some space-related folk
music (Jenkins, 1992, p. 270). The word filk stuck, and filk fans are a
small circle that overlaps with the pro-space and science fiction commu-
nities (Jenkins, 1992). Filk is performed more spontaneously at events
like the ISDC. One activist, a filk artist himself, played me a recording
of Leslie Fish’s ballad ‘Witnesses Waltz’. The chorus conveys the sense of
solidarity amongst space enthusiasts who, unnoticed, gather to picnic
as they watch space launches. He then played Fish’s epic ‘Hope Eyrie’
which encourages space enthusiasts to remember the Apollo’s Eagle lan-
der to their children and remain resolute in pursuing space exploration.
On listening to it, one activist said it was impossible not to feel ‘some-
thing’, although he could not articulate what this feeling was. He said
it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up – an unrepresentable
262 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
(maybe even Real) jouissance. Filk, as the music of the pro-space peo-
ple, is an evolving community art form. Its songs are passed on by
performance and repetition in the same way as folk songs. Though com-
ing from a very different perspective, Eyerman & Jamison (1998) have
emphasized the role that music has in constructing the meaning of a
social movement as well as ‘collective structures of feeling’ (although
pro-space filk may well undermine their understanding of the necessary
‘fit’ between the form of music and movement ideals).
Finally, space art also contributes to the pro-space imaginary as a
stock of shared images, and this is well recognized. The images of
artists from Chesley Bonestall to Don Davis have been as important
to space fantasy as science fiction literature. Davis’s best-known paint-
ings are of life within artificial space colonies. Nuclear families play
on sunny beaches, or communities picnic, whilst hang-gliders fly over-
head (the meaning of such images was inverted in the 2013 Neil
Blomkamp film Elysium). At the ISDC a room was set aside for the
duration of the conference for an exhibition by various space artists
(though the range of art varied from fantasy images, to expressionist
images of planets, to images more similar to Davis’s). At the conference’s
award ceremony, space artist Joy Day received a Space Foundation Life-
time Space Achievement Award, which again demonstrates the ongoing
dynamic between the formal symbolic order of pro-space activism,
and the fantastic support sustained through supplementary cultural
practices.
The centrality of these kinds of practices and spaces to a social move-
ment represents, in large part, the distinction between different types
of movement. More hedonistic movements might be expected to afford
more space for them, whilst in more institutionalized movements such
spaces are marginalized, and greater attempts are made to contain and
circumscribe them within the movement’s symbolic structure. This has
much to do with the discussion in the Introduction of the supposed
changing role of fantasy in social movements. Many of the changes
noted there point to a shift towards recognizing the importance of such
practices, even at the expense of maintaining a formal symbolic struc-
ture. But, as Stavrakakis (2010) makes absolutely clear, this is a dynamic
evolution. For as such practices become more recognized as central to
activism, so new expectations and commands emerge to govern these
practices such that they are integrated into what the movement offi-
cially stands for, and the enjoyment provided by them is subsequently
displaced elsewhere.
Pro-Space Movement and Political Organization 263
Organizational hierarchy
veterans are keen to talk about the history of pro-space activism, the
mergers and splinters of groups, the campaigns, the conferences and so
on. During one conference presentation I was startled by a tap on the
shoulder from another veteran who had, without solicitation, drawn
up a timeline of space activism for me. The creation of shared mem-
ory is vital for the solidarity of the movement, but this history also
sustains aspiration within the movement, whilst offering a depressive
compromise to veteran activists.
Leadership
illusion’. Their promise of the arrival of illusion ‘stimulates the wish for
the fusion of ego and ideal by way of regression and induces the ego to
melt into the omnipotent primary object, to encompass the entire uni-
verse’. In this account, leaders might stimulate a wish in the follower,
but the ego is there in the first instance and distinguished from the ego-
ideal. As Hinshelwood & Cheisa (2002, p. 76) put it, like the group itself,
the leader allows the group’s regression to omnipotent fantasy. Such an
account resonates with theories of crowd psychology such as Le Bon’s.
Frosh (1991, p. 87), on the other hand, has argued that it is narcis-
sists who seek out those who offer the fulfilment or embodiment of
fantasies in the form of narcissistic leaders. Hence the psychology of
rank-and-file activists is the more important factor. Both these views,
however, assume that the leader has particular qualities prior to his or
her articulation as a leader. As Alford draws out in his discussion of Bion,
the alternative argument is that leaders are empty vessels or compli-
ant personalities. Freud assumed the identification with the leader was
a mature one, but Bion questions whether it might instead be a form
of projective identification. He also asks if groups choose their most
paranoid-schizoid members as leaders because they realize they are to
be dependent on the leader and therefore want the leader to be depen-
dent on the group. Alford’s argument is that such leaders ‘are best able to
give internal anxieties a compelling external location and focus because
they have had more practice at this way of thinking’ (1989, p. 73). The
paranoid-schizoid leader is ‘more imaginative at generalizing his own
paranoid-schizoid defences to the objective problems faced by the group
and at selling this interpretation to others’ (p. 73). He ‘holds the group’,
objectifying their anxieties. Such a view takes into account the psycho-
logical constitution of both leaders and followers (which I would cast
in terms of their respective modes of fantasy). It also allows that the
content of the group’s fantasies might be influenced by the leader’s own
formulation, whilst accepting that the leader is not free to give these
fantasies whatever idiosyncratic content he or she wishes.
This echoes Erikson who advocated conceiving of a ‘ “great” man’s
crises and achievements as communal events characteristic of a given
period’ (Erikson, 1975). For Erikson, the appeal of the personal con-
flicts that movement leaders enact lies in their resonance with the public
they mobilize. Success is the result of re-enacting their existential curse
‘in a medium communicative to their fellow men and meaningful in
their stage in history’ (1975, p. 164). His arguments regarding Gandhi
exemplify this approach: ‘In the process of mastering his own fear and
weakness, he reassured several generations that they need not fear those
266 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
O’Neill was not only the infallible leader, but the source of potent
doctrine and new technique.
The deaths of these leaders no doubt instigated a period of crisis and
transition (Bell, 1985a, had noted the effects of losing earlier leaders).
The gaps they have left have been filled in different ways. One is that
new narcissistic and idealized leaders, such as Robert Zubrin and Rick
Tumlinson, have emerged. Zubrin is quick to put others down both
within and outside the movement, uses his status as a scientist as lever-
age, and frequently speaks over people. Yet he is adored by activists.
Another science fiction author (Zubrin, 2001), like O’Neill, he provides
a vision, ‘Mars Direct’ (Zubrin, 1996), and sells it. He was introduced at
an ISDC luncheon in his honour as ‘one of the people that energises me
Pro-Space Movement and Political Organization 267
and makes me feel like alive and interesting’. When he makes appear-
ances he often signs copies of his books to fans who love him because
of, and not in spite of, his extreme narcissism.
However, a different kind of leader has also emerged in the move-
ment. Leaders such as Brian Chase and George Whitesides have more
pragmatic styles of leadership founded, it would seem, on a different,
more interventionist, mode of fantasy. The previous director of the
National Space Society, Brian Chase, who was well versed in the pol-
itics of Capitol Hill, was unpopular because of the ‘realistic’ approach
to lobbying mentioned previously, which included telling activists not
to talk to politicians about space colonization. For Chase, the way to
win Congress round was to make the right arguments and to target spe-
cific bills before Congress. At the ProSpace ‘March Storm’ this included
expressions of support for bills to introduce prizes for the develop-
ment of space technology, to provide tax breaks for space investors,
and to remove red tape governing the regulation of private launches.
At its extreme (and going to support those who have argued that it is
impossible ever to determine what role a social movement has played
in social change), this meant that grassroots lobbyists were directed to
ascertain congressional positions (on such things as the then recently
announced Bush Moon-Mars Initiative) so that the organization could
alter its demands accordingly. Thus it was possible to claim success for
campaigns on bills that they knew were likely to pass Congress in any
case. This represents an extreme form of pragmatism, or what was once
called ‘possibilism’.
The strategic advantages of such forms of leadership are obvious, but
it raises important questions about how it was that such leaders rose to
prominence and achieved popular support within the movement in the
first instance. One answer is that such leaders, in explicitly curtailing
fantasy, actually facilitate it. This might be true in two senses. The more
intuitive explanation is that activists are encouraged by the promise of
more assured small gains that their more grandiose fantasies are also
achievable. In this sense it gives activists greater licence to indulge in
such fantasies. The more counter-intuitive version is that by electing
leaders who are seen to sell the movement short, activists erect another
barrier to the achievement of fantasy and so sustain it. Moreover, in giv-
ing more concrete form to this barrier, one that it is within their power
to overturn, casting dispersions over this leadership allows for another
form of jouissance. It is possible for activists to enjoy attacking the leaders
they elect, and therefore it can be argued that in some instances activists
will (albeit not deliberately) elect pragmatic leaders in order that they
268 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
can subsequently enjoy attacking them. There is, again, a sense that
their true enjoyment (the enjoyment promised by their space fantasies)
would be realized if only the leader was not there.
The question that remains then is why is it that movements some-
times embrace narcissistic leaders, and sometimes embrace (whilst also
resenting) pragmatic ones? The answer, I would suggest, has to do with
the ongoing interaction between the movement and its external polit-
ical and social environment (as emphasized in political process theory,
and which Lacanian political theory has been criticized for ignoring,
see Foweraker, 1995). For the election of pragmatic leaders saves a
movement when the promises made by charismatic-narcissistic lead-
ers seem to be failing. The leader then represents a new fantasmatic
barrier to the realization of the pro-space fantasy that can be over-
come more easily. Problems then arise when pragmatic leaders are too
successful, or find too many open political channels. Here the move-
ment threatens to lose its political identity. The leadership is no longer
able to sustain the desire of the movement’s participants. There is a
danger that when opportunities for success (as defined by the move-
ment) are too plentiful, the movement’s command to its members
approaches the imperative to enjoy, and hence activists become disin-
vested in the movement. Here the issues surrounding pro-space leader-
ship blur into much more general issues surrounding the movement’s
evolution.
This activist was nonetheless pursuing a fantasy, and one central to his
identity, but one that he recognized took him away from other people.
With such recognition comes the potential for all kinds of progressive
rearticulation between fantasy and ideology.
Summary
273
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Index
288
Index 289
51, 65, 66, 71, 78, 79, 96, 113, crowd psychology, 21, 91, 141, 144,
126, 127, 132, 134, 136, 137, 148, 146–52, 153, 155, 157, 162, 172,
198, 202, 210, 222 187, 258, 265
conscious mental processes, in cults, 197, 202
relation to unconscious fantasy, culture of narcissism (including The
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 41, 44, Culture of Narcissism), 9, 23, 213,
49, 64, 72, 77, 78, 113, 151, 177 231–9, 240, 241
see also secondary process thought see also narcissism
conservative populism, see populism,
conservative Darwin, C., see evolution
conservative psychological factors, Da Vinci, L., Freud’s analysis of,
182, 199 36–7, 224
constellation (ontological), 17, 25, 26, Davis, D., 262
65, 132 Davis, J., 176–7
Dawkins, R., 251, 252, 253
consultancy, 269
Dawson, C., 155
consumption, 9, 16, 24, 60, 117, 128,
Day, J., 262
201, 244, 245, 246, 247, 271
day-dreams as synonym for fantasy, 27
consumer choice, 177
Dean, J., 7, 130, 173
consumer fantasies, 5, 24 Dean, K., 116, 237
consumerism, 6, 117, 237 death (fantasies about), 82, 229
contagion, 147, 149, 152, 154, 156, see also nirvana
157, 160 death drive, 101, 226
contingency of fantasy, 123, 129, death instinct, 47, 80, 82
131, 219 Debord, G., 11, 16
contradiction and social order, 13, 62, decentredness, 52, 116
64, 121, 187, 195, 198, 231, 245, De Chardin, T., 228
246, 247, 256 deconstruction, 107
Controversial Discussions, the, 25, 26, defence mechanisms, 72
42, 67, 68, 69, 72, 77 see also specific mechanisms
convergence theories, 147, 156 deference of meaning, 106
cost-benefit analysis, 173, 164, 199 Della Porta, D., 15, 16, 179, 264,
see also instrumentally-rational 268, 269
action; rational actor theory delusion, fantasy as, 51–3, 220
Crack Capitalism, 5 demands, political, 19, 23, 24, 120–2,
124, 198, 201, 211, 218, 243, 245,
see also utopias, interstitial
260, 267
Craib, I., 8, 86, 90, 98, 190
distinguished from need and desire,
crazes, 22, 185, 188, 189, 190, 201
111–12
see also hostile crazes democracy, 4, 10, 64–5, 123–4, 159,
creative writers, 6, 44, 58 160, 161, 170, 179, 255, 263, 264
creativity, 3, 12, 14, 15, 39, 44, 49, 58, democratic leadership, 161, 264
84, 93, 95, 97, 131, 138, 203, 221 radical democracy, 5, 131
critical realism, 25, 194 social democracy, 89, 97
see also realism demographics (of pro-space
Crossley, N., 158, 162, 163–4, 165, movement), 23, 238–9
166, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 182, denial, 76, 78, 82, 94, 222
185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 194, dependence, 9, 84, 87, 202, 221–2,
195, 200, 234 236, 265
292 Index
fatalistic mode of fantasy, see mode of freedom, 4, 8, 10, 24, 87, 148, 158,
fantasy, fatalistic 215, 243, 244, 245–7, 251
father, 42, 43, 84, 104, 108, 117, 163, Freedom Summer, 15
219, 222, 234, 239, 243 free-riders, 169–70
see also Name-of-the-Father; parents French Revolution, see Revolution,
fear, 40, 41, 51, 60, 61, 62, 65, 78, 80, French
83, 84, 90, 94, 109, 113, 192, 196, Freud, A., 67, 68, 69, 84, 136
222, 223, 228, 232, 235, 236, 240, Freud, S., 5, 6, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26,
246, 249, 265 27, 29–66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72,
see also anxiety 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85,
feelings, 35, 38, 74, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 96, 98, 99, 102,
86, 87, 109, 144, 155, 162, 164, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 119,
166, 184, 186, 224 123, 124, 135, 136, 144, 146, 148,
see also affect 152–3, 157, 160, 161, 164, 171,
Feiner, K. see Knafo, D. 190, 192, 201, 221, 222, 224, 232,
feminism, 2, 48, 154 264, 265
feminist history, 21, 129–30 Freudian theory, 10, 26, 29–66, 68, 69,
Ferenczi, S., 71 85, 89, 94, 97, 111, 116, 132, 142,
filk music, 24, 260, 261–2 158, 225
film as source of fantasy, 113 Friere, P., 57
Fink, B., 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 109, Fromm, E., 158, 159, 235
110, 112, 115, 116 frontier
Fish, L., 261 antagonistic, see antagonistic
fixation, 46, 138 frontier
flying fantasies, 224–5, 262 space, 24, 209, 253–6
forbidden, 108, 112, 114 Frosh, S., 86, 117, 236, 240, 265
see also Law, the; prohibitions frustration, 46, 50, 55, 68, 69, 76, 80,
fore-pleasure, 44 158, 161, 221–2, 236, 237, 272
see also softening of fantasy functionalism, 22, 60, 63, 157–9, 174,
Fornari, F., 259 184, 190–1, 197, 198, 232
Foucault, M., 132 fundamental fantasy, 113, 127
fragmentation, social, 116, 153 Furedi, F., 11, 17
see also atomization
frame alignment, 176, 180, 216, 247 Gagnon, B., 266
frames, 96, 129, 142, 176, 177, 182, Gamson, W., 186
209, 210, 252 Gandhi, M., 265
diagnostic, 176, 208 gaze, the, 102, 114, 224, 229
and emotions, 163–4, 165 gender, 22, 48, 77, 89, 209, 222, 239,
fantasies as, 91, 112, 113, 226 see also biology, sexual difference
master, 176 generalised belief, 22, 190–2, see also
motivational, 176, 254 beliefs
prognostic, 176, 209 genesis of fantasy, 34–6, 43, 68
and stories, 177 genocide fantasies, see extermination
framing theory, 3, 175–7, 186, 244 fantasies
Frankfurt School, 60, 87, 89 geographic expansion, 248
free association, see association geographic space, splitting of, 96, 254
Free Association Narrative Gettys, W. see Dawson, C.
Interviewing (FANI), 210, 212 Giddens, A., 7, 92, 93, 116, 177
Index 295
Glynos, J., 2, 98, 113, 119, 126, 130–1, Harvey, D., 2, 58, 96, 248
134, 136, 202 hate, 41, 43, 54, 76, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89,
God/gods, 61, 94, 179, 202, 220, 234 90, 123, 190, 272
God complex, 229 Hayman, A., 26, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 77,
God’s eye view, 229 83–4
see also religion Heaven, 53, 229
Goddard, R., 209–10, 218 hedonism, culture of, 235
Goffman, E., 176 hedonistic movements, 17, 22, 23,
golf on the Moon fantasy, 227 200, 201, 203, 258, 262, 264
good breast, see good mother Heelas, P., 10
good-enough environment, 119, 236 Hegel, G., 108, 121
good-enough mother, see good hegemony, 234, 246, 256
enough environment hegemonic logic, 122, 124
good mother, 72, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, hegemonic struggle, 120, 249
118, 119, 132, 228, 258 Heimann, P., 71
good object, 19, 71, 72, 75, 77, 82, 83, Heinlein, R., 209, 218
85, 90, 202–3 held, fantasy of being, 224, 225
Goodwin, J., 141, 142, 161, 162, 163, helplessness, 48, 52
164, 165, 174 see also vulnerability
Gramsci, A., 232, 233 Henry, J., 235
Gravity (film), 225 Henson, K., 253, 269
gravity, 223, 224, 225, 226, 243 herd instinct, 153, 168
Great Refusal, the, 89 heroism, 149, 150
greed, 88, 89, 247 hierarchical organization, see
grievance theories, 175 organization, hierarchical
group, the (psychoanalytic), 90–1, Hinshelwood, R., 71, 259, 265
152–3, 158, 161, 202, 258–9, historical materialism, 53, 56
264, 265 see also materialism
group influence, 156 history of pro-space movement, 206–8
growth, 24, 195, 215, 244, 247–8, Hitler, A., 150
252, 252 Hoffer, E., 158–9, 266
see also limits to growth Holloway, J., 5
guerilla gardening, 16 hollowed-out utopia, see utopia,
Guevara, C., 16 hollowed-out
guilt, 8, 19, 40, 42, 43, 51, 82, 83, 85, Hollway, W., 86, 197, 210, 212
88, 89, 93, 95, 131, 170, 202, Homer, S., 98, 101, 104, 105, 108, 111,
232, 235 112, 113
homosexuality, 196
Habermas, J., 4, 8, 177, 180, 195, 234 Hope, D., 226
habitus, 145, 180, 182 hope, 84, 88, 123–4, 154, 155,
radical habitus, 182 223, 228
hallucination, 18, 30–2, 33, 34, 76, 83, horror, 41, 113, 202, 203, 228
92, 203 hostile crazes, 17, 18, 23, 24, 201–2,
hallucinatory mode of fantasy, see 203, 204, 211, 213, 257, 258
mode of fantasy, hallucinatory see also crazes; hostile outbursts
hallucinatory satisfaction, 18, 21, hostile outbursts, 22, 185, 189
23, 30–2, 33, 34, 70, 73, 76, 77, Howard, A., 223, 241, 248, 271
80, 81 human nature, 24, 218, 252, 253
Hartmann, H., 45 humour, 14, 15
296 Index
Huntsville Alabama L-5 Society, 261 104, 105, 108, 110, 112, 116, 118,
hypnotism, 148, 149, 152 120, 122, 123, 130, 135, 136, 137,
hysterics, 40, 112, 232 138, 176, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209,
210, 223, 225, 227, 251, 252, 265
iconoclastic utopianism, see utopia, Lacanian, 20, 99, 100, 102–4, 105,
iconoclastic 108, 109, 112, 118, 120, 122,
id, 42, 43, 63, 71, 72, 77, 164, 235 123, 125, 126, 130, 132,
ideal I, see ego-ideal 258, 259
idealization, 19, 81, 82, 94, 202, 203, see also social imaginary
204, 222, 259, 266 Imagination, the (Coleridge), 58, 135
ideal types, 22, 23, 135, 142, 166 imaginative turn, 2, 3, 210
ideal values, 166 imagining (Winnicott), as distinct
ideational representatives, 109 from fantasying, 137
identification, 1, 7, 44, 50, 71, 76, 90, imagos, 19, 81, 82
97, 102, 104, 107, 115, 117, 119, imitation, 149, 150–1, 152, 154
120, 122, 123, 129, 130, 132, 135, impotence, 46, 158, 159
153, 156, 157, 161, 202, 218, 221, impulsers, 8
226, 229, 230, 234, 238, 260, 264, inadequacy, sense of, 48
265, 272 incest
see also projective identification incest taboo, 46
identity, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 20, 60, 91, 93,
incestuous wishes, 43
96, 107, 111, 116, 118, 119, 120,
individual fantasies, 129, 241, 259
121, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130,
individualization, 7, 10, 158, 238
131, 136, 142, 149, 156, 158, 159,
inequality, 158, 169, 187
160, 164, 171, 176, 178, 219, 259,
Infante, J., 33, 37, 80
268, 272
inferring the existence of unconscious
spoiled identity, 158
fantasy, 78–9
identity politics, 7, 119
ideological mode of being, 131 ingress, 4
ideology, 6, 7, 10, 13, 23, 24, 55, 57, inner direction, 10, 232
59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 94, 115, 119, inner revolution, 9
120, 122, 124–5, 126, 127, 128, insatiability, 111, 116, 117
129, 132, 155, 165, 167, 172, 175, inspiration in pro-space discourse, 24,
176, 180, 184, 190, 198, 210, 213, 210, 218, 220, 244, 248, 249–50
216, 217, 218, 230, 243–56, 257, instant gratification, 235
259, 260, 270, 271, 272 instincts, 19, 20, 29, 30, 32, 37, 40, 47,
illusion as synonym for fantasy, 33, 52, 55, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 79,
51–2 80, 82, 88, 101–2, 108, 109, 132,
illusory self, 236 147, 148, 149, 152, 159
images, 2, 6, 11, 13, 19, 20, 23, 31, 32, see also herd instinct;
38, 39, 40, 46, 48, 66, 69, 70, 77, self-preservation instinct; sex
78, 96, 102, 103, 104, 105, 112, instinct
113, 116, 134, 149, 160, 209, 211, institutionalization, 155, 181, 186,
221, 224, 225, 238, 240, 243, 263, 268, 269, 272
255, 262 institutionalized movements, 17, 23,
imaginary, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 202, 204, 258, 262, 264
27, 33, 34, 40, 41, 43, 46, 50, 51, institutional politics, 10, 11
52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 65, 67, 79, institutionals, 8
85, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 103, institutional unconscious, 259
Index 297
Laclau, E., 2, 7, 13, 20, 106, 119, libertarian right, 24, 213, 244, 245,
120–2, 124, 130, 131, 146, 160–1, 246, 249, 251, 256
211, 230, 254, 264 see also collapsed libertarianism
language, 3, 11, 38, 39, 66, 77, 78, 79, libido, 35, 42, 46, 47, 76, 80, 82, 87,
100, 101, 102, 103, 105–11, 113, 131, 135, 152, 221, 222
114, 115, 118, 120, 124, 134, 135, life instinct, 80
149, 159, 160, 224, 227, 261 see also instinct
see also discourse lifestyle politics, 7
Laplanche, J., 37, 41, 112 lifeworld, 195–6
Larana, E., 7, 8 limits to growth thesis, 207, 208,
Lasch, C., 9–10, 14, 24, 117, 118, 209, 247
221–2, 228, 231–7, 238, 239, 240, liquid modernity, 6
241, 242 see also late modernity
late modernity, 92, 93, 116, 117, 195 literary movements, 203
see also postmodernity literature as a source of fantasy, 43,
Launius, R., 217, 244 113, 218
Law, the (Lacan), 94, 108–9, 113, 114, lobbying, 169, 205, 207, 210, 212,
115, 128, 201, 226 215, 245, 255, 260, 263, 267,
see also forbidden; prohibitions; 269, 270
transgression local chapters, 205
Leader, D., 25, 67, 68, 99, 103, 105, logic
109, 112, 113 of difference, 161
leadership, 16, 24, 54, 147, 148, 149, of equivalence, 161
150, 152, 153, 155, 161, 164, 172, of object a, 122, 124
176, 186, 196, 212, 213, 217, of protest, 15, 179–80
264–8, 269, 271, 272 logocentrism, 106
London riots, 149
charismatic leadership, 264, 268
see also riots
narcissistic leadership, 24, 161, 213,
loosening the grip of fantasy, 130–1
264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 272
loss, 23, 71, 76, 83, 113, 114, 131,
pragmatic leadership, 24, 264,
222, 229
267, 268
love, 46, 76, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90,
and prestige, 148, 152
104–5, 111, 152, 153, 163, 164,
see also agitator theories
165, 167, 190, 222, 236, 239, 267
Le Bon, G., 144, 146–50, 151, 152,
see also cavitas; self-love
153, 154, 156, 157, 160, 164, 183,
lynching, 2, 125–6, 175
211, 265
Lyotard, J-F., 215
Lefebvre, H., 16
Left Bank (Paris), 118 Machiavellianism, 202
Left melancholia, 7–8 Maffesoli, M., 4–5
LeGuin, U., 60 magnetic influence, 148, 149
Lemlij, M., 34, 48, 79 see also hypnotism
Lenin, V., 56, 150 Malthus, R., 247
Lewis, J., 247 managerialism, 233, 234
Lewis, M., 253, 255, 256 mania, 84, 94, 230
LGBTI, as acronym, 107 Mannheim, K., 6
liberalism, 3, 58, 87, 90, 209, 234 Marcuse, H., 15, 16, 17, 89, 90, 129,
see also neoliberalism 194, 246
libertarianism, 244, 246, 247, 271 marginalization, 159, 239
Index 299
Mars, 205,218, 226, 227, 251, 253, Melucci, A., 8, 16, 174, 180, 183,
266, 267 194, 258
Mars One, 217 meme, 253
Mars Society, 207, 212, 239, 247, memories, and fantasy, 31, 32, 35,
249, 255 36–7, 38, 42, 50, 68, 69, 70,
Marx, G., 141, 157, 187, 191, 192 110, 113
Marx, K., 2, 19, 54–7, 60, 66, 87, 194 mental unity of crowds, 149
see also Marxism messianism, 126
Marx Hubbard, B., 217, 227–8 metanarrative, 215
Marxism, 2, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19, 53–7, 120, see also narrative
141, 145, 175, 180, 187, 194, 233, metaphor, in language, 107, 108, 110,
237, 245 118, 127
see also Marx, K.; post-Marxism; methodology, 78, 211–12
rational choice Marxism see also inferring the existence of
mass movements, 9, 60, 158, 159, 266 unconscious fantasy
mass psychology, 143, 144, 145, metonym, 107, 110
147, 150 Michaud, M., 206, 207, 208, 210, 217,
master frames, see frames, master 223, 238, 239, 266, 268, 269
masturbatory fantasy, 43, 46, 76 Michels, R., 268
materialism, 55
micro-utopias, see utopias, micro
see also historical materialism
middle classes, 54, 182, 238, 239
material reality, 15, 27, 44, 45, 47, 56,
see also class
69, 73, 95, 101, 109, 126, 132,
Milgram, S., 156
248, 260
millenarian movements, 17, 23, 202–3
see also brute materiality; external
world; reality mining asteroids, 227, 228
material values, 166 mirror stage, 102–4
May, 1968 9, 14, 87 mise-en-scene of desire, fantasy as, 112
McAdam, D., 15, 174, 175, 186 see also staging of desire
McCarthy, J., 171, 186, 200 mock reparative fantasies, 230
McDougall, W., 152, 158, 160, 161 modernism, 4, 7, 249
McGowan, T., 127, 128 modernist fantasies, 227
McIntyre, V., 209 modernity, 6, 8, 14, 58, 64, 91–2, 94,
meaning, nature of, 39, 77, 103, 95, 96, 117, 147, 187, 237, 238
106–7, 111, 122, 130, 136, see also late modernity;
137, 160 postmodernity
meaningful action, 142, 143, 144, modes of fantasy, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22,
146, 150–1 23, 24,26, 91, 118, 131, 132,
means (in relation to ends), 12, 142, 134–8, 135, 183, 213, 230, 240,
143–4, 166, 167, 168, 172, 173, 242, 257, 271, 200, 202, 231,
178, 179, 198, 216 265, 272
see also instrumentally-rational closed, 131, 134
action depressive, 17, 21, 23, 82, 132,
mechanical, criticism of Smelser’s 136–7, 138, 202, 271; see also
theory as, 22, 192 depressive position
media, 11, 12, 13, 16, 87, 96, 113, 186, dissociative, 17, 21, 137, 203–4; see
234, 238, 266 also dissociative, fantasy as
melancholia, 7, 173, 202 fatalistic, 17, 21, 137, 202–3
300 Index
projection, 63, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81, 86, rationality, 1, 64, 93, 120, 141, 142,
87, 89, 90, 95, 104, 202, 236, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148 154, 157,
259, 264 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 170,
projective identification, 19, 75, 76, 173, 177, 178, 181, 188, 195, 258
80, 83, 94, 265 substantive rationality, 179
proletariat, see working class see also instrumentally rational
ProSpace, 207, 212, 243, 244, 245, action
248, 250, 255, 256, 260, rationalization, of action, 63–4, 144,
267, 270 146, 179, 216
pro-space movement, 18, 23–4, rational understanding, 143
205–72 reaction formation, 42
prosperity in pro-space discourse, 24, Reaganism, see Thatcherism
195, 215, 244, 245 Real, the (Lacanian), 20, 100–1, 107,
protestivals, 14, 201 116, 120, 122, 125, 126, 132,
proto-concepts, 102 226, 262
psychic reality, 27, 45 realism, 98
see also reality empty, 101
psychic reciprocity, 154 see also critical realism
psychobiography, 224, 266 reality, 1, 2, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21,
see also biography 25, 26, 27, 28, and passim
psychological expressivism, 147 see also brute materiality; external
see also crowd psychology world; material reality; psychic
psychosis, 34, 39, 40, 80, 98, 105, 223 reality
psychosocial theory, 17, 20, 22, 97, reality principle, 13, 31, 32, 33, 49, 63,
139, 194–7, 210, 211, 92, 136
212, 241 reality-testing, 18, 21, 32, 34, 42, 50,
see also synthetic approach 56, 65, 66, 72, 73, 77, 80, 87, 95,
public goods, 169, 170 136, 150, 211
public utopias, see utopias, public reality-thinking, 72
publics, 153, 154, 156, 160, 161 realization of fantasy, 34, 40, 46, 60,
public sphere, 177, 182 123, 126, 136, 203, 204
puritanism, 14, 234 reason, role of, 8, 42, 52, 55, 56, 65,
purposive incentives, 167, 179 89, 90, 127, 154, 163, 164,
see also selective incentives 171, 192
reflexes, 30, 31
queer theory, 13 reflexive modernization, 7, 92
reflexivity, 91–4, 146, 177, 220, 271
race, 209 regression, 35, 46, 49, 115, 192, 226,
racial unconscious, 148 241, 259, 265
radical habitus, see habitus radical Reich, W., 9, 60, 87, 235
radical heterogeneity, 121 Reicher, S., 148, 149, 153, 156–7
see also difference religion, 4, 10, 51, 52, 53, 144, 166,
rational actor theory, 3, 21, 139, 144, 167, 177, 197, 208, 222, 244,
162, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250
174, 176 see also God/gods
rational choice Marxism, 21, 145, 171 reparation, 19, 23, 82, 84, 88, 89,
rational choice theory, see rational 90, 230
actor theory; rational choice reparative reason, 90
Marxism see also mock reparative fantasies
304 Index
space settlement, see space substitution, 29, 37, 40, 42, 43, 46, 48,
colonization 78, 108, 109, 113, 135, 136, 152,
space tourism, 205, 207, 217, 153, 223, 226
241, 270 see also translation into
space tourism movement, 207 consciousness
spatial fixes, 248 suggestion, psychological, 148, 149,
spectacle, 11, 12, 13, 16 152, 157, 160, 161
Spillius, E., 69, 71, 75, 76 suicide, 194
Sun, death of, 228
spiritual consumption, 9
superego, 10, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 62, 63,
split subject (Lacan), 104
66, 88, 94, 109, 117, 234, 235, 237
splitting, as paranoid-schizoid
supplementary spaces for fantasy, 24,
mechanism, 19, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87,
260, 262, 272
90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 190, 201,
survivalist fantasy, 24, 228, 240, 242
202, 203
suspension of disbelief, 34, 203
splitting of ego, 81, 82 Symbolic, the (Lacan), 20, 100–1, 102,
see also geographic space, splitting 103, 105, 107, 108–9, 110, 111,
of; paranoid-schizoid position 112, 114, 115, 118, 120, 122, 125,
spoiled identity, see identity, spoiled 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 211,
Staggenborg, S., 191, 192 220, 221, 223
staging of desire, fantasy as, 13, 112, symbolic interactionism, 158
114, 125, 203, 221, 223, 226, 228 see also Blumer, H.
Star Trek, 215, 255 symbolization, 3, 13, 71, 75, 95, 125,
state, the, 2, 94, 130, 159, 175, 208, 137, 160, 207, 223, 229, 230, 253,
209, 233, 234, 243, 244, 246, 258, 259, 260, 262
247, 256 symptoms, 13, 29, 39, 40, 46, 47, 61,
Stavrakakis, Y., 5, 14, 20, 81, 98, 101, 78, 81, 85, 110, 126, 245, 256
105, 107, 108, 109, 11, 112, 113, syndrome, 61, 135
116, 119, 120, 122–4, 125, 127, synecdoche, 110, 122
128, 129, 131, 148, 257, 259, 262 synthetic approach, 22, 194, 196,
stereotypy, 63, 65 197, 198
Stern, S., 9 see also psychosocial theories
stories, see narrative
tactics, 155, 175, 260
Strachey, J., 29, 53
see also repertoires of protest
strain, social, 22, 158, 175, 182, 184,
Taine, H., 146, 160, 211
185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192,
Tajfel, H., 156, 157
195, 197, 198
taming, fantasies about, 227
stress, 19, 85
Tarde, G., 146, 149, 150, 154, 157,
structural conduciveness, 22, 185, 160, 161
187, 198 Tarrow, S., 11, 165, 175, 185
structural model (Freud), 42–3 technology, significance of, 94, 210,
structural models of social 211, 213, 222, 229, 261
movements, issues with, 194 see also science
structuration, 197 telescopes, 219
sublimation, 9, 24, 52, 75, 88, 146, television as source of fantasy, 113,
181, 263, 272 219, 230
substantive rationality, see rationality, temporary autonomous zones, 5
substantive terraforming, 227, 245
Index 307