Traumatized Revolutionaries
Introduction
Trauma has a number of definitions and causes. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual classifies traumatic events as “an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others”. Many have expanded this definition to involve conditions resulting from historical, collective, or intergenerational relations. Perhaps the most collective of this type is trauma caused through the facing of extinction. Humanity is sprinting towards a precipice of either transforming into something truly new or vanishing in the face of catastrophic ecological collapse. We attach and transform ourselves to distract from the contradictions which come from the preparation of our own suicide as a species. We use visions of an after, be it in tombs underground or boxes in orbit, to fuel our rush towards extinction. More and more, as we rocket towards a point of no return, individuals recognize our trajectory in horror. Upon this horror, still maintaining their reality many try senselessly to adjust humanity’s trajectory away from extinction. Scientists and professionals in the Global North protest endlessly, hoping their rhetoric can spur the masses to somehow change the institutions which govern them.
However, life carries on, after the headline is replaced with another outrage explodes and dissipates just as quickly. Is extinction truly a traumatic event if we carry on just as easily with our fantasies of being the billionaire who conquers ecological collapse? To understand, we first must understand the effect trauma has upon our mind.
Trauma and The Real
Lacan spoke of trauma as a hole being punched in our reality. A break in our fundamental understanding of symbolic and imagined meaning to the world we exist within. This hole would expose one's mind to The Real, an unknowable contradiction to this reality, and ultimately lead to a breakdown of psychic functioning. Lacan's psychoanalysis and understanding of trauma differ from most modern forms of psychiatric theory in that it centers around the creation of a reality. Each reality is as unique as the subject it rules. That reality's resistance to traumatic events depends on its ability to stretch and mold itself to the senselessness of traumatic events it experiences.
Regardless of the external events, our reality is imperfect. Filled with holes, the Real seeps, and bleeds from it. We chase objects of desire to resolve the contradictions between our reality and Real. These holes from which the Real seeps are an emptiness inside us that we hope to fill. This chase to fill these holes is what makes up most of our waking life. Seeking a new career, a new love, a better status, a revolution, a flashy car, when one desire is achieved, another is immediately manufactured as our reality cannot resolve the contradictions of the Real. When one hole is filled, another appears.
Trauma, however, is a breaking down of our entire reality. Our chasing objects of desire, constantly patching small holes in our reality, focusing on the next patch to ignore the Real seeping into our consciousness, continues to force action from us compulsively.
These objects of desire we chase with increasing intensity are not a result of trauma but rather psychological constructions we have made to prevent it and maintain our reality. The more fragile this pursuit, the less able these objects are to resolve contradictions in our reality, the more likely an event will occur that transforms that hole within ourselves into a fissure. What was once a leak, the Real bleeding from a hole is now a flood. We become amnesiac, forgetting and repressing our own experiences as we desperately try to stimy the flood of contractions with new objects of desire. The worse the flood, the more likely it is that we encounter an experience that cannot be ignored. The destruction of your home, the death of your family, starvation, war, fascist uprising, the forms of trauma caused by deteriorating conditions are many but the result within the mind is the same.
What was once the robust structure of our reality is now a crumbling ruin. In this ruin, the traumatized subject must begin rebuilding their reality so that they begin to function again.
However, not all traumas are the same. While Freud and Lacan analyzed traumatic events as those that happen instantly, breaking down our most fundamental beliefs, others happen over lifetimes and even generations. These traumas are fissures within our reality, areas of weakness constantly strained against the pressure of the Real.
Control Societies and the imaginary & symbolic order
Lacan describes our reality as something created by ourselves. This reality's seed begins at the mirror stage when a toddler first sees their own reflection and recognizes their own image. Even this seed of reality is controlled by our surroundings. Reflections can be distorted, and therefore, our ensuing reality along with it. Reality, therefore, is not a creation of our own but rather one fabricated by the systems and machines that surround us. Social systems, technological systems, and political systems all shape our reality, We, driven by our constructed reality, shape those systems, reinforcing them with the products of our labor. The imaginary and symbolic order are products of these systems, and these systems will update, mold, and recreate these orders to achieve whichever goals they were designed to do.
Economically we will compulsively create and consume more, at whatever cost, to increase Gross profit, even if this means transforming our bodies and environments to do so. Ecologically we will further solidify our place as the apex predator within our ecosystem, even if it means consuming all other life. Socially we will re-engineer the human into a collection of parts, each interchangeable and upgradable, in service of our economy. Each of these systems will compel us to further mediate our perceptions of the world to better achieve these objectives.
This constant recreation of reality is driven by the fundamental contradictions between our reality and the Real. If we imagine the Real to be a force, pressed up against our reality, the reality is constantly being rebuilt to deal with new cracks and fissures. The systems we exist within create a reality that is locked within a dialectical struggle against the Real. The synthesis of these struggles results in a new reality, distorted further than the last.
However, when these systems fail to account for the witnessing of a fundamental contradiction, one that unravels the yarn ball of logic crafted over our lifetime, is when trauma appears. As our reality becomes more blurred, more distorted from what is possible to exist within, is where the cracks and fissures emerge, and the Real begins leaking through, increasing the unnerving anxiety and neuroses that exist under our psychological current. These fissures are not quite the annihilating trauma often referenced by Lacan but a sort of precursor to it. A weakness that cannot be easily resolved and one whose symptoms will only worsen as the contradictions deepen.
Unlike individual traumatic events, trauma experienced by all has the opportunity to break down not only our own reality but the systems shaping it. As we rebuild our own symbolic and imaginary orders, so too are we rebuilding the socio-economic systems shaping them. Perhaps for a moment, after our systems of control crumble and before we rebuild them, we escape from the post-human systems upon which our reality was tightly intertwined.
Loss of Control and Revolution
Althusser builds upon Lacanian theory by positing that ideology does not reflect the "Real" world but rather represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to the real world. Our imaginary understanding of individuals' relationship to the Real conditions of the world is one that is constructed within an apparatus that houses our performances. If what we imagine is controlled largely by the images we witness, the apparatus is the machine that mediates those images. In turn, we continually develop that apparatus to optimize that mediation.
Particularly as we codify this mediation through our technological apparatus, we sort, filter, and unify the images seen by those en-mass. These technological systems seek to develop and maintain a one-size-fits-all reality in the face of an increasingly unstable Real. While our development of technology has created systems increasingly able to highly mediate mass ideology, there will inevitably be a point where anything short of ideological destruction will be able to mend the fissure created by the contradiction between our ideology and ecological feasibility.
It will be at this point, as our ecological systems collapse, as our reality fractures, and as a wave of trauma washes over the masses, that an opportunity for alternative systems to come about may happen. What shape these alternative systems may take, their resiliency against the Real conditions of the world, and viability will depend on the availability of ideological building blocks upon which that collapse happens. The job of the revolutionary is not simply to act at this point of mass trauma but tirelessly develop the ideological and logistical infrastructure for when that moment happens. Regardless of the commitment of any revolutionary to act and sacrifice upon a revolutionary moment, if alternative ideologies have greater organization and infrastructural capabilities, the moment will pass, and opportunity will be lost.
A revolutionary ideological apparatus must not contend only with the dominant ideological apparatus of a given society but also with tertiary ones as well. Following the first world war, the German communist party advanced its cause, seizing a number of cities and establishing council democracies. However, the combined might of the ruling social democrats and the fascist militias they funded to murder communist organizers quickly put an end to these German worker councils. Furthermore, it funded and emboldened a highly organized, fascist, militant group and kickstarted the Nazi party's takeover of Germany.
As we begin to see "mainstream" ideology wither under increasing contradiction with the Real conditions of the world, we accelerate towards a collapse and rebuilding of what that mainstream ideology is. This mass re-interpellation is contingent upon what institutions are most organized to spread and force that ideology upon those rebuilding their reality after the trauma subsides. Whatever new ideological apparatus seeks to exist after the current crumbles must build an organizational infrastructure robust enough to develop under the threat of the existing ideological apparatus but also seek to subvert and destroy the alternative ideological apparatus. Furthermore, this apparatus must also contend with the Real conditions of the world. It cannot resolve all contradictions between that ideology and the Real; however, it can be less contradictory. Rather than being predicated on maximizing consumption, it can be predicated on maximizing stability or diversity.
Conclusion
Lacan posits that the "Mirror Stage" is where the human develops the first drops of their imaginary reality. The mirror being the object which develops our first seeds of ideology that grow into the great illusion that we use to insulate our minds from the Real. That mirror, along with every other apparatus that directs our psyche and body into a machine, thus reinforcing the systemic tendencies of the world we live in. Those apparatuses, however, are not locked into place. Mass contradiction and trauma can jostle them out of place, unlocking the forces of momentum and allowing them to be reorganized, if only for a moment. However, to do so requires more than just a commitment and willingness. It requires ruthless organization and preparation, all under incredible pressure from the apparatus itself.
This is why the role of the revolutionary extends beyond simply the execution and maintenance of the revolution itself. It requires tireless preparation and organization under extreme adversity, all while experiencing trauma themselves. The revolutionary must consciously rebuild their old ideology for a new one, this new one full of contradictions itself. The guiding principle of any successful revolutionary might not have to do with righting those immediate contradictions but understanding how that new ideology will develop an apparatus that might grow into being more harmonious with the Real conditions of the world.