My theory: As with inflated fears of car jacking & home invasion, most suburban paranoia scenarios are actually fantasies ("the bad other wants what I have"). Once stripped of defensive distortions, this fantasy looks to me like narcissism: "I am desired / we are desirable."
My theory: As with inflated fears of car jacking & home invasion, most suburban paranoia scenarios are actually fantasies ("the bad other wants what I have"). Once stripped of defensive distortions, this fantasy looks to me like narcissism: "I am desired / we are desirable."
everyone- I mean everyone- wants to feel that their life could be envied by some imaginary onlooker; our self-worth is rooted in this interpersonal network. The fantasy of "the person who wants what I have" is fundamentally pleasurable- it says "I'm worth something" to someone.
Everyday life under capitalism = there's always someone wealthier than you. Everyday life online = there's always someone more desirable than you. So the value of the self is always under pressure. It costs/hurts to know one is always "below", so...
The supposedly threatening, horrible "worst case scenarios" in which a home is invaded, a car is jacked, or children are abducted- they're all ways of stabilizing the idea that "i have what others want". Above all, the current paranoia of our culture is rooted in basic insecurity
This political rhetoric is rigged to turn deep feelings of parental care & love into a kind of perverse pride in paranoia itself: "Look how much I love my children! I'm willing to do insane things to limit everyone else's life because maybe someone somewhere is a threat!"
you to don't have to be Lee Edelman to see that the trump card in all this is the rhetorical figure of "the child" itself; once invoked, there's no limit to the extent of what can be justified (just think of every cliché schlocky film and TV narrative about a vigilante parent)
anyway this @mxwfx piece on the traffic in children narrative is worth reading if you want a critical analysis: parapraxismagazine.com/articles/the-t…
@mxwfx and as a followup this more recent piece on the concept of the child as "property" of the parent also by @mxwfx is useful too I think in flagging why the parent's ego is at stake in the fantasy of trafficking / abduction : lux-magazine.com/article/free-t…
@mxwfx some might say "this is too elaborate! parents love their children & want to protect them from people hurting them, it's not that deep" etc. I understand that the allegation that this is fundamentally narcissism might be a tough sell or too simple, so... let's talk about "love"
@mxwfx obvious Freudian point here, but: every powerful bond is the site of psychic ambivalence- from the infant at the breast upwards, the place of intense love and attachment and pleasure is always already also a site of aggression, anger, even hatred and fantasies of destruction.