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Created August 11, 2002
Latest Update: August 11, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Metaphor: Motherland or Fatherland?

Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, August 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Sunday, August 11, 2002, the following message appeared on a listserv I subscribe to:

Subject: Re: Hitler's (M)other(land)

"Is there any evidence that national identification is different depending on whether the metaphor is motherland or fatherland?"

I will identify the author only if permission is given. The listserv revolves around discussions of psychoanalysis. My interest in Freud's influence in sociology draws me there, though I am not trained in psychotherapy.

I was fintrigued by the question of whether there may be a difference in national identification that depends on whether a male or female metaphor of parenthood is used. This semester we will use Daniel Rigney's text, The Metaphorical Society: An Invitation to Social Theory, in our graduate seminar on reinterpreting social theory. Rigney reminds us that "[m]etaphorical images of society are not the exclusive province of social theory, but infuse the popular culture as well." (At .p. 6.)

References:

• Inductive Analysis Metaphor And the elphant and the blind men. Backup.

• The Elephant as a Metaphor for African Technology Philip Emeagwali's Site. Backup. > >Following my post on "self and (m) Other," one respondent >suggested that Nazism, in its fidelity to Hitler and homeland, was >clearly a "paternalistic phenomena, not a maternalistic phenomena." > >Unlike some Lacanians writing on culture and history, where concrete >instances are deduced from theoretical constructions, my work begins >with the empirical world and proceeds toward articulating theoretical >constructs. The empirical world in this instance is "the text." > >I have studied the words and images that appear in Hitler's writings >and speeches in order to reconstruct his mental world. I suggest that >ideologies may be viewed as if manifest content of a dream. They >reflect shared phantasies--dreams that many persons are having at >once. Ideologies constituted cultural "containers" that function to >articulate these shared phantasies. > >Hitler was born in Austria, near the border of Germany. One of his >earliest and most fundamental political aspirations was to UNITE these >separate(d) nations. This "greater German Reich" would embrace two >nations within one border--fusing two bodies politic into one. > >Hitler wrote about this aspiration in MEIN KAMPF: "German-Austria must >return to the great German mother country…The destinies of Germany >and Austria are eternally one." He wrote of the "elemental cry of the >German Austrian people for union with the German mother country" and >of a "deep longing which burns in the heart of children separated from >their mother country." > >He addressed himself to all those who "detached from their mother >country now, with poignant emotion, long for the hour which will >permit them to return to the heart of their faithful mother." > >What is the relationship between political ideology and human >development? For Hitler, ideology constituted the vehicle that >permitted him to externalize his infantile phantasies into social >reality, thus transforming a regressive desire into a progressive one. > >The "symbolic form" (nationalism) functions to sequester the energy >bound to an infantile phantasy. The ideology exists in order to permit >the projection of the fantasy into the world, giving it form and >meaning. I hypothesize that a cultural form (meme) exists (and >continues to exist) insofar as it functions to articulate fundamental >dimensions of the psyche. Contained within any social construction or >narrative is the unconscious phantasy that is its source. > >Hitler's entire political career was shaped by love for his mother and >Germany. In MEIN KAMPF he stated that his heart had beaten "only for a >German Reich." A longing had risen stronger and stronger within him to >"go at last whither since my childhood secret desire and secret love >had drawn me." > >Hitler like Freud experienced a particular desire within himself >(which he called "the Oedipus complex"), and wrote about it. However, >where Freud mastered this desire by identifying and building a theory >around it, Hitler sought to come to terms with it by projecting it >into the world, and acting upon it. > >With regards, > >Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D. -- Clark McCauley, Co-Director Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict University of Pennsylvania St. Leonard's Court, Suite 305 3819-33 Chestnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215) 573-0645

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