Page 250

REVISTA IEEE 11

250 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 11 / 2018 A critical-theoretical analysis The survival of authoritarian regimes is likely dependent on two factors: the repression of political agency (particularly aimed at interest groups holding different religious beliefs) and the congruence of the people’s political culture with the regime structure4. Political agency seems to have a simple explanation in non-democratic regimes: the refusal of submission to an imposed power. However, under the strong social and psychological mechanisms (including family retaliation) inducing individuals in normal times to give up and accept the ongoing state of affairs, the actions of those individuals who resist the dominant structures demand further explanation. For some renowned philosophers such as Judith Butler, the subject becomes a political agent only once it is interpellated into the existing order and adopts a «collaborative relation with power5», even if its ultimate goal is to rebel or to resist. In fact, she claims that this dubious complicity constitutes a necessary condition for agency rather than an impediment. Lacan proposed a radically different explanation: individuals would be able to break up with the system that exploits and oppresses them if and only if they managed to differentiate their genuine desires from those of the Master (or in his terms, the «Big Other»). In other words, to emancipate from the Master’s morality in what is known as the «Lacanian act», and therefore exit the prevailing dominance. This act, however, would have a severe cost for the social or even personal integrity of the subject, what Zizek described as «striking at oneself». He argued that subjectivity would come into being when the interpellation into the dominant order failed, or moreover, «the subject emerges when ideology falters6». Within the more likely Lacanian-Zizekian scenario regarding dictatorial states, this emergence requires an extraordinary effort which very few individuals are able (or willing) to fulfill. What happens then when citizens are bound to accept with resignation the established modes of oppression? To address this question we examine the adaptive mechanisms of the people’s own political culture which undergoes significant changes, including the abnegation of «negative thinking7». 4  See: ALMOND, Gabriel, and VERBA, Sydney. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in five nations, Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963. 5  SILVERMAN, Kaja. World Spectators, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, p.14. 6  RUTI, Mari. «In search of defiant subjects: Resistance, rebellion, and political agency in Lacan and Marcuse», Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2014, vol. 19, 3, p. 299. Available at: www. palgrave-journals.com/pcs/. 7  This notion was first brought by Herbert Marcuse in his analysis of the psychological mechanisms which reigned in postmodern industrial societies, both within the communist and the capitalist bloc. http://revista.ieee.es

REVISTA IEEE 11
To see the actual publication please follow the link above