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Sociodynamics
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Microfascism and desubjectification. The origins of the problem

Rusakov Sergei Sergeevich

PhD in Politics

Associate Professor, Department of Social and Humanitarian Disciplines, State Institute of Economics, Finance, Law and Technology

188300, Russia, Leningrad region, Gatchina, st. Roschinskaya, 5


arias456@mail.ru
Other publications by this author
 

 

DOI:

10.25136/2409-7144.2022.7.38266

EDN:

MBDAEP

Received:

14-06-2022


Published:

05-08-2022


Abstract: This article is devoted to the search for primary ideas concerning the theoretical origins of the concept of microfascism and determining its connection with the topic of subjectivation and desubjectivation. The author suggests looking at these problems from the perspective of the French philosopher J. Deleuze and the German sociologist T. Adorno. The author pays special attention to the comparison of the ideas of both thinkers, analyzing not only the concepts mentioned by them to clarify the problematic field of microfascism, but also those social phenomena that have become the object of criticism of both authors. The article examines how their views have historically developed and transformed. The main conclusions of the study are following : 1) in both authors views, the problems of microfascism are connected with their criticism of modern capitalist society, which has adopted the fundamental features of historical fascism; 2) desubjectivation in the interpretation of J. Deleuze is defined as the dominance of the inhumane "logic of capital" over all possible ways of asserting the desire of the subject, and T. Adorno is defined as the displacement by culture of all opportunities to show non-stereotypical and unconventional ways of self-expression of the individual; 3) both authors cannot give an exact recipe for overcoming the prevailing social problems and the subsequent disintegration of human subjectivity and insist on the need to change the ways of understanding and the perception of culture.


Keywords:

Gilles Deleuze, Theodor Adorno, Felix Guattari, subjectivation, desubjectification, microfascism, authoritarianism, capitalism, subject, political theory

This article is automatically translated.

Microfascism refers to the old concepts developed in the 50-70s of the XX century. The emergence of this concept is due to the fact that some social phenomena and processes peculiar to totalitarian regimes of the XX century were found in capitalist-type societies. Nowadays, this topic has become especially relevant thanks to such movements as the cancellation culture in Europe and the USA, the social credit system in China, the grassroots movement in the USA, the effect of "spying capitalism" around the world (Sh. Zuboff), etc. In the scientific world, the problem of microfascism is also becoming popular against the background of such social challenges [1; 2; 3].

The most diverse forms of microfascism permeate society and revive the ideas of their historical predecessor. Replacing mass totalitarianism, microfascism invades any social system and culture and, by transforming the nodal points of modern capitalist society, undermines a person's ability to subjectification. So, for example, M. Onfre points out that if classical fascism could be fought only through revolution, then microfascism can be dealt with only through micro-resistance: "To create enlightened, strong, sober, capable, resolute, benevolent individuals who are in harmony with themselves, which is the key to good relations with others" [4].

Subjectivation and desubjectification are two multidirectional processes of changing a person as a social, existential and ethical being. The concept of subjectivation was developed and popularized by Michel Foucault in the XX century, although he, along with P. Ado discovered the origins of the ethical and aesthetic forms of the formation of the subject in ancient and early Christian spiritual practices. The process of subjectivation is understood as the process of folding autonomous self-consciousness, therefore, desubjectivation is a reversible process, denoting a set of various procedures for eliminating the autonomy of individual consciousness, but not necessarily by replacing it with a collective one, but, for example, by creating an illusory, passive or malleable consciousness.

In the philosophical and political discourse of the 20th century, the problem of microfascism and the need to study the factors that led to the possibility of the formation of a repressive society under capitalism and democracy were actively associated with the topic of the formation of human subjectivity. Among the numerous studies, it is necessary to trace two main trends: firstly, the tendency to search for the root causes in the deindividualization and desubjectification of a person (the authoritarian personality of T. Adorno, the one-dimensionality of a person as a subject in G. Marcuse, the fear of loneliness by E. Fromm, the indefinite subject of J.-P. Sartre, the persona of K. Jung, the split subject of S. Zizek, etc.) secondly, the tendency to search for the root causes in the microfascist aspects of modern society (technological dehumanization by M. Horkheimer, interpellation by L. Althusser, bio-power by M. Foucault, das Man by M. Heidegger, total institute by I. Hoffmann, digital architecture by S. Zuboff, etc.). Many authors did not directly use the concepts of "microfascism" or "desubjectivation", but their work is devoted to the analysis of epiphenomenes arising during these two processes.

The origins of the problem of desubjectivation and microfascism as two phenomena that often come into contact and "work in pairs" can be found in two key authors. On the one hand, this is a more ontologized and philosophical position of J. Deleuze (sometimes co-authored with F. Guattari), and on the other hand, it is a politically and sociologically oriented position of T. Adorno. Both authors were aimed at criticizing capitalism as a form of cultural, economic and social desubjectivation of a person and at searching for elements of microfascism in modern culture.

Gilles Deleuze set himself the ambitious task of creating a large philosophical system within which the social and political problems of the 60s and 70s would be overcome. Having written "Anti-Oedipus" in 1972, he intended to destroy Marxist and Freudian theoretical ideas about modern society. In a broad sense, he was not satisfied with the idea of binary power institutions and free individuals. It is possible to overcome the isolation of dialogics if we turn to the pre-individual level of collectivity, which, according to the French philosopher, is desire. At the same time, one should not forget that "Anti-Oedipus" is not a manifesto of the revolution, but is engaged in criticizing all kinds of micro-fascist structures within Western society and fragmentary construction of the theory of post—critical society, in other words, as M. Foucault wrote: "Anti-Oedipus is an introduction to non-fascist life" [5, 163-136].

The concept of desire (or desiring production, since every desire produces something as a goal or as a way of obtaining pleasure) explains the universal primary process underlying the construction of society and the psyche of the individual. Subjective desire is a positive and autonomous principle of constructing reality, where a person plays an atom, a separate performer of this absolute production process [6, 258]. J. Deleuze opposes the "logic of capital" of modern society with the "logic of desire" of the post-critical society that he would like to build, and instead of the psychoanalytic method of analyzing production, he offers a schizoanalytic method.

Applying the method of schizoanalysis, J. Deleuze and F. Guattari build the main lines of criticism of modern society, where the practices of microfascism are formed. First, schizoanalysis rejects negativity and insists that desire can be the ultimate cause of any social protest. For example, conservative moralizing interprets dyed hair or wearing leather clothes as a kind of protest or a demand for justice or freedom put forward to the authorities by young people. Schizoanalysis suggests abandoning the need to decode such actions as desires with a certain intention for a need and consider them as "pure desires", or as immanence. According to R. Scruton, the strategy of J. Deleuze is based on the fact that psychoanalysis is fixated on the model of "dad, mom, me" and "gives us a false idea of development as a return to the bourgeois family, and not liberation from it" [7, 278].

Secondly, schizoanalytic analysis proceeds from the premise that desire, unlike labor as an element of the "logic of capital", is an infinite resource. Desire cannot be objectified or alienated like work, because it is immanent in nature. According to J. Deleuze, an economy constructed on the basis of the "logic of capital" is not made for people, but is designed to support the life of capitalism. In Marxist terms, the "logic of capital" continues to exist and reinforces desire with needs, while schizoanalysis offers the idea of needs arising from desire. The limited resources in the "logic of capital" presupposes inequality, which lays down another microfascist idea of the necessity and inevitability of consumption leading to impoverishment and exploitation [8, 396].

Thirdly, the language of the humanities itself should be desocialized. Since psychoanalysis and political economy are recognized as unsuccessful and untenable attempts to answer the most important questions of our time and are aimed more at strengthening capitalism than at liberating man, then the scientific understanding of society should be revised. Hence the Guattari-Delesian "mechanized" terminology: "willing machine", "assembly", "body-without-organs", "transversality", etc. Sociology, like other sciences about society, is untenable due to the fact that not only "society is not made for people", but even "society is not made for society" and "people are not made for people" [8, 397]. The ultimate critical point of schizoanalysis is that a person is not made for anyone, therefore, he has no Kantian ultimate goal in himself. This is the third requirement of schizoanalysis, which leads to the rejection of the humanities, primarily structuralism.

Thus, the three main ideas of schizoanalysis as a method of critical analysis of society, proposed by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari in "Anti-Oedipus", aim at the three nodal points of microfascism in modern society:

1. The Freudian triangle "Papa-mama-I" calls us to understand desire as a consequence of family relations and turns into a dogma a psychologized interpretation of human social life. The microfascism of Oedipus consists in the fact that the unconscious, which was supposed to produce desire, becomes unconscious in psychoanalysis, which can only express itself in a myth, a dream or in its phantasms [8, 90]. Oedipus produces a passive subject of desire.

2. Marxist ideas about labor are located inside the "logic of capital" and, under the vague slogan of future utopias, continue to justify consumption and exploitation as an element of microfascism.

3. The humanities in their modern form are not a critical tool, since their language is based on the assumption that the nature of society coincides with the logic of studying society.

J. Deleuze's philosophical program was originally formulated as a struggle against the "passive subject" or with the "cracked Self", although his doctoral dissertation does not mention microfascism as a cause of weakening of a person as a subject [9, 115]. On the other hand, the big disadvantage of the later and joint Deleuze-Guattari project is that, in the redundancy of his own criticism, he is not able to offer a full-fledged political program. Unlike the Frankfurt school, which considers the possibility of building an alternative "society for people" through criticism and reforms, J. Deleuze believed that the potential of modern society has been exhausted, since it is unable to abandon the "logic of capital". In order for a global reformatting of society to take place, it is necessary to develop molecular (or singular) forms of existence that will be able to engage in revolutionary investment. Until now, society is developing molar (herd), preferring to rally and create a totality of conformist associations that only stimulate the development of microfascism.

Thus, J. Deleuze analyzes microfascism from an ontological position, insisting that the desire to rule over what dominates us and exploits us is the basis of modern capitalist culture, which will endlessly generate structures of repression and reproduction of the "logic of capital". This can be overcome only if modern society is deedipated, deterritorialized and decoded by joint efforts, but not by negating, banning or stopping social processes, but by releasing willing production and emancipating various forms of thinking and political action.

On the other hand, one can find the Frankfurt school, among the members of which special attention should be paid to T. Adorno. Thanks to this author, microfascism receives a special sociological explanation. Unlike J. Deleuze, whose problem of political subjectivation and microfascism is concentrated in one book, T. Adorno's understanding of these issues is hidden in several works. First of all, we are interested in his key works: "Dialectics of Enlightenment" (1947), "Study of the Authoritarian Personality" (1950) and "Negative Dialectics (1966)".

In the 40s, T. Adorno analyzes late capitalism for authoritarianism, anti-Semitism and conformism. The theory of the cultural industry is formed on the basis of the idea that new mass media aim at quasi-enlightenment and engage in mass deception, which results in the impotence of the subject. The standardization of a person and his transformation into a quasi—subject who constantly reproduces his unconditional identity with the collective Self is the main tool of fascism in capitalist society. Individuality is replaced by stereotyping, and a free society becomes a place that does not accept any resistance to the social configuration established by the culture industry [10, 193-196].

The "Study of the Authoritarian Personality" aimed at analyzing hostile biases towards social minorities from more global ideological configurations. Any hostility of one social group towards another has a social expression in the form of suppression and a psychological expression in the form of a search for an ersatz object, i.e. a group of people who are the "scapegoat" of personal or social problems [11, 11]. The empirical research conducted here concerning anti-Semitism is a direct continuation of the earlier developments of Adorno-Horkheimer.

The culture industry has turned society into a collection of people who are extremely close in their beliefs, whose mind is replaced by a passive consciousness filled with collective stereotypes and images. Jews (like any other small social community distinguished by autonomous culture and beliefs) become a pronounced group of resistance to the dominant social configuration in Western society, a system of patterns. The authoritarian personality syndrome, which appears during the upbringing of an authoritarian father and an emotionally distanced mother, manifests itself through the need to follow generally accepted values and the configuration of stereotypes established in society. The authoritarian personality is the main product and at the same time the main translator of micro—fascist sentiments in capitalist society. Of course, T. Adorno's approach is based on a psychoanalytic methodology, emphasizing the power of a strong Super-Ego formed at an early age and the further projection of desires suppressed in childhood on other people and society as a whole.

Published in 1966, the work comes from close, but still more complex premises. In his opinion, reason is not used to criticize reality, but on the contrary, either becomes its hostage (empiricism), or completely absorbs it (idealism). Negative dialectics should become a new method of explaining reality, in which only contradictory concepts can determine the objective qualities of the surrounding reality and preserve the tension between thought and reality.

In "Negative Dialectics" T. Adorno reveals the problem of subjectivation, insisting that in a capitalist society the personality is constantly undergoing a number of transformations. Firstly, since the personality, completely detached from the universal, is unable to construct it, society is forced to objectify many personalities with the help of hierarchical structures of domination. Secondly, the economic principle of appropriation turns into an anthropological one, which has led to the fact that the intersubjective relationship of people has become based on systems of domination of some people over others. The subject falsifies the objective definition of his self for the sake of unconditional personal domination. Thirdly, the personality, understood as a Kantian transcendental subject, does not exist outside of society, since its morality, read by Adorno-Ferenczi as a Superego, is based on the coercive force of submission. A person is in a state of reconciliation with society and microscopically reproduces its mechanisms of coercion of each individual in relation to the universal [12, 357-164].

In the end, T. Adorno reveals three components of the same line of reasoning about how microfascism is creeping into modern society. First of all, he defines capitalism as a more developed and adaptable form of an authoritarian society, where the ideology of historical fascism of the 20s is replaced by a liberal-conformist ideology. Secondly, he insists on the idea that modern conformism includes many microfascist mechanisms, for example, the standardization of thinking, in which subjectivation is eroded and destroyed under the pressure of generally accepted social configurations. In conclusion, desubjectivation reaches its limits when an individual is forced to fixate his self on a collective moral duty, i.e. to destroy his subjectivity in favor of the universal.

As a summary, it should be noted that both authors, who laid the conceptual foundations for the analysis of microfascism, have a number of overlapping positions. Firstly, both authors are aimed at criticizing Western capitalist societies, responding to the historical challenges facing the culture of the 50s and 70s: for J. Deleuze, it is the experience of working in GIP (the prison information group, where together with M. Foucault they investigated the arbitrariness of jailers over prisoners) or the strengthening of bureaucratization and the police apparatus in the "lead the seventies" in Italy (where, together with F. Guattari, he observed the demands of social change) [13, 361 - 390]; for T. Adorno, it is a mass musical and film culture in which elements of social stereotypes are fixed and there is no desire to develop artistic taste (unlike the new Viennese school of A. Schernberg, with whom T. Adorno collaborated), and the monopolization of American culture of the 50s, which was engaged in the production of popular stereotypes and stimulated the authoritarian syndrome, as well as created false projections in Western society, where aggression and frustration of workers were transferred from real problems to a small social group (Jews, Gypsies, etc.) [14, 270]. Both authors are aimed at criticizing the bureaucratization and instrumentalization of reason in scientific cognition.

Secondly, it should be noted the difference in understanding of the problem of desubjectivation in microfascism of modern society, which develops between the two authors. In the works of J. A Deleuze subject is a person fully capable of registering his own desires outside the boundaries of the "logic of capital", and desubjectivation (becoming a passive or "cracked" subject) is a process of producing self-reproducing subjectivity, where the Ego is replaced by the machine production of desires. T. Adorno defines the subject as a person with moral autonomy and the ability to transcend without identification On the Other hand, desubjectification can be defined as such a process of radicalization of rationality in society, when the totalizing identity, hiding behind objectivity, displaces and represses every single phenomenon.

Thirdly, despite the criticism and analysis of social problems important for their time and profound in a philosophical or sociological sense, both thinkers rest against the ceiling of their own ambitions. J. Deleuze proposes to rebuild the whole society through a "molecular revolution", counting on the fact that people are able to transform their perception of capitalism and their position in it, while T. Adorno is more eager for "molar changes" (in the words of J. Deleuze), subjecting culture and the mass media to some kind of restructuring.  

Unfortunately, neither Gilles Deleuze nor Theodore Adorno left students or full-fledged schools that would develop their teachings, especially in the spectrum of issues related to the analysis of microfascism and desubjectification. The rich heritage in the form of numerous concepts has given rise to many individual researchers, both the first and second author, but the use and development of their methodology for the analysis of the XXI century has yet to be implemented.

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The article "Microfascism and desubjectification" submitted to the journal "Sociodynamics". The Origins of problematics" is an analytical plan, in which the author draws the reader's attention to the approaches formed in the philosophy of the XX century to understanding the phenomenon of microfascism and desubjectivation. In general, the article is devoted to the criticism of modern capitalist society, and in particular, the analysis of the ideas of J. Deleuze and T. Adorno, described in some of their works containing criticism of late capitalism and options for opposing its totalitarian potential, revealed through microfascism and its consequence - desubjectivization. The author clarifies what subjectivization and desubjectivization are: "The process of subjectivation is understood as the process of folding autonomous self-consciousness, therefore, desubjectivation is a reversible process denoting a set of various procedures for eliminating the autonomy of individual consciousness, but not necessarily by replacing it with a collective one, but, for example, by creating an illusory, passive or malleable consciousness." From a wide palette of concepts of philosophical thought of the XX century, in which the problem of alienation, splitting of the subject, deindividualization was somehow touched upon (as the author himself writes, these are "the authoritarian personality of T. Adorno, the one-dimensionality of man as a subject in G. Marcuse", and "the fear of loneliness by E. Fromm, the indefinite subject of J.P. Sartre, the person K. Jung, the split subject of S. Zizek, etc.", and "the technological dehumanization of M. Horkheimer, L. Althusser's interpellation, M. Foucault's bio-power, M. Heidegger's das Man, I. Hoffmann's Total Institute, digital architecture of S. Zuboff, etc."), the author's sympathies are on the side of 2 approaches. These are (1) the social criticism of the Frankfurt School, in particular, the most subtle thinker among them, Theodor Adorno, and (2) the methodology of the critical study of capitalist society by the philosopher J. Deleuze and his close friend and co-author, psychoanalyst F. Guattari. The author summarizes the ideas of "schizoanalysis" by J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, outlined in Anti-Oedipus, which are aimed at exposing microfascism in modern society, critically evaluates their project: "in the excess of his own criticism, he is not able to offer a full-fledged political program." The Frankfurt School, on the other hand, offered ways of liberation from a repressive culture and created alternative versions of a "society for people." However, he is silent about how these options can be applied in practice, and how the author himself evaluates them. Analyzing the works of T. Adorno, the author shows that for Adorno, capitalism is an adaptive form of an authoritarian society, in which fascism is replaced by a liberal conformist ideology. This ideology harbors an implicit potential that allows microfascist practices to flourish. Under their total power, the subject loses his proper Self, merging with the universal. The author not only separates the two approaches, but also finds their points of contact. Both the Deleuze and Guattari project and the Adorno project are not only intellectual responses to the real historical events of the 50s and 70s, but the philosophers themselves were actively directly involved in the transformation of society (one can recall the collaboration of Deleuze with Foucault in the "prison information group", cooperation with the new Vienna school of Adorno). Deleuze's "micro-revolutions" and Adorno's "molar" changes, however, can be considered sufficient grounds for classifying both thinkers as those philosophers whose activities had a significant impact on Western European culture of the twentieth century, and not only gave rise to many concepts, as the author writes. I would like to emphasize that the author presents the material very clearly and in a structured manner, and his article, of course, corresponds in its content to the principles of scientific integrity. The list of references contains both English-language sources and works translated into Russian. The author critically evaluates the contribution to the development of the topic of microfascism and desubjectivation of philosophers of the XX century. The article is written in a good academic style, it will be interesting for both sociologists and philosophers, and those small comments on the text, which are listed below, do not affect the high assessment of the research work carried out. The comments are insignificant and can easily be taken into account by the author when preparing the article for publication: An unfortunate expression ("to discover"-?): "On the other hand, it is possible to discover the Frankfurt school...." Error: "The study of the authoritarian personality" was aimed at..." Obviously, we are talking about Arnold Schoenberg, a typo: "... unlike the new Vienna school of A. Schernberg, with whom T. Adorno collaborated..." From the point of view of stylistics, the final phrase does not look graceful enough - its meaning is that the author complains that Deleuze and Adorno are not supported nowadays, apparently, by any specialized philosophical school with a developed methodological apparatus, without which it is difficult to conduct a socio-philosophical analysis in the XXI century. It is worth correcting: (...a rich heritage has given rise to many researchers ...): "The rich heritage in the form of numerous concepts has given rise to many individual researchers, both the first and second author, but the use and development of their methodology for the analysis of the XXI century has yet to be implemented."