We should harken back to what could be seen, historically speaking, as the beginning of the so called ‘culture war.’ What was really at stake? What was it really about? What was the true contention at its centre? If I remember correctly, the culture war, in less than ten years, went from a peculiar cultural politics centred primarily around the fringes of internet forums to a phenomena which became essential to the outcome of presidential elections and even geo-politics. Trump’s victory was a victory centred on the antagonisms which the culture war signified—and even historically significant military confrontations(if not caused necessarily by a culture war) has been rhetorically deployed by world leaders in justification of such; Putin’s speeches made straight after the onset of the Ukraine war were filled with references to the culture wars of the West.
The culture war began with so called ‘gamer gate’. I’m not expert on the history of internet cultures but the standard account states that women ended up inside gaming circles on internet forums. Men responded to that presence with hostility, mockery and so on. Somehow this became (globally) newsworthy.
The seemingly inflated significance of such first world problems could be understood through the fact that the culture war has always signified contests over social and political space. From a man’s perspective, despite what many feminists still argue, there are little to no men-only spaces left in contemporary liberal society. Of course, the contention is ‘why should there be?’ So far nobody has had the clarity of mind to simply respond ‘why shouldn’t there be?’
Liberal ideals around gender neutralizations of social space are taken for granted and rarely challenged. High rates of mental illness and collapsing relations between genders —relations necessary for basic civilizational functioning (reproduction)—make the indefinite neutralizing tendencies of contemporary liberalism impossible to ignore. It’s about time to genuinely confront the necessity for some gender segregated spaces. The irony of course, for those arguing for further deconstruction of ‘gender norms’ is that this very appetite for indefinite deconstruction has turned on its masters. An increasing amount of women now find themselves outraged that trans-women (biological men) are intruding on their spaces (women’s sports teams in particular). You won’t find much sympathy from me—like an alcoholic addicted to deconstruction instead of liquor, years of moral and cognitive abuse on ‘norms’ eventually backfires on its most enthusiastic cheerleaders.
However, identity politics should not be dismissed as a simple ideological capture, narcissism, or manipulation by supposedly clever political leaders (if only those still existed). There is a legitimate anxiety which emerges from cultures of androgenizing deconstruction and corporate-hygienic gentrification; which are for all purposes the same thing.
When Italy’s prime minister Meloni won the presidency on a platform which was driven by the use of rhetoric aimed at defending identity, she claimed ‘Anything that now defines us is the enemy. For those of us who no longer want an identity they will turn us into perfect consumer slaves.’ This was more or less echoed by Putin not long after. No military is capable of invading and enslaving the Russians, yet their anxiety in face on an encroachment is not misplaced. Many peoples, Western and non-Western, increasingly feels like the Americanized liberalism which emerged after WW2, will siege your nation nonetheless; a globalization of identity destruction and consumer pacification, if not tanks and infantry.
So why does this rhetoric resonate? Because it’s true. There has been a clear loss of definition which can only be understood as a limit in the destruction of identities which post-war liberal democracies have pushed to their absolute limit. If one wants to encounter the tragic results of this limit, they needn’t look at conservatives but progressives themselves. A young person whom has changed their name, social circles, politics, morals and even pharmacologically changed their gender an excessive amount in only short period of time, does not often come across as a free and healthy individual—but a chronically frustrated, confused, lost human whose life is filled more so with constant and overwhelming suffering as opposed to any sort of maturity, freedom or happiness.
However, in order to reclaim identity or definition, we must understand the psycho-developmental processes in which the sort of identity which is experienced as destroyed, can emerge. Identity is not a rational choice, but involves certain limits and necessities. One of these necessities is also a developmental one. As I have pointed out before on this blog, the most popular psychologist of our time(Peterson) has a basic message: people must grow up, or they become sick and miserable. In this light, we see both a demand for definition and maturity emerging as a response to the destruction of any social and ritualistic mechanism of identity formation.
To reflect further on the contest over a social space seen in gamer gate, we see that there are certain spaces in which both maturity and identity are formed. This is likely why universities and internet spaces are usually a consistent battle grounds for culture wars. These are spaces which have played a developmental function in the identity formation of modern individuals. The true contest over the nature of a male only space (even when this space is as unthreatening and moderate gaming forums) is that there really is a problem with gender fluid spaces (somewhat ahistorically) and that historically, contemporary liberal women really have developed an obsessive tendency to demand supervision of anything male. Where we see liberal women, it won’t be long before some sort of supervisory authority is intervening with moralistic and self-righteous enthusiasm; like bug eyed nuns, taking account of their indiscretions; indiscretions evaluated by their nauseatingly liberal values, of course..Always suspicious of anything manly, stubborn, principled, self-reliant or working class.
This was the essence of the metoo movement whereby the media became the fill-in supervisory authority. Managerialism also took on a censorial and overbearing presence during this time. Universities, workplaces, social media—everything; it all took on a supervisory extremism during the 2010s. In particular, frail, oversensitive and neurotic types from overprotected backgrounds became central within this supervisory arena; likely because they were a good excuse for more encroachment— and on a narcissistic level, they rather enjoyed the supervision.
If we were to give this tendency a psychoanalytical framework, we could argue that this excessive supervision normally takes on a displaced mother-child relationship and projects it onto areas within the larger civil society (universities, workplaces, political organizations ect.) Jordan Peterson has argued that this stems from a lack of child-bearing for women in their 30s who then create infant relationships with other adults. While this is likely true, I believe this has a more fundamental cause.
The 2010s was a peculiar time as it revealed a rapid infantilization process where these civil spaces became somewhat akin to bureaucratically managed, and rather punitive, day care centres for quasi-politized variants of personality disorders. Conservatives love to frame this as a problem with collective and civil life, in favour of private and family orientated dwellings and values. However, this very supervision-culture is in fact the unregulated power of the familial (at least a mother-child expression of the familial). Quite the contrary, the problem of excessive middle class frailty and supervision is not caused by over zealous civic and collective overreach, but excessive and inappropriate enthusiasm of psycho-political forces which are essentially family-orientated and attempt to transform every social and civic space into mother-child relations.
To get extremely psycho-analytical about it, we could further argue that an obsessive attack on ‘hate’, stems from a super-ego attempt to lower the psychological and social forces which are necessary to form identities: weaning. If, in a somewhat narcissistic state, we develop ‘identities’ inside a mother-child space, and then encounter a larger society where the identity created by our maternal-relationship is challenged, we realize we must wean ourselves off that initial identity-space and form an new one inside the more challenging and larger identity-space of civic society. This in common terms is ‘growing up’.
Here’s where it gets complicated. Weaning is inherently an aggressive act as the primordial act of weaning is— at its core— the act of biting. Liberal theories of civilization, especially the progressive ones, are built on the task of indefinite lowering of aggressive impulses (particularly in men). The initial contractual framework for liberal societies was designed by the likes of Hobbes and Locke— and was primary concerned with the aversion of sectarian and civil warfare. This has led to a series of errors in the civilizing processes of modern societies whereby aggression is seen merely as an anti-civilized impulse that must be controlled and repressed for the benefit of civil order. Yet, this account simplistically ignores the psycho-developmental necessities of humans whereby aggression, though the symbolic change of identity space involves an element of primordial aggression. Humans can only form through, in some sense, a symbolically violent attack on the mother: or at least an attack on the often indulgent and infantile identity space created by mother-child relations.
The aggressive-necessity of ‘growing up’ was depicted rather uniquely in the recent Viking adaptation of Hamlet, Northman. Amleth (Hamlet for all intensive purposes) preforms an kingly-initiation ritual marking the transition from boy to man. The ritual involves crawling on the floor with his Father, under the guide of a shaman, barking and howling like a wolf. This scene occurs right before Amleth’s uncle murders his father and steals the throne.
The death of the father is a de-legitimizing act. Although Amleth escapes with his life, he experiences an identity death through expulsion and de-legitimization. This ritual enshrines Amleth with enough symbolic identification with the father (and the throne) to prepare him for the eventual vengeance and return of symbolic connection with the paternal line. This return is depicted at the end of the film and a cosmic-paternal— and royal— tree: Yggdrasil.
An extreme example, I know. Yet, there is somewhat of a universal truth to this formation of identity and paternal-identification. If the child is expelled or de-legitimized from this process of identify formation, he (or she) risks being psychically crippled indefinitely—or at least until the symbolic identification is restored.
In Northman this restoration was also a revenge story. The hero’s conviction towards this restoration entirely forms his purpose and character. Within this initiation ritual which marks a coming of age, Amleth takes a pledge of loyalty.
‘should i fall by the enemies sword. You must avenge me or forever live in shame.’
‘I will father. My blade will not rest till it’s struck the blood from his open neck’.
Modern commentators enjoy dismissing this dramatization of revenge cycles as something which retains merely artistic value. Yet, extreme though this example is, there is something intrinsically aggressive about human developmental processes. Initiation is always, at least symbolically, violent. Actual violence is more likely to stem from the disruption and expulsion of these identify formation rituals and processes. This is because it leaves people with two choices: psychic and moral crippling or a restoration at any cost. The recent history of Islamic terrorism is perhaps only the most recent and likely not the last in what will be further restoration attempts, which—given the dominant liberal society that wishes to further deconstruct and expel the capacity for initiation and development—will likely not learn its lesson anytime soon.(if ever)
Few have yet acknowledged the necessities of weaning-ritualism evident in the pursuit of maturity. Given it is intrinsically an aggressive act, we could say that the definition of humans, which is increasingly feels lost, only occurs through a manner which is quite contradictory to the predominant civilizing ideals of liberal society whereby ‘adulthood’ is only achieved through adapting to socio-economic demands, and thus as a managerial, economic and socially bourgeois process. A process that entirely expels and sees no value in aggression; deeming it merely harmful, criminal and superfluous.
It would be worth comparing and contrasting this description of weaning to Freuds’ reality principle, which is framed as an ‘external’ imposition, thus reinforcing the spatial aspect to identity formation and maturity. Although, this will have to wait for another essay.