We will return to exploring more aspects of ideology in future newsletters, but this week, I want to focus on the idea of disavowal.
Whether the devastating floods caused by Hurricane Hellene and now Milton or the news of another tech company laying off thousands of workers, we are regularly confronted with what the Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called the Real.
Whether it was a natural disaster or a man-made decision driven by financial motivations, our reaction to the Real is often the same. Disavowal.
In her recent book, Disavowal, the philosopher Alenka Zupančič took a deep look at this concept, and I will be working through some of her ideas and how they relate to work.
It is essential to start by saying that disavowal is not the same as denial. Few people would deny that their company could lay people off when asked. To some extent, they recognize that layoffs are a part of our capitalist system. Employees are expendable due to shifting priorities, economic downturns, or just trying to be more profitable. We don’t deny it.
It is also critical to distinguish between repression and disavowal. To some extent, we can repress the idea that we are expendable at work by just stopping to think about it, which is a common reaction.
However, what we are talking about here is something more deep-seated. It is the idea that we sustain “some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite” 1
To go back to the climate change case for a second, we know that it is real, and we use that belief to allow us to move forward in ways that act as if it isn’t. We don’t change or modify our behaviors to deal with the real threat, but we use our knowledge of it as real to excuse our lack of change. It is summed up well in the phrase Zupančič shares from Octave Mannoni, “I know well, but all the same.” 2 By knowing that we don’t deny that climate change is real, we somehow feel superior to those who deny it, and yet the results are essentially the same.
Before we get too deep, I want to discuss the Lacanian concepts of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real and how they relate to work culture, particularly for those working in technology.
The best way to explain the registers is by analogy. Suppose you were to think about a user using an app on their iPhone. In that case, the interface and everything the user sees is the Imaginary, and the code that the user doesn’t see but powers the application would be the Symbolic. When a bug occurs, it would be an eruption of the Real into the user’s experience. The Real is not the bug itself; it is what exists outside of what is coded. The bug is a symptom. The user can only relate to the Real through the Imaginary interface based on what is coded at the Symbolic level. The Symbolic can be adjusted when a bug causes the developers to be aware of it. The Symbolic can be repositioned in relation to the eruption of the Real (the bug can be fixed), but it can never fully account for the Real.
In more theoretical and general terms, the Imaginary is that we see and imagine in the gaps. For example, our view of another person is always an Imaginary entity. We see a portion of all there is, including certain expectations we hold about others.
The symbolic aspect is how the word is structured through language; this can become very dense, but this is the level of ideology, culture, and norms. When we think about identities, we operate at the symbolic level.
The Real exists outside signification and symbolization; it is what is impossible in the symbolic structure.
To think about all three together, you can think about all your titles and identities, such as Software Engineer, Mother, Daughter, Sister, Community Member, Runner, etc. Each of these is a symbolic representation of who you are. However, the truth cannot be captured by any of those titles. It is what is missing, and the imaginary is how you see things as being.
A layoff is often a rupture of the real. While people know layoffs happen, we usually don’t expect them actually to happen, let alone to happen to us. When they do, that is an intrusion of the Real, an impossibility that comes into being.
It forces us to confront the lack in the Imaginary aspect of their work: the company’s values, the individual’s role, and their value to the company are all found lacking. This has a direct impact on how people see themselves and their identity.
The underlying symbolic structure, the way that work was talked about, the norms, and the expectations are shown to be unable to encompass the reality that they no longer have a job.
The symbolic and imaginary are shattered as we face the real.
Expectations shattered in this way are like those of Neo when he took the red pill and awoke to the reality of the matrix, with one difference: Neo took the pill on purpose. He didn’t know what would happen, but he expected something. For many who are laid off, it is as if they thought they were taking Advil and got the red pill instead.
If The Matrix was a more realistic film, Neo would have gone back after seeing the world and asked to go back, not to forget what he saw, but with a willingness to return to the old ways and carry on with the old way of doing things. “I know well, but still.”
That brings us back to layoffs. We see the messages on LinkedIn and go through the emotional ride with our teams. When it hits, it hits hard and rocks our world.
Each time we tend to proclaim that what hits us is a complete game changer’, that we have finally woken up, yet at the same time we go on mostly as before, as if nothing has really happened, or else we (want to) return to some anterior state. 3
But we quickly start looking for a new job and try to return things to normal. We don’t deny that layoffs are likely to happen wherever we go. We go back to how things are. We don’t repress the idea and say that we can’t deal with a world of layoffs and ignore that they exist. Instead, we normalize it.
whereas repression preserves the extra-ordinary character of that thing by pushing it out of our ordinary reality, disavowal keeps it as part of reality, yet changes its character. We could thus say that disavowal consists in making what is for me, and perhaps not only for me an extraordinary, game-changing’ fact, an ordinary fact – but still a fact. 4
Accepting these realities, whether the nature of layoffs or climate change, is a harsh reality that can cause real fear. It is, although we decide, “We are more afraid of something ‘scaring the shit out of us’ than of actually dying.” 5 And so we normalize to avoid that fear.
The challenge for those in a disavowed state is that knowledge is not the answer. This isn’t like those who deny or repress an idea who can learn they are wrong and adjust their course of action. When we have disavowed knowledge, learning more won’t help; we already know. We are choosing to act against that knowledge.
As a form of disavowal, this belief requires the disclosure of truth; it requires knowledge and its associated blow as its inner condition. This is precisely why – and this is crucial this belief is resistant to knowledge: knowledge cannot be the remedy for disavowal. 6
This brings us to another important Lacanian idea, that of symbolic castration.
Symbolic “castration is the idea that “we give up something in order to gain access to the symbolic status and social position… symbolic castration is actually a solution to a deadlock: it is a loss through which we also gain.” 7
Through disavowal, we gain our status as workers. At some level, we need to symbolically castrate ourselves to resume that role, and disavowal allows us to do that.
[Disavowal]can take the form of a ‘post-factual’ worldview in which the content of knowledge becomes relativized, while our relation to that content itself obtains the status of an object and is considered as ‘objective’ as anything else (even if it is ‘false’, it is a fact to be reckoned with); it can also take the form of our most common everyday fear of being somebody’s dupe, of being perceived as naïve, of not being in the loop – and hence lacking in ‘social capital’. In other words, disavowal doesn’t need to take the drastic form of a conspiracy theory. It can take a much more ‘reasonable’, moderate, but also more perverse form of what Nietzsche called ‘the lulling opium of skepticism’. We know better than to allow anything to really get to us. 8
There is a range of ways that we can accept this castration.
The first way is neurotically. In this case, some joy is experienced with this castration, but it is hidden. Although it is acknowledged that you are castrated, you can secretly enjoy the ability to return to work and move on with things.
Another way of accepting symbolic castration is that of perversion. It is to take the castration fully with no remainder 9. This means we cease to recognize that we accept it by choice. Ultimately, we buy into the idea that we are forced to work this way, that layoffs are part of life, and we might even begin to enjoy the rush of it all.
A final approach is acknowledging the disavowal, which Zupančič describes as “’ I know very well that “I know very well, but all the same….’ So we are dealing not only with disavowal but also with configuration in which I use the knowledge itself of its functioning as a fetishist tool.” 10
This is the use of a fetish, an object to hold our belief so that we can continue with our work. In this case, our very knowledge about the reality of layoffs becomes the thing that allows us to disavow it.
Knowledge’ thus adopts a new and different role; it is no longer simply something to be disavowed but – paradoxically – something that can help us disavow (the real of this same knowledge). 11
A great example of this comes from Żiżek in How to Read Lacan,
Niels Bohr, who had aptly replied to Einstein’s ‘God doesn’t play dice’ (‘Don’t tell God what to do!’), also provided the perfect example of how a fetishist disavowal of belief works in ideology. Seeing a horseshoe on Bohr’s door, a surprised visitor remarked that he didn’t believe in the superstition that it brought luck. Bohr snapped back: ‘I don’t believe in it either; I have it there because I was told that it also works if one does not believe in it!’ 12
So what is the harm? This allows us to move through life without being paralyzed by the fear of layoffs (or climate change). Isn’t that a good thing? It does give us resilience, but there is a cost.
We forget of course that this resilience mostly exists only in the bubble of our own relationship to ourselves; we forget that there is a storm raging in the real and that we are very likely to be struck by lightning. We are calm not because we have accepted that we have no control over some things anyway but, on the contrary, because we continue to believe that, thanks to our very disbelief, we still have control. And that magic can protect us, especially if we don’t ‘really’ believe in it, if we know better than to believe it. 13
This disavowal gives us the illusion of control. It doesn’t allow us to accept the system’s nature and risks. It will enable us to pretend that because we can ignore what we know very well to be accurate, we can be sure that it won’t happen to us again. This forecloses our ability to truly address it.
Of course, this doesn’t just happen to us as individuals.
Perverse disavowal is, so to speak, an individual mass phenomenon. It is the pinnacle of individuality, of individualism, however widespread and in this sense ‘universal’ it may be. 14
We can see this everywhere. As the news of layoffs spreads across LinkedIn, you see the posts encouraging people. You see posts reminding everyone that a job doesn’t care about them; people must care for themselves; and offering to help others find new jobs. But you don’t see any real sense of engagement in a struggle. You see the immediate reaction to each event.
I have had more and more conversations with people who want to leave technology altogether, who no longer wish to deal with the stress and unknown that come in a technology environment where people are valued less and less.
While a tremendous amount of energy is put into empathy, providing real value to individuals or people leaving the field altogether, that is not where Zupančič sees the solution. I will quote her at length because she says it so well.
What we really need to understand is not other people (‘who are less fortunate or different from ourselves’) but the other side of the crisis – i.e., the fact that the other side of the crisis is a scene of continuous, ongoing struggle. I’m not simply talking about establishing the true or deeper causes of the crises. A genuine emancipatory struggle is not about establishing the right causality that could ultimately explain (away) these crises. And neither is psychoanalysis. If there is one lesson that social struggles can draw from psychoanalysis, it is the following: Il n’y a de cause que de ce qui cloche (Lacan) – there are only causes of what does not work, of what stumbles and points to a gap, a leap, a problem. Emancipatory thinking is not about explaining away the gap and making everything look natural – that is the job of ideology. Emancipatory thinking is about identifying and locating this gap in causality, this glitch, this point of decision where responsibility, agency and, yes, politics come into play. And where things could or should have taken a different direction.
If the ongoing struggle is the other side of crisis, recognizing this and joining the struggle could be an alternative kind of collective-forming action. Joining the struggle does not mean surrendering to the immediacy of the movement that pulls you in. Also, it is not necessary to love your neighbour, or understand her, in order to join a common struggle. It is not even necessary to get rid of all prejudices against them in order to do so. We are trained to jump up and scream at any sign of prejudice and immediately to disqualify people who in our view show any of these signs. And that’s not a solution, it’s part of the problem. To loosen the grip of disavowal and conspiracy thinking, we might need to introduce some alienation and negativity in the midst of all this immediacy. Because that’s what both disavowal and conspiracy thinking ultimately thrive on: Immediacy. What is being repressed here is the repression, the negativity itself: not simply this or that thing, but the alienating gap that is the armature of repression. 15
And so, what do we do to prevent disavowal?
Would it be the right answer to wake up and face it directly, in all its immediacy? No. There is no way to face the trauma directly, and that is what makes it a trauma something that consumes us and is indistinguishable from the effect it has on us. The more traumatic it is, the more numb we tend to become. We need to wake up – not to forget it and shore up our defences by ‘rational means’ but, rather, to pursue the trauma and its consequences in the threads and cracks of our normal, everyday reality. The ‘true and deeper causes’ of crises can only be addressed with attention focused on the surface and the form. Tearing away the veil of the surface, on the other hand, only strengthens the defences and effectively prevents all thinking, struggling and dealing with these causes.16
We can’t just keep pointing out the greed and ideology that drive that drive layoffs. We must focus on how they appear and the underlying social forms.
Like climate change, our anxiety and outrage over each issue won’t change the underlying problems; we must step back and join together collectively to chart new paths and directions. It won’t be immediate, it can’t be, but if we stop looking for immediate answers, we may find some real ones.