A metapsychological interpretation of fascism in the freudo-adornian approach

Abstract

In the direction of this article, the central objective is the understanding of the fascist discourse through the Freudian-Adornian approach. To do so, the mytho-political allegory present in ‘Totem and Taboo’ (Freud, 1990) and in other Freudian writings is taken as a basis for illustrating the libidinal nature that organizes modern social bonds. The social adherence to the thanactic signs of fascism is understood mainly through the bias of the phantasmatic latencies that are inserted in the political body, instigating object links of subjection to a sovereign power analogous to those established in the regime of the primeval horde. The immortality of the father who survives as a latent instance, the feeling of guilt for the collective parricide and the consequent symbolic debt paid through the libidinal currency are presented as central beacons in the sexual economy of fascism, with the purpose of reestablishing a first time of the coined social organization in barbarism and primordial masochism in relation to a real father.