QAnon is typically described as “a far-right conspiracy theory.” I think we should get rid of the word “theory” in this description or definition (at best, it is a pseudo-theory). It accords this specific (and ever-changing) cluster of socially or culturally and politically incoherent and irrational ideas with some semblance of respectability: calling to mind the rationality, facts, hypotheses, evidence, abstract or principled thinking that bear upon or directly involved in explanation and understanding, not only in the sciences, but in everyday life and practical reasoning as well (e.g., no part of this putative ‘theory’ is based on fact). QAnon is not a theory, a term that accords this clusterfuck too much credence or plausibility when it is, in fact, completely bereft of same. It is rather a full-fledged collective phantasy (unfortunately, there is comparatively little literature on this subject) … and that is how it should be described. I hope to post at a later date more about collective phantasies, assuming a distinction between benign, harmless, or creative fantasies (which, unlike phanatasies, occur largely if not exclusively at the level of individual persons, while phantasies can take individual and/or collective form) and psychologically baneful phantasies (the lines drawn here may of course be a bit fuzzy and porous, as they often are in such boundary marking), although both could be said to function by way of making sense of our perceptions and feelings or emotions, the latter being more deeply rooted in the unconscious and of a regressive character with regard to moral and psychological development and individuation. And thus there is something stronger than an elective affinity between the sociopathic cult of Trump and the QAnon conspiracy phantasy that has spread like wildfire across several social media platforms.
For an introduction the distinction between “fantasy” and “phantasy” (although often ignored or the meanings sometimes conflated), I’ve found the following useful:
- Arlow, Jacob A. “Unconscious Fantasy,” in Moore, Burness E. and Bernard D. Fine, eds. Psychoanalysis: The Major Concepts (Yale University Press, 1995): 155-162.
- Brakel, Linda A.W. Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-rational Mind (Oxford University Press, 2009).
- Hinshelwood, R.D. Clinical Klein: From Theory to Practice (Free Association Books, 1994).
- Segal, Julia. Phantasy in Everyday Life: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Understanding Ourselves (Penguin Books, 1986).
- Segal, Julia. Phantasy (Icon Books, 2000).
- “Unconscious Phantasy,” in Spillius, Elizabeth Bott, et al. The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought (Routledge, 2011): 3-15.
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