New Forms of Revolt

Contrast two forms of revolt described in the article.

Hande Lara Sever

            Kristeva states that there is a new from of revolt and the new revoltés are experiencing that there is no answer to social, historic and political impasses without a radical inner experience. Through the human psyche, inner experience, she categorizes forms of revolt because she believes that the key for transformation lies in this radical inner experience. She argues that “old” revolts were consumed by nihilism which was about “the abandonment of retrospective questioning in favor of an outright rejection of the old, so that new dogmas can take place.” She states that the nihilist revolté betrays the meaning of revolt because she or he is satisfied by the stability of new values. Kristeva believes that the experience of true revolt, intimate revolt, and transformation is achieved by doing inner search. As a tool for inner search she uses psychoanalysis and dismisses the spiritualist options. She thinks that currently everyone experiences the syndrome of ideality because as adults we acquire the certainty that there is an absolute satisfaction. Kristeva states:

 “The belief that an ideal object exists( be it a partner, a profession, or a creation) is accompanied by the absolute belief that the parental couple, oidipous complex, must be suppressed and even abolished so that the adolescent subject can escape into an idealized, paradisiacal form of absolute satisfaction.”

She states that any disappointment in this ideality  syndrome ruins the paradise. Kristeva states that after the disappointment in this ideality a person becomes a nihilist “Because it exists(in the unconscious), yet “he” or “she” disappoints me(in reality). I have no choice but to be angry with them and seek revenge…” According to Kristeva this is the old revolté reaction which she later identifies as the “wake of maladies of reality”. So Kristeva thinks that for true transformation we should abandon the nihilist approach and aim to transform ourselves through psychoanalysis by overcoming the ideality syndrome.

Side Critique of the Ideality Syndrome and the “Suburban Trouble”

In her article Kristeva states

“… I would like to call the “suburban troubles” which are especially felt in Marseille but elsewhere as well. Aren’t they due to a failure of French model of secularism?... I think it is the delinquency of “disadvantaged teens” reveals more radical phase of nihilism. This delinquency concerns the deeper mechanisms of civilization and highlights the destruction of the pre religious need to believe that constitutes the psychical life with and for other, on which I sought to shed light today.”

I disagree with Kristeva on how and why these tensions are cultivated. I think these tensions are felt because of the history of colonialism not simply because of the failure of French model of secularism or clash of values as she states it.

To be more concise I think an Algerian French adolescent who lives in a banlieue of Marseille experiences something greater than just the disappointment in ideality since she or he enters society with a different baggage, the baggage of a massacre/genocide survivor. As “Paris forced itself on Algiers in 1830 with a quasi-genocide and left it in 1962 amid a shocking outburst of torture, terrorism, and ethnic cleansing that outdid the occasional massacres and unending discrimination of the long years of colonial occupation.”(World Affairs Journal, 2013) Until recent these war crimes were unacknowledged by the French government, if I am not mistaking the current president Françoise Hollande apologized for the 61 massacre in 2013 and became the first high-rank French official to acknowledge the tragedy. To keep it short I think an Algerian French revolté’s decision to revolt goes beyond the disappointment in ideality because he or she witnessed what Kristeva calls the “extreme evil” in her article. Thus what she calls “suburban troubles” are caused not just because of clash of Muslim values versus secular French values but because of colonial history. Thus I think an Algerian French citizen’s psyche is different from a French person. Since France is not a homogenous society I think her argument that people protest just because of disappointment in ideality is very reductive for the experience of a French citizen from a former colony as this person might never got the chance to construct that ideal in her or his psyche. If we apply it to a global spectrum the same falls for a black person protesting in Ferguson or a Kurdish citizen protesting for his rights in Turkey because both of the communities are un-acknowledged holocaust survivors who are still surviving despite every governmental structure that is against them. Thus their motivation to protest goes beyond disappointment in ideality, it is a protest for existence. Lastly, I think framing the reason behind these protests as clash of values and dismissing colonial history is very reductive.

Source: World Affairs Journal: http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/politics-apology-hollande-and-algeria