From: "Richard Koenigsberg" <libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: The Human Body and the Body Politic Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:54:42 -0400 Dear Colleague, Whereas Foucault, Lacan and other theorists suggest that the body is molded and shaped by discourse, I hypothesize that the structure of discourse grows out of the experience of the human body. Freud stated that "The human ego is ultimately a body ego." Perhaps conceptions of the nation and body politic represent a projection of the human body. At least in the case of Hitler and Nazism, it is possible to perceive the manner in which experiences and fantasies surrounding the body are externalized to create the ideology of genocide. With best regards, Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph. D. The Human Body and the Body Politic: Genocide as an Immunological Fantasy By observing images and metaphors bound to central elements of an ideology, it is possible to reveal the ideology's underlying structure. Hitler was the deepest believer in Nazism and its most passionate advocate. Through analysis of the central metaphors contained within his writings and speeches, we may perceive the relationship between Hitler's ideas and the fantasy that defined and shaped them. The logic of Hitler's ideology was based upon the coherence of the fantasy that was its source. Genocide as a mode of activity represented the acting out of a fantasy put forth by Hitler and conveyed by him to the German people. The central fantasy that gave rise to genocide was that of Germany as an actual body politic containing pathogenic microorganisms whose continued presence within the nation would lead to its death. Hitler conceived of Germany as a gigantic body that was under attack. He referred to the Jew as a "bacillus infecting the life of peoples" and declared that he would devote his life to fighting the "international carrier of the bacillus." In order to rescue Germany, it was necessary to eliminate the cause of the nation's disease. _____ To read Richard Koenigsberg's groundbreaking papers on the dynamics of genocide and war (listed below), please visit: <http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/> http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/ <http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/> AS THE SOLDIER DIES, SO DOES THE NATION COME ALIVE: The Sacrificial Meaning of Warfare DYING FOR ONE'S COUNTRY: The Logic of War and Genocide THE LOGIC OF THE HOLOCAUST: Why the Nazi's Killed the Jews THE SACRIFICIAL MEANING OF THE HOLOCAUST AZTEC WARFARE, WESTERN WARFARE: The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim _____ The purpose of National Socialism, according to Hitler, was to "maintain the life of Germany." He called Germany a "corporate body," a "single organism" that consisted of the German people as cells of this organism. The Jewish people also constituted cells of the national organism. These cells, however, made no contribution to the life of Germany. Rather, as bacteria, viruses and parasites, they lived and fed off the body politic, draining the nation of its energy and capacity to exist. Hitler defined his mission in medical terms. Although ordinary politicians saw the "forms of our general disease" and tried to combat them," these politicians "blindly ignored the virus." Hitler conceived of himself as that unique leader who had identified the nature of Germany's disease and possessed the ability to affect a cure. In Mein Kampf, he stated that Germans would choose as their leader the individual who "profoundly recognizes the distress of his people" and who, after he has attained "the ultimate clarity" with regard to the nature of the disease, "seriously tries to cure it." In his diary on March 27, 1942, Goebbels described the process of extermination as "pretty barbaric and not to be described in detail" but had no compunctions because after all this was a "life-and- death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus." In his 1935-6 propaganda booklet Himmler observed that the battle against peoples conducted by Jews had belonged "so far as we can look back, to the natural course of life on our planet." Therefore one could calmly reach the conviction that the struggle of nations against Jews--of life against death--was quite as much a law of nature as "man's struggle against some epidemic, as the struggle of a healthy body to eliminate plague bacillus." Why did Nazi leaders employ biological metaphors to articulate the genocidal project? What was the "law of nature" that led Himmler to believe that the struggle of nations against Jews was equivalent to the struggle of a "healthy body against a plague bacillus?" In Mein Kampf, Hitler said: "Could anyone believe that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same laws as all other human organisms?" What was the "law" that Hitler and Himmler believed was governing the life of the German body? The "immune system" is that complex mechanism of chemical and biological reactions acting to protect the organism from destructive entities within the interior of the body. The immune system works based on its capacity to identify cells that are foreign or "not self." Professor Fischer of the University of Berlin stated on June 20, 1939 that when a people wants to preserve its own nature it must reject, suppress and eliminate "alien elements," and declared that "the Jew is such as alien." Jews in Nazi ideology were portrayed as bacteria, viruses and parasites--alien elements that the German body politic recognized as "not self." The normal or natural tendency of the national organism was to work to eliminate or destroy the foreign cells. Genocide grew out of an immunological fantasy. Since Jews were conceived as microorganisms, it was necessary that every single one of them be removed from within the body of civilization, lest they begin again to divide and multiply; thus the fanatic, furious, hysterical will to destroy. On the evening of February 22, 1942, Hitler met with Himmler and a Danish SS major and expounded his conviction that the "discovery of the Jewish virus" was one of the "greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world." The battle in which the Nazis were engaged, he said, was of the "same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch." How many diseases, he declared, have their origin in the Jewish virus! "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew." Robert Koch was a German physician who discovered the tuberculosis bacteria in 1882. His 'germ theory' postulated that each disease had a specific cause in a pathogenic microorganism. Hitler conceived of himself as the "Robert Koch of Germany", the genius who had discovered the germ that was the source of his nation's suffering. Having diagnosed the cause, he then would perform that "heroic deed" in order to "rescue a nation which is suffering from a fatal disease." Hitler's actions on the stage of history followed as a consequence of his fantasy that Germany was an actual body politic containing pathogenic microorganisms. Did Hitler believe this fantasy, or did he put forth his ideology in order to justify killing for other reasons? Based on thirty-five years of research, I conclude that Hitler did believe this fantasy, indeed experienced it as real, and thus was able to convey his ideology so passionately to others. Rudolf Hess often declared that "Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler." This statement articulated Hitler's fantasy that his body was fused with the body politic, the boundaries of his own body co-extensive with Germany's boundaries. Insofar as Jews were a disease within the body of Germany, Hitler therefore experienced the Jewish disease as present within his own body. What was the nature of Hitler's disease? We say that people "identify with their nations." Freud theorized that the human ego is "first and foremost a body ego." Nations may be viewed as projections of the body ego, vast, omnipotent extensions of the self. Hitler, an early embodiment theorist, insisted that Germany was not merely an abstract idea or imagined community, but rather a "real substance of flesh and blood." Killing Jews for Hitler was equivalent to destroying a diseased part of the body. Hitler put forth his plan for extermination as follows: "One must act radically. When one pulls out a tooth, one does it with a single tug, and the pain quickly goes away. The Jew must clear out of Europe." Hitler conceived of genocide as an activity that was equivalent to removing an infected part of the body that caused pain. In killing Jews, Hitler attempted to kill off a diseased, painful part of himself. We may hypothesize and begin to explore the idea that genocide has a psychosomatic dimension. The external object requires destruction because it is experienced as if a part of the body, a disease threatening one's existence. Killing is undertaken in order to eliminate the source of the painful disease, that is, to remove from within the body politic a destructive entity experienced as coterminous with the self. _____ E-mail: <mailto:libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net> libraryofsocialscience-AT-earthlink.net Phone: 718-393-1081 Web: <http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/> http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/ --- StripMime Warning -- MIME attachments removed --- This message may have contained attachments which were removed. 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