Nationalism as Regressive Identitarian Acting Out and Its Destitution Through Democratic Action

Abstract

In the following text I would like to juxtapose two types of agency: on the one hand, the acting out of affects of hatred and envy against a projectively imagined other, which is mostly constitutive for nationalism; on the other hand, the deliberative acting on the basis of conflictuality which is constitutive of inclusive democracies, i.e. the ability within a society to resolve conflicts in a civilised way. In doing so, I will draw on the term of acting as enactment or acting out (Agieren), which Sigmund Freud coined for psychoanalysis, but which has since found its way into everyday language.