"WinterPalace 2021": Hobbes, Phantasy, and the Assault on Pluralism

• In Event: Riot and Resistance: For Good or for Ill

Abstract

This essay will examine the January 6 insurrection in the context of Hobbes'theorizing on phantasy and how it appears in and affects political life. I will look at how phantasy pushes the passions of hate, vengeance, and rebellion; and how phantasy is harnessed in the service of artificial constructions of reality that possess no relation to the empirical truth. It is the will to believe, the ignorance of reason and judgment that makes such appeals inspiring to audiences willing to engage in insurrectionist violence. It is my argument that phantasy, as both Hobbes describes it and modern psychoanalytic theory, constitute the major ideological and authoritarian threats to the survival of pluralism and democratic values.

Author

• James M. Glass, University of Maryland, College Park