Xenophobia and economics

Just as road rage is not primarily about the person at whom the rage is directed, so the current, or recent, spate of attacks against foreigners is not, I believe, primarily about hatred for these unfortunate migrants.

Road rage is a classic example of what is known in psychoanalysis as ‘projection’ — in this case the projection of one’s uncontrolled anger onto a person who is erroneously perceived as having done something that deserves one’s justified rage, which really derives from something completely different. The person who goes berserk in a fit of road rage may have been fired from his or her job, or be extremely stressed because of a breakdown in his or her marriage, or could be facing what seems like insurmountable financial difficulties. Then, when someone inadvertently swerves in one’s direction on the freeway, or fails to move out of the ‘fast lane’ when one wants to pass their car, or slams on brakes in front of you, necessitating some serious evasive action, this triggers the rage in question. But it is merely that — a ‘trigger’ of violent behaviour, which is more fundamentally connected with, and an expression of, the kind of stress, distress, or anxiety referred to above.

In a similar manner, I believe, the rage directed against foreign nationals really comes from a deep sense of discontentment, anxiety and distress, and is triggered by these people’s presence in so far as they metaphorically represent the true cause of the distress, which is economic.

When people — most of them apparently quite young — are unable to find a legitimate source of income in their own country, and as a result live lives bordering on destitution, the sight of foreign nationals making a living from selling goods at ‘their’ shops, among other things, easily provokes (that is, triggers) envy or resentment that manifests itself in violent attacks. But the true reason for the violence is not the presence of the foreigners; their presence as people who are apparently succeeding in generating an income is simply a stark reminder of the economic woes of the South Africans who ‘take out’ their economic misery on these people.

What could alleviate the economic misery of these South Africans? For one thing, I doubt whether they have the necessary skills to participate in the kind of economy that sets the norm today, namely one in which either various professional qualifications or the kind of skills required by the information society ensure that one has a job with a good income. In short, the mere, basic capacity to do a day’s manual, unskilled labour, is not what would get you a ‘good’ job in a globalized economy, which goes a long way towards explaining why so many South Africans are unemployed.

At the same time we live in a society where everything around one combines to create the impression that, to ‘be’ a person at all today, you have to surround yourself with the trappings of material success, such as a swanky car, Saville Row suits, the latest cellphone, hi-fi equipment, television sets and so on. A case in point is the billboard advertisement along the M1 in Johannesburg, which shows a young black businessman behind the wheel of the flagship Cadillac, with the caption: ‘The new measure of success’. Needless to say, when thousands of people see advertisements such as this one day after day, without any hope in hell of ever owning such a car, while at the same time being exhorted by the media to own it as if it is a real possibility for everyone, something’s got to give.

People identify with the images of role models, and such identification is not without consequences. Lacan points out that every process of identifying with an image of a certain kind is characterized by rivalry with the image, which really means by competition with what or whom the image represents. Moreover, he reminds one, such rivalry is invariably accompanied by aggression. In other words, when an unemployed person looks at an image like the one described above, and willy-nilly identifies with it because everything in the surrounding culture encourages one to desire such a way of life, it initiates a sense of rivalry — of ‘I want to be like him (or her)’ — even if it is at their cost. Small wonder that unemployed people who are constantly surrounded by images which valorize material wealth, manifest their desire for such a kind of life in the form of aggression towards those whom they experience (rightly or wrongly) as their rivals, in the present case, foreigners.

As long as this mindless glorification of material wealth as a self-justifying condition continues, similar incidents of violence are bound to occur in South Africa — if not as so-called xenophobic attacks, then as criminal violence (as I have argued in an earlier post, Violence in South Africa: A psychoanalytical perspective. To make people aware of the blindness and emptiness of the materialistic values being foisted on everyone in this country — in slavish imitation of the ‘American (Hollywood) way of life’ — is, let’s hope, already doing something towards preventing similar events from occurring (even if it is in the guise of planting a little seed in the minds of some who may read this, and who are in positions where they can influence policy decisions, or perhaps even some people in government).