Author/Authors :
Polimpung, Hizkia Yosie university of indonesia - Center for Global Civil Society (PACIVIS), Indonesia
Abstract :
It is quite often, wittingly or unwittingly, that people assume society, even the state, as person.They talk about society in a way as if it shares same attributes with human being: can be sick (asif it has body), can think (as if it has mind), can speak (as if it has mouth), for example. It is quiteobvious that this gesture implies a view ofsociety as an agglomeration of individuals. The problemarises around the legitimacy of this gesture: namely, to analogize the society as individuals alwaysimplies a logical leap. Things even get murkier when this gesture is applied even more to the wayin which people recognize the state: as collectivities, as a big-person. This gesture, which has methodological impact, is what the author call anthropomorphism analogy . By doing what the author callpsychogenealogy—a mixture of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Foucauldian genealogy, that is a way at seeing history as constituted by various contestation of materialization of desire—to the history of the modem state, namely, modem sovereign state, the author seeks to remedy this analogy with an objective account. The purpose is not to side with the analogy, but to pro ve that it is invalid not because it is scientifically inadequate, but that it is a true correspondence: state is person.
Keywords :
Anthropomorphism analogy , state , sovereignty , psychogenealogy , desire , anxiety