by Chris Horner
Things we don’t want to know that we know.
Donald Rumsfeld’s famous distinctions between knowledge and ignorance:
[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. [1]
It’s been suggested that we should add to that list another kind of ‘known’: unknown knowns. [2] these would be the kinds of things we actually do know, but somehow remain unaware that we know. The classic example would be repression: a painful memory is repressed from our consciousness, but continues to be present in the unconscious – where it may return to trouble us via dreams, symptoms and parapraxes (so-called ‘Freudian slips’). So we (unconsciously) know something, but do not (consciously) know that we know it.
But there is another variety of knowing that isn’t ‘unknown’, but inhabits a twilight zone between knowing and acknowledging: Fetishistic disavowal. This is where we do know something, but act on the basis that ‘I know this perfectly well, but nevertheless….’. To disavow something is to deny it; to fetishise something is to invest it with special powers. One knows that something is the case, but denies it to oneself. This is obviously paradoxical, for how can I know X is the case but at the same time deny it? How can I act a belief that I consciously deny, or deny something that my actions show that I believe? This is where the unconscious, fantasy, and the fetish, enter in.
The role of the fetish is that of a structure of desire: some thing: an object, a performance, even (especially) a belief or idea that we fixate on and invest with special powers. Its fantasmatic nature allows us to deny the thing we know. We cling to the fetish as a way of allowing us to act as if x were not the case, although we know it is the case. An obvious field in which this occurs in adverts and marketing: the consumer consciously knows very well that the Nike swoosh is just a logo that adds no real value to the T-shirt, yet hands over the extra cash despite the inflated price. The denial of what one knows is practical – it happens in what we do, not in what we say we believe.
So this isn’t just about things ‘in people’s heads’, but how they act. Fetishistic disavowal ensures the unwanted knowledge doesn’t interrupt the way we deal with the world. One can proclaim one’s disbelief – even adopt a stance of cynical detachment and yet act one’s belief in it. We believe through our actions. And this isn’t just something that an individual in the grip of a pathology does, but rather structures the way society makes sense of reality: ‘reality’ is permeated by collective (unconscious) fantasy. The illusion is ‘out there’, in the world.
Here are three examples of what I take to be fetishistic disavowal in today’s world, with suggestions of what the fetish in each case might be.
Climate Change
The evidence that catastrophic heating of the the atmosphere is happening, and that it will have potentially catastrophic effects is widely known. The scale of the challenge this poses to all life on earth is huge, and amounts to the requirement that we mobilise collectively on a scale not seen since World War Two. Yet the responses to that looming disaster are puny. As individuals we wake up in the morning, maybe sort the garbage into different boxes, see the sun shine and the birds singing and carry on as normal. So do most of our politicians. So do the corporations profiting from the very activities that are pushing us closer to the edge. The stakes could not be higher: at worst, the end of life on this planet, at best, a series of catastrophic events that will upend civilisation itself. What is the fetish here? I suggest ‘net zero ’ (other contenders might be ‘sustainable business practices’ or ‘carbon offsetting’) The various ways in which we tell ourselves that we will reach this target of ending carbon dependence in what – 20 years? 30? While doing nowhere near enough to bring that about works like a magic charm or spell. For we are surely spellbound by it.
Democracy
Democracy: rule by the people, a government elected by the citizens enacting the will of the majority. The reality is quite different. Take the USA: it is largely ruled by lobbyists and those organisations and individuals who have the money to determine what laws will be passed. Everybody knows this. The fetish is the tawdry electoral process and the party system itself. Attention fixes on the presidential candidates, polls and parties, while the business of deciding what actually happens falls to the those with the financial clout. None of involves secret conspiracies: it is all in plain sight. As Vox summarised the findings of a study by Giles and Page, of Northwestern University :
the authors conclude, basically, that the US is a corrupt oligarchy where ordinary voters barely matter. Or as they put it, “economic elites and organized interest groups play a substantial part in affecting public policy, but the general public has little or no independent influence.” [3]
People know this, and effect is to create a cynical detachment from the process, an attitude of ‘they are all corrupt’. But the spectacle itself, and the contempt it engenders, acts as a fetish that allows the show to continue.
This isn’t to say that voting has no effect at all – it might matter a lot to have a President Harris, say, over a President Trump – but since both main parties mainly follow the will of the ‘economic elites and organized interest groups’, voting for the lesser evil is unlikely to lead to the expression of a popular will over, say, gun control or a public health system free at the point of delivery.
We can apply this description to many other ‘democracies’: the USA is only the egregious example.
Israel and the Palestinians
At the time of writing, Israeli forces are involved in killing, maiming, displacing and starving millions of civilians in the Gaza Strip. We also know that the USA and Europe is sending weaponry and the means to continue to do this. The USA could certainly end the killing by stopping the support for Israel’s genocidal ‘war’. It does not do this, but instead poses as an honest broker between the parties.
We also know that Israel is occupying land it invaded in 1967 (not to mention the dispossession of millions of Palestinians in the Naqba of 1948) and building illegal settlements there; it rules these occupied territory with a regime widely described as apartheid (I could cite the many independent organisations that use this term, but if you are in any doubt, which, lets face it, you really aren’t, you can google it). Again, we, and this of course includes our politicians and media, all know this perfectly well. The fetish? Perhaps ‘the two state solution’, or maybe the ‘peace process’.
Those are three examples: there are plenty of others.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns
[2] See, for instance, Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, pp 30-33, Verso, 1989.
[3] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained