Globalisation, War and the Death Drive

Abstract

This paper deals with the psychoanalytical conception of aggressivity, destruction and war in relation to the contemporary context of the globalisation process. The destructive tendencies are interpreted with the help of the psychoanalytical theory of the paranoid-schizoid position. The paper plays off Patočka's "heretic" conception of war as something meaningful and meaning-giving against the Freudian conception of war as one of several ways in which the death drive may be externalised. It examines the possibilities of Freudian determinism and instinctivism to handle human destructivity. It suggests that something like a "destructive revolution", which would be analogous to the 20th century sexual revolution, is needed in order to reduce the contemporary international tension.