Diversity and aggression: A reflection on sensual meanings and an ameliorative law after Freud and Lacan

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore phenomenologically how the ‘inside’ (psychical) and ‘outside’ (the other and/or society) interweave since it appears that sometimes those of us who favour diversity may also inadvertently shut it down. Phenomenology appears to open more easily onto what we don’t want to know about in our everyday lives, or a turning away which impedes diversity. If we cannot hear our own thoughts that come to us from the ‘inside’, then how can we move towards diversity on the ‘outside’. The tensions between turning away and turning towards leads into a Freudian look at conscience and aggression, and Lacan’s idea of the ego being the seat of identification and misrecognition. Freud’s observation of an ‘original’ aggression towards the other appears especially important. It is argued that this aggression always fragments the movement towards diversity. Two factors appear to mediate this movement, namely a ‘negative’ exclusion, and a ‘positive’ ameliorative ‘law’. Two fictional accounts are given from everyday life reflecting societal and psychical aggression, including its ‘privacy’ or sensual meanings.