Mia Lasic-Ellis

In keeping with my original theme, I’ll now analyze stage fright—the fear of being seen. Not by a single individual but by a mass. Two things at hand, then: the analysis of the mass, the observer, and sight, the logic of observation. This article is the first part of the analysis, dealing only with the mass.

From the subject to a mass, there is a transfiguration which results in the loss of autonomy. Mob mentality, herd mentality, etc. These refer to the subject’s inability to deviate from the mass’s desire. Freud interprets this as “a recession of mental activity [by the individual] to an earlier stage such as we are not surprised to find among … children.” This regression invokes the child’s weakness, a dependence, wherein no action comes to fruition without the interjection of someone else. Then the mass is a figure of selective empowerment. It does not empower the individual to pursue or enact “originality and personal courage” but rather to stagnate on “the group mind which exhibit themselves in such forms as racial characteristics, class prejudices, public opinion” i.e. to default on existing social constructions that contain oppressive qualities (racism, homophobia, etc). This is the function of the mass: to simultaneously ground and ensnare the subject. The mass exhibits—to an exaggerated degree—the logic behind our subjectivity’s formation. We are at all times operating through the nexus of prevailing constructions. Thus, the tragedy of the white liberal who can only speak through white supremacy.

I’ll continue to borrow from Freud—this time the libidinal economy. Consider all psychical energy as libido, which is invested in objects to produce emotional ties, a currency of sorts. When the child becomes attached to its blankey, it invests a considerable amount of libido into the blankey to produce an object attachment that reads: I want my blankey. The aforementioned x-quality from previous articles functions as a catalyst; the sight of Nothingness arouses an investment.

If the mass signifies a loss of autonomy, it implies a unified entity. Then libidinal investment is orchestrated as such. Or we can invert Freud to say that libidinal investment is always already social; libido functions on a social dimension instead of a “private” one. Instead of claiming regression, we can claim inanimacy. Without the social libido flowing through the subject’s veins, the subject remains inanimate and exists only as a potentiality—a potentiality to redirect libidinal flows, not to invest them. The potentiality could then only be actualized through this social libido—individuality comes out of the collective. Consequently, the logic of subject formation changes; ensnarement is no longer by nature because there is no fundamental lack.

Whereas the x-quality explains pathological beliefs through a lack—kill “y” group to finally get x-quality—the social libido explains it in terms of positive production. Desire for fascism arises when the social libido is tainted with self-destruction. The individual has the power to produce reality instead of being merely subjugated by it. And that’s the rupture, a transition from negation to affirmation.

But more relevantly, we can ground the analysis of stage fright within the social libido to get away from the stale argument that the actor is pursuing (performing for) the mass’s appeasement—they are—but limiting the analysis to just this reduces the actor to a body bouncing between applause and heckles. Instead, the actor is producing reality—for themself and the audience—through the acting. We could posit stage fright as the impasse between the group and the subject. An analysis of this impasse would entail an analysis of observation.

All quotations are from Sigmund Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.” In the latter half, I borrow ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s “Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.”