Schizophrenia in Postmodernism
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
Allen Ginsberg, Howl
Modernism alienates. Postmodernism fragments into schizophrenia. In Postmodernism the ‘subject’ is ‘decentered’ and loses its capacity to organize meaning. History is destroyed as the subject is unable to organize past, present, and future into a coherent experience. Time is experienced as fragments, images, and hyperreal overlays. Postmodernism creates schizophrenic knowledge.
Schizophrenia can be defined as the breakdown in the signifying chain which constitutes meaning. The term ‘gaslighting’ has been heavily used in recent years to denote a form manipulation and psychological control where people are deliberately and systematically fed false information. People end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity.
The technique of gaslighting to create schizophrenia has its theoretical basis in Saussurean Structuralism. In this theory, meaning is not created by a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified, between a word and its concept. Rather meaning is created by a subject (person) situating a signifier (language) in relationship to the thing signified (concept). A person ascribes meaning to the events of in their life by relating a word to a concept.
Gaslighting has become a technique of manipulation and control under Postmodernity and the exercise of Power over the population. Here the subject is unable to situate a concept in life (space/time/events) and ascribes a wrong meaning to the signifier.
Disassociation between signifier and the thing signified creates a form of schizophrenic fragmentation of language made popular by the beat poets of the 1950s. The sentence disintegrates the fabric of the narrative it inhabits. Disassociated words create powerful non-sequiturs and disjointed meanings where global meanings must be interpreted. The technique is to create discontinuities between sign and signifier, then to reframe reality by creating continuities where none exist.
Schizophrenic disjunction becomes a cultural style. It is rap music, beat poetry, and graffiti. Media gives us pictures and video in disjointed flashes. We know these pictures are ‘real’ coming from life, but we don’t know their context. There is a “material signifier” but no signified meaning. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Postmodernism deliberately creates cultural trauma leading to schizophrenia. Lacan describes schizophrenia as the breakdown of the signifying chain where the individual cannot ascribe the correct meaning to experience. In Saussurean Structuralism meaning is not a one-to-one relationship between signifier and signified, between a word and its referent concept. Rather a word or sign is always interpreted in relationship to other words and signs. It is a one-to-many relationship where a word may mean many different things. The individual must interpret the word and understand its meaning in a sentence. Postmodern techniques deliberately break the signifying chain to cause a deconstruction of meaning causing deliberate schizophrenia. When the relationship between sign and meaning breaks down, when the links of the signifying chain break, we have schizophrenia in the form of unrelated signifiers. The schizophrenic cannot identify itself as a personal identity that consists of a past, present, and future, and cannot use language (signifiers) to achieve this temporal unification. For the schizophrenic the breakdown of the signifying chain reduces experience down to pure unrelated phenomena.
In society mass schizophrenia causes a sense of unreality countered with an attempt to return to the real. Reality becomes a romantic longing for a real past, that may not have existed. This reaction to Postmodernism is an attempt to return to real life and real experience. People yearn for the authentic, the organic, a pure fix.
Postmodern unreality produces euphoria, an intoxicating hallucinogenic high. Anxiety and alienation of Modernity is replaced with euphoria and joyous intensity. The hyperreal is an addiction reinforcing more addictive behavior.
Deliberate and systemic false information for the purposes of manipulation and psychological control is a vital part of Postmodern culture. Manufacturing desire was used in advertising to sell products as part of the capitalist mode of production. Later it was used by the state to issue propaganda. Under state capitalism it infects all areas of society as all knowledge is manipulated. All Postmodern knowledge has an agenda. It becomes increasingly difficult for people to see the truth or even trust their own experiences. This creates an institutionalized schizophrenia where individual experience is devalued, and instead the state, corporations, or social institutions control the narratives that create meaning and knowledge.
Central to the technique of social schizophrenia is the destabilization of the victim’s sense of identity and self-worth. This is often accomplished by minimizing the subjective experience of the individual and inflating the importance of communal knowledge. A central narrative is the destruction of what ‘I’ think and feel, and instead outsource judgement and opinions to what ‘We’ think. This often starts with the tactic of having the individual identify with a social group. Identity politics may be Democrat/Republican, LGBTQ, race, sex, religious affiliation, profession, and other social groups. Once a social identity is established the next phase of manipulation can begin. Initially the lies are about simple things, but the volume of misinformation grows over time. The victim is accused of lying if they question the narrative. There are positive and negative reinforcements against the victim in the form of raising or lowering their status in the social group.
Social schizophrenia can be psychologically devastating. It violates trust people have in society and destroys the person’s view that society is good and just. The person starts to question everything and everyone in their life. The victim also loses trust in themself and their self-worth. The victim starts to blame themselves for being too trusting, vulnerable, or dependent. The experience of this manipulation can make a victim not want to be involved in society again. The alienation inherent in Modernism and capitalism is exponentially increased under Postmodern schizophrenia. The main symptoms are anxiety, depression, and escapism. The outcome is a toxic society that alienates, gaslights, and manipulates its individuals. All knowledge and information is weaponized and used for effect against the individual.
