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In 1895 Sigmund Freud coined the term “displacement” in The Interpretations of Dreams. What he meant by this was the unconscious redirection of negative feelings -rage, fear, anxiety - from the true object of their intent to safer, less destabilizing ones. As a simple example, a child displaces his anger and hostility from his father, whom he fears or feels responsible for, to his younger brother and ends up taunting and berating that brother for reasons that appear uncalled for or even confusing to him.
What I wish to argue in this paper is that a form of displacement is operating increasingly on a societal level, redirecting feelings of rage, fear and anxiety away from the neoliberal social order to objects that are affectively compelling but that do not challenge the foundations of real power. Both the ideological Left and Right are engaged in the social construction of explanations for what so many of us see as social and political breakdown. I use the concept of displacement for this process not in the traditional Freudian sense wherein intrapsychic conflict is responsible. Rather, I view individuals today as deeply confused over the economic, social, and political worlds they inhabit. They turn to what is currently available in their ideological landscapes for meaning and understanding, and it is in that turning they encounter ideologies of displacement.
To find our way in a society that appears increasingly chaotic, complex and polarized, individuals absorb what is being offered by thinkers and politicians embedded in a deeply divided political environment: from the Right, our fear and anger are directed to the coastal elites, the deep state, and Critical Race Theory, and from the Left to systemic racism and transphobia. Rage against these objects provides us with the ability to channel our most negative feelings, but because these objects remain so broad, largely symbolic, and/or ill-defined, there are no real solutions offered for their elimination. Rather, t