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Disavowal is a small book that makes big claims. Zupančič develops her titular concept in order to explain a range of confounding sociopolitical phenomena—climate change denialism, proliferating conspiracy theories, the anti-vaccination movement, and a growing mistrust of scientific expertise in general. “Disavowal, which sustains some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite, is becoming a predominant feature of our social and political life,” she contends (p. 2). Among her central claims is that disavowal—as distinct from repression, on one hand, or denial, on the other—should be understood as a “social rather than just individual structure” (p. 18). The book offers a philosophically sophisticated attempt to account for what can look like completely irrational developments. Zupančič insists that, far from irrational, “the contemporary social modality of disavowal is a perverse form of reason, of knowledge itself, and not a return of some archaic and obscure drive” (p. 3, original italics). At our bewildering historical moment, it may be worth considering the hypothesis that more than merely individual cluelessness or mass denial prompts millions of Americans to embrace Trumpian falsehoods, for example.
As a psychic defense mechanism, disavowal describes how people may at once acknowledge the facts and yet proceed as if in blithe ignorance of them. For example: Yes, we know that politicians always lie, but we nevertheless believe what Donald Trump says; or, we see the signs of global warming, but we still believe that “climate change” is a hoax. What Zupančič adds to the latter example is that even those who do believe in climate change continue to act as if it weren’t really happening; the urgency of the facts—what we might call the reality of the reality—is disavowed. Such cases make clear that disavowal involves a form of splitting in which two incompatible beliefs are maintained, with the proviso that what is disavowed is evidence co