Dissociation and Disavowal in Discursive Norm Formation

ABSTRACT Social norms are negotiated in discourses. Discourse participants join together as collective actors in order to pursue their shared interests with the help of norms. However, successfully negotiated norms neither represent the interests of all members of society, nor are all representatives of these norms completely convinced of them. Because of the ontological principle of lack, all concepts of collective identity, including norms, are based on the frustration of members of the collective. Complete satisfaction is not possible even for the most discursively powerful actors, as they experience conflicting needs such as pleasure, social belonging and differentiation, not all of which can be fulfiled by a norm enforced by them. This promotes dissatisfaction, which can be suppressed by the unconscious psychological defence mechanisms of dissociation and disavowal. With these mechanisms, subject emotionally distance themselves from stressful situations such as the existence of inadequate norms. The subject can lethargically settle into difficult situations or use the disconnection from stressful feelings as a basis for discursively advocating for the change of norms. Power relations, cultural practices and structures promote the popularity of certain needs and defence mechanisms. Disavowed and dissociated discursive positions and feelings accumulate as the real and return unexpectedly in a destructive form. The question arises as to what extent discourses can be conducted without psychological defence processes and the real can be constructively integrated. The article combines psychoanalytic political social theory with micro‐practices of psychological and discursive processes, thus exploring the conditions of norm genesis.