問題詳情

A community, whether spatially organized or defined according to othercriteria such as ethnicity or sexuality, is a particular kind of social group. Itwill be remembered that Benedict Anderson insists that all communities areimagined; they vary, however, according to their style of imagining, and thisstyle is expressed in both the nature of the group's boundaries and thenarratives that constitute the group imaginary. In situations of intercommunalconflict—which, as we have seen, have economic, social, and/or politicaldeterminants—processes of identity construction take on a particular characterbecause of the way in which they enlist the kinds of powerful group emotionsdescribed by Georg Simmel and others. In particular, they become infused bya complex amalgam of hatred and paranoia that give such conflicts anindeterminacy that is irreducible to the material factors. Such conflictualrelations constitute, in Walter Benjamin's schema, a breakdown in therelationship between self and other and thus lead to a paranoid style ofimagined community. This is equivalent to a defensive and paranoid strugglein which each party experiences the existence of the other as a threat and seeksto obliterate the difference.As we have seen, Simmel calls attention to the integrating effect ofantagonism—the way in which it brings cohesion. Echoing Hegel, Simmelargues that "the first instinct with which the individual affirms himself is thenegation of the other." And, if we follow this line of analysis, so it is with thegroup: the group identity is affirmed in the act of negating the other. Thisidea—that identity requires the negation of difference—has been a tenet ofmuch contemporary social and political theory, particularly poststructuralisttheory. But this suggests that identity is always constructed agonistically, notthrough constructive relations with the other but in struggle with the other.What Simmel referred to as polar differentiations we might think of asantinomies. For Freud, love and hate constituted the basic antinomyunderlying emotional life. However, unlike Simmel and the poststructuralists,Melanie Klein argues that there are two different ways of dealing with suchantinomies. One is to split them apart, thereby creating binary oppositions; theother is to hold the tension implicit in the antinomy and live the contradiction.The first state of mind Klein refers to as paranoid-schizoid; here, what isexperienced as being bad is repudiated in the self and projected onto the otherwhile what is experienced as good is attributed to the self. So in place ofambivalence—the mixture of love and hate we feel toward ourselves andothers—we appropriate love for ourselves and our group by projecting hatredonto the other, an other that is henceforth experienced as a source of dangerand persecution. Similarly with the group, solidarity and fellow feeling can bestrengthened so long as the rivalries, hostilities, resentments, and hatreds thatwould otherwise dog the group can be projected onto the other.
51. What is the passage mainly about?
(A) Conflict is an integral part of a community.
(B) Social relations consist in imaginary feelings toward different groups.
(C) Group identities are constituted as a result of some conflictual relations.
(D) People tend to hate those who project negative feelings onto them.

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.419355
統計：A(7),B(13),C(9),D(2),E(0)

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