11. Hall, Psychoanalysis and the Problem of Populist Anger

This chapter is about the anger commonly associated with the Brexit vote. It exists as a Coda and not incorporated into the main text since it implicates a discipline, psychoanalysis, that Hall did not interrogate theoretically in the way he did other disciplines. So, this is an attempt to go beyond Hall and begin to consider the issues raised in attempting to introduce psychoanalysis into conjunctural analysis. The initial problem is evidential: how do we know who were the angry voters? In the absence of this knowledge, incorporating anger into conjunctural analysis apparently becomes impossible. Yet still necessary given its obvious relevance to the Referendum outcome. So, the Coda begins to explore the nature of the difficulties. Hall’s one article specifically on psychoanalysis is used as a starting point. An attempt to explain Brexit anger psychosocially, combining psychoanalytic ideas with sociology, is also used to exemplify the theoretical problems. Finally, psychoanalytic ideas from Melanie Klein and Jessica Benjamin are used to show their potential in illuminating the social issues of racism and misogynistic violence, and how these might be incorporated into conjunctural analyses.