Suzanne Lundquist abstract

According to Walter Lippmann and Robert Bellah, a good society should be moving toward not a single homogeneous system but a society that respects and encourages diversity and attempts to reconcile the conflicts that spring from this diversity (Robert Bellah).

However, attempts to reconcile conflicts are often thwarted by unconscious shadows in both dominant and minority or immigrant cultures. The nature of the shadow in dominant cultures is defined by Jean-Francois Lyotard as secondary narcissism. Several patterns or pathologies emerge when this secondary narcissism is brought to consciousness: species arrogance (John E. Mack); the tendency to reduce the Other to the same (Emmanual Levinas); conflictual mimesis-- the unconscious desire to create envy in the Other while withholding what is desired; and monstrous doubling -- where perpetrators and victims within nations become doubles of each other (Rene Girard). Often times, inherited oppression or colonial despair (Carol Ward) is experienced by minority or immigrant cultures who then formulate various attachment disorders which irrupt in violence. The imago dei or image of wholeness is also in conflict between dominant and minority cultures -- often one being secular or individualistic and the other being religious or communal. In communal societies, when the image of God is criticized (fairly or unfairly), those with attachment disorders justify their violence in the name of God.

This paper wants to discuss the prospects of identifying those unconscious shadows within nations that lay claim to being Good Societies.

Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist is an associate professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of Trickster: A Transformation Archetype and Native American Literatures: An Introduction. Lundquist spent ten summers doing interdisciplinary service learning in Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico among indigenous peoples. Her specialies include Cultural Studies, comparative mythologies, Native American Literature, and American minority discourse. She has written numerous articles on these subjects. Lundquist is also a member of the Jewish American Literature and Holocaust congress.