The Useful Lacanian Question During a Conflict: “What do you want from me?”

In previous cases of conflict people acted and responded in ways that suggested that they were facing threats to their identities because of that conflict. Invasion was a genuine fear, where a nation could be subsumed in the order of a foreign power, thereby causing the loss of a previous national identity.

The rebellious question “Who am I?” lingered not just after a war and invasion but rather during the war itself. The lack of knowledge of a war's outcome meant that people felt they did not belong to either side in the conflict, and the most pressing “Who am I?” drew from there. People were seeing, sensing, eating and living in the war context but this question remained in their minds, which was the first indication in their lives that there could be a way of life outside of national identity and that a kind of attractive “base-level life” was possible. In other words, the “Who am I?” is not asked when the one posing the question is feeling a loss and wants to get a definite answer (“In two years, you will be a Nepali”), but it is the first moment of the realization of a complete freedom from belonging to any nation or identity (“I don't belong anywhere and I feel free”). This lack of commitment to any nation or cause is what threatened the war-making elements and compelled them to make war in a way that did not elicit this question. This “Who am I?” question was prevalent in an atmosphere where struggles against war were themselves more aggressive; “Who am I?” was still a tactic based on implicitly defeating a certain side after a certain period of time rather than coming to a genuine discussion or contract between the warring parties.

War-making elements have found a way around anti-war outcry and have subdued the feelings of identity-loss. Sophisticated and exciting techniques of warfare have been produced today, so that war itself is seen as giving an exciting answer to the “Who am I?” question; war indeed has become about young people “finding themselves,” and that is how it is “advertised.” People are more geared today to live out their identity in the conflict context rather than feel that war robbed them of their identity; they have grown tough because of war rather than being unable to cope with it. Today war can take its time, be prolonged, get dramatic for the satisfaction and intrigue of the war-making elements, whereas previously there used to be war-making elements that got bored and grew irritated of war rather than singing its praises, and this attitude was an important reason that brought about the end of certain wars.

People have grown accustomed to war, they have grown to build a daily life that is not against the war, or disrupted by the war, but rather utilizes the context of the war, a life that is actively involved in the war context; there is a daily life where offices to deal with conflicts have arisen, the think-tanks have made work of the studying of war daily and so war subsequently became more than an armed struggle but becomes work, a job. “Popular support” for war becomes more than a wave of supporters celebrating war in the streets and becomes a concentrated group of individuals utilizing their intellect and information to justify war, finding the war context exciting as it enables the exercising of their imaginations as much as demanding objective dealing with cold facts. The aura of seriousness to the war-effort makes war very hard to take as a joke or distraction. War used to be considered a distraction in the lower wrung of the social strata, and the higher up one went in the hierarchy the more war was looked at as a joke. Today this model has been outdated by the fact that the higher-up, intellectual class is more engaged in war than before, and hence this higher-up class builds sophisticated wars rather than considering wars to be a joke.

The most effective rebellious question in war is no longer “Who am I?” posed to nature or God, but rather, following Lacan, the more primary question that we all ask as human children to human mothers: “What do you want from me?”. Unlike the “Who am I?” which takes one beyond the people and war, the Lacanian question places two conflicting people in a relationship. The question is not a “What do you want that I have? What do you want from my possessions?” but “What do you want from me?” at once ready to give the most intimate and personal of things, things from me, and not from mine. “What do you want from me?” is essentially a question with no answer because there is no thing that is from me, instead, everything I have is a possession based on a contract. There is nothing except for “me” that “I” can give; and the "What do you want from me?" question itself is all I can give...The only way to preserve Nepali identity is to give it over to the other who will preserve it. The only thing the other wants “from me” is the preservation of my identity just as it is.