Enemy objects shift along axes of interiority and exteriority.

Evidence

The nosology that Freud ultimately develops always involves substitutions and topographical articulations and disappearing acts. Distinct defense mechanisms are put in place that constitute and deconstitute the enemy object in complex ways along shifting lines of interiority and exteriority, the enemy within and the enemy without. “In phobia of animals the danger seems to be still felt entirely as an external one, just as it has undergone an external displacement in the symptom. In obsessional neuroses the danger is much more internalized.” (145). Freud designates these rwo spheres of enmity as “social” versus “moral.” “That portion of anxiety in regard to the super-ego which constitutes social anxiety still represents an internal substitute for an external danger, while the other portion-moral anxiety-is already completely endo-psychic” (145-46). — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 448

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Manufactured external enemies alternately take domestic and foreign forms; Longer equivalential chains make the enemy’s identity less stable. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 454