Enmity is constituted by projecting one’s own aggression onto the other

Evidence

The series of double or ambivalent impulses continues to operate “in” the object and to constitute the enemy object as always already double. Hence, if in the first stage of the neurosis the father is considered a (passive) enemy (an object of aggression), he later goes on to become what Totem and Taboo had described him as having already been: the (active) enemy (the subject of aggression). Hans’s first “instinctual impulse” was, no doubt, “a hostile one against the father,” yet that hostile impulse is repressed and attributed, by way of yet another substitution, to the father himself “Instead of aggressiveness on the part of the subject towards his father, there appeared aggressiveness (in the shape of revenge) on the part of his father towards the subject.” Thus the father becomes what he already is: the enemy. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 443

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the enemy as an object that is always already double: passive object of aggression that becomes the active subject of aggression through projection.