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 FOMENTING
POLITICAL VIOLENCE
FANTASY, LANGUAGE, MEDIA, ACTION

STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOSOCIAL

EDITED BY STEFFEN KRÜGER,

KARL FIGLIO AND BARRY RICHARDS
 Studies in the Psychosocial

Series Editors
Stephen Frosh
Department of Psychosocial Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
London, UK

Peter Redman
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK

Wendy Hollway
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK
Studies in the Psychosocial seeks to investigate the ways in which psychic
and social processes demand to be understood as always implicated in
each other, as mutually constitutive, co-produced, or abstracted levels of
a single dialectical process. As such it can be understood as an interdisci-
plinary field in search of transdisciplinary objects of knowledge. Studies
in the Psychosocial is also distinguished by its emphasis on affect, the
irrational and unconscious processes, often, but not necessarily, under-
stood psychoanalytically. Studies in the Psychosocial aims to foster the
development of this field by publishing high quality and innovative
monographs and edited collections. The series welcomes submissions
from a range of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary orientations,
including sociology, social and critical psychology, political science, post-
colonial studies, feminist studies, queer studies, management and organi-
zation studies, cultural and media studies and psychoanalysis. However,
in keeping with the inter- or transdisciplinary character of psychosocial
analysis, books in the series will generally pass beyond their points of
origin to generate concepts, understandings and forms of investigation
that are distinctively psychosocial in character.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14464
 Steffen Krüger • Karl Figlio
Barry Richards
Editors

Fomenting Political
Violence
Fantasy, Language, Media, Action
Editors
Steffen Krüger Karl Figlio
Department of Media and Communication Department of Psychosocial and
University of Oslo Psychoanalytic Studies
Oslo, Norway University of Essex
Colchester, UK
Barry Richards
Bournemouth University
Poole, UK

Studies in the Psychosocial

ISBN 978-3-319-97504-7    ISBN 978-3-319-97505-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97505-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956326

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Anette Selmer-Andresen / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

This book grew from a conference by the same name in 2016 and has
been a group effort throughout. We thank our authors whose inspired
work and engaged participation made this a smooth and pleasant process.
But as usual, when it comes to team play, there are those dexterous, untir-
ing people in the background whose excellent work would not find
appreciation if their names weren’t mentioned here. Thus, our thanks go
to Deborah C. Stewart and Tom Kugler at the Department for Psychosocial
and Psychoanalytic Studies (DPPS), University of Essex, for their fantas-
tic (not in the psychoanalytic sense) help with the 2016 conference. We
also thank all conference presenters and other participants who engaged
in discussion with us, sharpened our ideas, or changed them entirely. The
conference was also enriched by a chamber music trio comprising
Katherine Darton, Stina Lyon, and Chris Scobie. The University of Essex
graciously hosted the conference. The Faculty of Media and
Communication at Bournemouth University, the Department of Media
and Communication (IMK) at the University of Oslo and the DPPS at
Essex supported us financially. IMK also helped with the book publica-
tion. Thanks a lot!
Further thanks go to Grace Jackson and Joanna O’Neill at Palgrave
Macmillan for guiding us elegantly and surefootedly through the publi-
cation process, as well as to the series editors of Studies in the Psychosocial,
Stephen Frosh, Wendy Hollway, and Peter Redman, who supported this
v
vi Acknowledgements

project from the first. We are also extremely grateful to Jessica Yarin
Robinson, who copy-edited the book in a manner that sets new standards
of professionalism. And finally, we thank Joanne Brown, Stina Lyon, and
Marianne Heggenhougen for putting up with their respective parts of
this book’s editorial team on a daily basis.
 Contents


Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction  1
Steffen Krüger, Karl Figlio, and Barry Richards


‘Fighting for Something Great …’: Intergenerational
Constellations and Functions of Self-culturalisation for
Adolescents in Migrant Families 17
Vera King

 Most Brutal and Implacable Superego: Understanding the

A
Pseudo-political Violence of the Islamic State 37
Barry Richards


Pussy Riot, or the Return of the Repressed in Discourse 57
Maria Brock


Violence and the Virtual: Right-wing, Anti-asylum Facebook
Pages and the Fomenting of Political Violence 75
Steffen Krüger

vii
viii Contents


Shaping Prejudice? Holocaust Remembrance and the Narrative
of German Suffering103
Roger Frie


The Rhetorical Satisfactions of Hate Speech125
James Martin


Fundamentalism and the Delusional Creation of an Enemy149
Karl Figlio


Spatialisation and the Fomenting of Political Violence167
Deborah L. S. Wright


Four Monuments and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and
Collective Memory in Contemporary Hungary189
Jeffrey Stevenson Murer


Darwin, Freud, and Group Conflict219
Jim Hopkins

Index253
 Notes on Contributors

Maria Brock is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Baltic and East
European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University, Stockholm. With a BA in
Russian Studies (Bristol), an MSc in Social and Cultural Psychology (LSE), and
a PhD in Psychosocial studies, she does research into nostalgia and memory
culture in ex-socialist/ex-communist states.
Karl Figlio is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychosocial and
Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK. He is a senior member of the
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of the British Psychotherapy
Foundation and a Clinical Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, in
private practice. He has published widely on psychoanalysis as a discipline and
in relation to other disciplines, most recently on bearing unbearable memory.
His book, Remembering as Reparation: Psychoanalysis and Historical Memory
(Palgrave 2017), develops themes relevant to his chapter in this book.
Roger Frie is a clinical psychologist and a professor at the Faculty of Education,
at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. His academic work examines the inter-
section of cultural and personal dimensions in psychological development. He
focuses on how human beings develop within social, cultural, historical, and
political contexts, and in turn, how they respond to these contexts through situ-
ated acts of psychological and political agency.
Jim Hopkins is a Visiting Professor at UCL and Reader Emeritus in Philosophy
at King’s College London. He was Kohut Visiting Professor of Social Thought at

ix
x Notes on Contributors

the University of Chicago for 2008. His main work has been on psychoanalysis,
consciousness, interpretation, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Vera King is head of the Sigmund Freud Institute Frankfurt for psychoanalysis
and its cultural applications, as well as professor of sociology and psychoanalytic
social psychology at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. She has conducted
research into strategies of self-perfection, on migrant identities and disadvan-
taged families.
Steffen Krüger is a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer at the Department
of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway. He develops criti-
cal, psychosocial approaches to media texts and discourses. In his current
research project, “Online Interaction Forms,” financed by the Norwegian
Research Council (NFR), he analyses forms of online interaction on a variety of
platforms – discussion forums and social networking sites.
James Martin is a professor of politics at the Department of Politics and
International Relations at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is a
political theorist with interests in public speech, argument, ideology and dis-
course and their effects on subjectivity. He is currently working on the topic of
‘hate speech’ and preparing a book on the ‘psychopolitics of speech.’
Jeffrey Stevenson Murer is lecturer on collective violence at the School of
International Relations, University of St. Andrews. His research explores the
psychosocial processes associated with collective and individual identity forma-
tion in the context of conflict and through violence. It explores how anxiety can
motivate social action, and how perceptions of material change can prompt not
only violence but also a profound realignment of the boundaries of identity in
the contexts of postcommunist Central and Eastern Europe.
Barry Richards is Professor of Political Psychology at Bournemouth University
in the U.K. He has long-standing interests in terrorism and political violence, in
social cohesion, and in national identity and nationalisms. His approach to these
topics is psychosocial, combining psychoanalytic insights with sociological and
political analyses. His current work continues to explore the emotional dynam-
ics of democracy and governance, with security and the sense of safety as key
topics.
Deborah L. S. Wright has a degree in Visual Communication from Edinburgh
College of Art. Her artistic and academic work have centered on humans’ rela-
tionships with their environment. She worked as a supervisor, staff trainer, and
 Notes on Contributors xi

manager in residential care with people with learning difficulties and mental
health issues. She has worked as a Psychotherapist in private practice for eleven
years and is currently doing the professional doctorate at the Department of
Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex.
 List of Figures

Spatialisation and the Fomenting of Political Violence

Fig. 1 The spatial array of a building as an auxiliary mind introjected as
an auxiliary mind, by Wright, D 173
Fig. 2 Marking out spaces and people, by Wright, D 173
Fig. 3 The nave of Westminster Abbey, by Wright, D 177
Fig. 4 The shrine of Edward the Confessor, by Wright, D 178
Fig. 5 Speer’s ‘Cathedral of Light’ (‘Lichtdom’) at Nuremberg, by
Wright, D 181
Four Monuments and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and Collective
Memory in Contemporary Hungary
Fig. 1 Soviet War Memorial, designed and built by Károly Antal in
1946, is dedicated to the fallen soldiers of the Red Army during
the Battle of Budapest, by Jeffrey S. Murer 195
Fig. 2 Bust of Admiral Miklós Horthy dedicated in 2013, by Jeffrey S.
Murer196
Fig. 3 Monument to the Victims of the German Occupation, designed
and built by Péter Párkány Raab, was unveiled in the Spring of
2014, by Jeffrey S. Murer 198
Fig. 4 Shoes on the Danube Bank, conceived and executed by Can
Toguay and Gyula Pauer, was installed in 2005, by Jeffrey S.
Murer199
Fig. 5 Dialogue instead of double-talk, a protest placard in Szabadság
Tér in 2015, by Jeffrey S. Murer 211
xiii
 Fomenting Political Violence:
An Introduction
Steffen Krüger, Karl Figlio, and Barry Richards

Abstract In this introduction we use a speech by Rodrigo Duterte, the

president of the Philippines, as an example with which to explain the
psychosocial outlook of the volume. ‘If you had raped three, I will admit
it, that’s on me,’ Duterte told soldiers tasked with battling Muslim rebels.
We follow the reception of this and others of Duterte’s statements in
order to map the theoretical frame laid out by the concepts of fantasy,
language, media, and action and offer various interpretations and analy-
ses of the unfolding scenes. Subsequently, we introduce the volume’s
chapters with reference to the theoretical frame thus set up.

S. Krüger (*)
Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: steffen.krueger@media.uio.no
K. Figlio
Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex,
Colchester, UK
e-mail: kfiglio@essex.ac.uk
B. Richards
Bournemouth University, Poole, UK
e-mail: BRichards@bournemouth.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2018 1

S. Krüger et al. (eds.), Fomenting Political Violence, Studies in the Psychosocial,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97505-4_1
2 S. Krüger et al.

‘If you had raped three, I will admit it, that’s on me.’ This is what Rodrigo
Duterte, president of the Philippines, told soldiers tasked with battling
Muslim rebels on the southern Mindanao island, after having declared
military rule there in order to fight armed rebel groups (Reuters 2017).
Duterte made the remark as a joke in which he contradicted – and practi-
cally disavowed – both the pleading and threatening rhetoric that went
before it: ‘If you go down, I go down,’ he appealed to the soldiers in his
speech, ‘But for this martial law and the consequences of martial law and
the ramifications of martial law, I and I alone would be responsible, just
do your job I will take care of the rest.’ Subsequently turning to threats,
he warned his soldiers: ‘I’ll imprison you myself,’ referring to any soldiers
committing violations. It was at this point that he made the joking prom-
ise that soldiers would go unpunished for three rapes.
Now, this is probably one of the most direct, least euphemistically
vested ways of inciting political violence of recent times – performed
publicly, not only in front of soldiers but, via the media coverage of the
speech, national and international audiences. In its flabbergasting frank-
ness, it exaggerates and caricatures the tendencies towards impulsiveness
and looseness, aggression and transgression, populism and nationalism
that combine to weigh in heavily on the structure of feeling (Williams) of
the current historical moment. As that, it can serve here as an exemplary
case with which to unfold the practices, processes, and dynamics that the
chapters in this book seek to shed light upon.
In keeping with existing definitions (Bosi and Malthaner 2015; Della
Porta 2013), we define political violence as the infliction of physical, psy-
chological, and/or symbolic harm on people and/or things through a
variety of means so as to influence wider parts of a given public in order
to achieve political goals. However, the word ‘fomenting’ is a decisive
qualification here. In its sense of to rouse, stir up, excite, effect, and spread
(OED 2018), the term directs our interest in political violence to the
seismic contractions, historical movements, and shifts in social, political,
and cultural constellations that lay the ground for such violence to
emerge. Furthermore, the developmental aspect contained in the term
points towards the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic viewpoint that the
present volume takes. Such a perspective is oriented towards micro-­
interactions, relational styles, and dynamics between people, and pays
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 3

particular attention to the inter- and intra-subjective dimensions of such

dynamics.
This can be demonstrated by returning to the example of Duterte’s
aside. The jocular, self-contradicting way in which he made this state-
ment opens an ambiguous realm of meaning and non-meaning that acti-
vates all the concepts contained in the subtitle of this volume: fantasy,
language, media, and action. Into this realm of ambiguity, fantasies can
flow from various positions and perspectives. Not only will it have trig-
gered the imaginations of the Philippine soldiers as to who they are, what
their task is, and their duties and privileges, but also the wider Philippine
population will have been set alight with impressions and ideas concern-
ing their leader and themselves – let alone the female population on
Mindanao thus surrendered to the wills of an army let loose – and finally,
also the ‘world stage.’ All who witnessed Duterte’s statement could find
dark, brooding meaning here – to be embraced or rejected, rejoiced or
feared.
Staying with Duterte’s speech, in the kind of martial law to be estab-
lished on Mindanao, soldiers were to become unbound, relieved, and
freed from the constraints of doubt and empathy: ‘My order to the troops
is all people who are not authorised by government to carry arms and
they resist, kill them, wipe them out,’ Duterte ordered. In other words,
the force by which resistance was to be met was to be immeasurably,
unchallengeably stronger than the resistance it was to meet. Resistance is
not merely to be met and overcome here; rather, it is to be totally ‘wiped
out’ so that no trace of it will be found after the soldiers’ work is done.
In light of this fantasy of total annihilation, the joke about going free
for up to three rapes can no longer be seen as remaining enclosed in the
sphere of the ‘as-if.’ Rather, in a situation thus defined, the joke hints at
the very plausible circumstance that sexual violence becomes tolerated as
a degree of collateral damage to be expected and absorbed (see Wood
2014 for a comprehensive overview of conflict-related sexual violence).
Furthermore, the execution of military force and political violence on
this imagined scale becomes charged with a sexual dimension itself. Total
annihilation presupposes total domination and, accordingly, total subju-
gation. In this respect, Duterte’s joke is a way of admitting to a grotesque
proportionality in the monstruous fantasy of martial law that he imposed.
4 S. Krüger et al.

Extending this line of thought, it is enlightening to assess the family

relations that Duterte constructs between his soldiers and himself, how
he as president and military leader binds himself to the soldiers and, in
turn, makes the soldiers dependent on him personally. He takes respon-
sibility for and ties his fate to the soldiers’ actions; he threatens to person-
ally punish them for war crimes, but at the same time offers them personal
protection from such punishment – he upholds the law but informally
suspends it. From the viewpoint of Freudian theory, this creates a precari-
ous situation in which subjects are offered to let their drives (cultivated in
military training) run freely by assuring them that this will not only be
within the limits of what is approved of by the (externalised) superego
but, moreover, welcomed by it as being for its sake (see Kris 1941 for an
assessment of Nazi-German home propaganda along those lines). Soldiers
are directly bound to the president by ties of love and are made to depend
on the president’s quasi-parental authority. After all, should they, by
juridical standards, overshoot the mark in the way Duterte suggests and
jokingly invites them to, their fate will be in his hands only. In such a
paternal context, having the father’s goodwill, blessing, and protection
can be expected to have very concrete effects on the soldiers’ actions. Do
as I please – which I know will please you too – and I have you covered. This
has been the way in which the ground for conflict-related sexual violence
was laid in the Philippines in 2017. The circumstance that Mindanao is
Duterte’s home island adds a further troublesome familial dimension to
the concessions to his soldiers. It is as though Duterte, speaking from the
position of connoisseur, makes a perversely cruel, underhand compli-
ment to the women on the island – as though he gives his soldiers to
understand that he himself knows from experience that the women of
Mindanao are ‘impossible to resist.’1
Even though Duterte made his career in local politics, having held the
office of mayor of Davao City for long stretches of consecutive election
periods (1988–1998 and 2001–2009; Batalla 2016), his joke is anything
but a product of provinciality or naivety in national, or international
politics. To the contrary, with the incident being one in a chain of similar
and similarly gruesome ones, he will have been fully aware of the media
attention, and even if his remarks should have come to him spontane-
ously and were made off-script, he will have intuitively anticipated what
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 5

impact they would have. After all, in the case of the rape joke he could
already draw from extensive experience with public responses. In 2016,
for example, during a string of provocative anti-American statements –
one in which he called US President Barack Obama a ‘son of a bitch’ – his
approval ratings kept at an unambiguously positive 86 percent (Batalla
2016, p. 180). Against the insight that it apparently pays nationally to
show an aggressive disregard to the sentiments of international onlookers,
especially as concerns the US as the Philippines’ former colonial power,
Duterte could expect that the shocked responses from international news
outlets would only strengthen his standing with substantial parts of the
Philippine population, who – similar to the relationship his soldiers were
offered in the speech – embrace him as a strong, uncompromising, and
charismatic leader. Indeed, his rape joke could be expected to resound
positively and impress as a token of radical independence from and disre-
gard for an intellectual, globally oriented, liberal elite.
Carried by international media coverage, Duterte’s enactment of
authoritarian populism will have further resounded with audiences with
likewise authoritarian, transgressive inklings around the world. In
Western societies, his joke could tap into strong anti-Political Correctness
currents that, in turn, are part and parcel of contemporary internet cul-
ture. As Angela Nagle (2017) rightly claims, this online culture must be
seen as the reactionary reinterpretation of a culture of transgression that,
throughout the second part of the twentieth century, had been owned by
artists and intellectuals with leftist political orientations. Directly related
to this intersection of Duterte’s populist play with violence and transgres-
sive internet culture, BBC News reported in November 2017 on several
video games available on various app stores in which players could either
play Duterte himself or his police chief, Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa, and
shoot drug addicts.
Duterte’s links to urban death squads are an open secret and reach back
to his time as mayor of Davao. These connections he apparently took
with him into the president’s office in 2016, so that already by September
2017, there had been over 8000 extrajudicial killings by vigilante groups,
in addition to the 3900 deaths at the hand of police forces (Human
Rights Watch 2018). The above-mentioned video games, boasting titles
such as Pinoy Crime Fighter and Fighting Crime 2 (BBC 2017), turned
6 S. Krüger et al.

the killings into fun and play and, in view of their crude, two-­dimensional
aesthetics, into a joke once more. Indeed, one can understand the games
symptomatically as confessing to and disavowing the ongoing violence in
the Philippines at the same time. As with Duterte’s jokes, which play
‘hide and seek’ with reality, making suggestions only to laugh them off,
the games invite players to restage the literally thousands of killings and
experience them as absurd and inconsequential and the victims as two-­
dimensional cutouts receiving their natural fate.

 Psychosocial Approach to Studying Political

A
Violence
As cursory as the above assessment of aspects of political violence in the
contemporary Philippines is, what we hope becomes apparent from it is
how the realms of fantasy, language, media, and action inform and inter-
act with one another in a process towards fomenting violence – violence
that, in addition to its often horrendous effects, is politically motivated
and has political gains and losses. As shown, Duterte’s statement and its
ambiguous relation to reality has a place between humour and serious-
ness, legality and illegality; it draws on and, in turn, triggers fantasies that
are based on shared cultural imaginations, creating and recreating rela-
tions and dynamic interplays of investments, attitudes, and meanings. In
turn, the media coverage of the statement, circulating in the hybrid spaces
(Chadwick et al. 2016) in which various media forms (mainstream news
media, social networking sites, anonymous online discussion boards,
etc.) overlap and contend with one another, further shapes and adds to
the imaginaries and fantasies of audiences in vastly different contexts,
strengthening positions, modifying and transforming them, or breaking
them down. And finally, all the above will interact with existing cultures
of conflict that shape dispositions and the pathways of action and, in the
case of an eruption of violence, the modes and quantities of discharge.
Such an approach to the preconditions and developmental aspects of
political violence shares central viewpoints with a social scientific para-
digm in the study of political violence that has formed throughout the
last 15 years. This paradigm took shape when social movement scholars
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 7

started to research political violence in a way different from mainstream

terrorism studies (Bosi and Malthaner 2015, p. 3). The latter field had
shown tendencies to render essential the notion of the terrorist and failed
to take into consideration the specific ways in which people were becom-
ing radicalised and drawn into insurgent groups (see Della Porta 2013).
Social movement scholars, by contrast, sought to develop critical perspec-
tives to address and counter terrorism studies’ somewhat rigid and uni-
versalistic conceptions by shedding light on the specific contexts, relations,
processes, and dynamics in which radicalisation and acts of violence emerge.
In Political Violence in Context (2015), for example, Lorenzo Bosi, Niall
Ó Dochartaigh, and Daniela Pisoiu use the dimensions of time, space,
and milieu ‘as variables that are an intrinsic and central part of the analy-
sis of contention’ (Bosi et al. 2015, p. 3). In Dynamics of Political Violence
(2014), Bosi, Chares Demetriou, and Stefan Malthaner seek to develop
an understanding of the buildup and development of cases of political
violence by focusing on four dimensions of such dynamics: ‘state-­
movement interactions, intra-movement competition, meaning forma-
tion, and (transnational) diffusion’ (2014, p. 5). As a last example, Eitan
Y. Alimi, Bosi, and Demetriou (2012) offer an approach to studying
political violence that looks at its relational and processual dynamics. In
the article they write:

A relational approach, ‘depicts social reality in dynamic, continuous and

processual terms, and sees relations between social terms and units as pre-
eminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, ongoing processes rather than
as static ties among inert substances’ (Emirbayer 1997, p. 289). From this
perspective, strategy, rationality, and even values and norms are always rela-
tionally embedded in space and time and gain salience in the context of
social relations. (Alimi et al. 2012, pp. 7–8)

Paying attention to dynamic and relational aspects becomes particu-

larly important in view of the strong rationalistic orientation that domi-
nated a substantial part of terrorism and insurgency studies. In Why
Terrorism Works, for example, Alan Dershowitz (2002) argued that terror-
ism is ‘an entirely rational choice to achieve a political objective’
(Dershowitz 2002, p. 89). This argumentative line has been a mainstay in
8 S. Krüger et al.

terrorism studies of the 2000s and has been extended even to suicide
bombers. For example, Robert Pape (2005) contends that ‘over the past
two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists
have learned that it pays’ (Pape 2005, p. 343, quoted in Abrahms 2006,
p. 45).
Now, whereas we by no means want to rule out that a strong belief in
the effectiveness of one’s actions on the part of the (surviving) insurgents
plays an important role in spawning further such acts, we do not think
that conceiving of the rationale of terrorist acts as outcomes of sober
decision-making processes, in which pros and cons are meticulously
weighed against one another, is a fertile path to understanding insurgen-
cies. Thus, we strongly agree with Alimi et al.’s (2012) above point that
political violence cannot sufficiently be captured in and understood
merely through notions of strategies, tactics, aims, and calculations of
gains and benefits (see also Bosi et al. 2015, p. 6). As Barry Richards
argues in the present volume about a case of Islamic State propaganda,
even though this propaganda might appear to offer the recruit a rational
choice between in-group and out-group, or right or wrong, ‘There is no
real choice of any kind here, since the terms of the dichotomy have pre-­
empted that: would you choose the only right path, which leads to para-
dise, or (the only alternative) sin and eternal hellfire?’ (Richards, this
volume). Far from considerations of rational choice, Richards under-
stands the act of joining IS along the lines of Sandor Ferenczi’s (1949)
concept of ‘identification with the aggressor’ – that is, ‘a way of seeking
safety through merger with the boundless power and will of god’
(Richards, this volume). In our opinion, this interpretation of the
motives and circumstances of joining IS – a step offering a makeshift
solution to painful insecurities about one’s place and identity – is signifi-
cantly more orienting and socially enabling than that of a rational weigh-
ing of options.
What a psychoanalytic perspective can thus bring to existing approaches
to political violence is its theoretical richness and sophistication in analys-
ing and interpreting the inter- and intra-subjective dimensions of social
relations and cultural constellations. This sophistication is oriented towards
finding the irrational in the supposedly rational and, vice versa, the ratio-
nal in the supposedly irrational. Referring back to the above reading of
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 9

Duterte’s speech, a psychoanalytic orientation can unfold the affective,

‘sticky’ qualities in the relation between the president and his soldiers that
are mixed into the more explicit relations in the scene. As shown, the for-
mal relationship between soldiers and their leader can be understood along
these lines as permeated by a radically informal, libidinous dimension in
which Duterte enacts a paternal authority who is known to be brutal and
violent, but who shows himself to be benign towards and understanding
of his (soldier) sons’ needs.2 In this way, the context of his official speech is
coextensive with another context of male bonding, specifically: subjection
under and initiation into a paternal structure which needs female victims
to counter its homoerotic implications. This initiation will thus have
unfolded a catastrophic dynamic on Mindanao, inflicting gruesome vio-
lence on the island’s female population. While as of today, independently
verified figures are missing, the Philippine government has stated that the
counterinsurgency cost 1112 lives, all but destroyed the Muslim city of
Marawi, and displaced more than 400,000 residents (Human Rights
Watch 2018). Against these numbers, one can only surmise what the
women of Mindanao had to suffer – silently and off the record.

The Chapters in This Volume

In the approaches to fomenting political violence we have gathered in this
volume, psychoanalytic considerations of inter and/or intra-subjective
dynamics, such as the above, are combined with and checked against the
social, cultural, and political dimensions (and to a lesser degree economic
ones) in various ways and to differing degrees. Rather than attempting to
bring all contributions in line with one central conception of the psycho-
social, we have embraced a range of positions and methodologies, repre-
sented by our international roster of researchers, with some chapters
engaging more intensely with psychoanalytic theory while others are
more empirically oriented.
Vera King’s chapter (“‘Fighting for Something Great …’: Intergenerational
Constellations and Functions of Self-culturalisation for Adolescents in
Migrant Families”), which opens the main part of the volume, represents a
qualitative and intergenerational approach to the psychosocial dimensions of
adolescent development. This approach conceives of the psychic and the
10 S. Krüger et al.

social as dialectically interrelated. Her synopsis of findings from research proj-

ects on adolescents with immigrant backgrounds in Germany shows how the
socioeconomic and sociopolitical realities of migrant families in their host
country, as well as the ways in which these realities come in conflict with the
families’ hopes and expectations, prepare the ground for relational dynamics
between family members that can (but by no means must) lead to rigid iden-
tity formations on the part of the adolescents which might then foment acts
of violence.
Barry Richards (“A Most Brutal and Implacable Superego:
Understanding the Pseudo-political Violence of the Islamic State”) offers
an understanding of IS and its appeal to (particularly Western) recruits
through his reading of Dabiq, IS’s official, glossy magazine that was pub-
lished monthly for over two years, until the ‘caliphate’s’ demise. Drawing
on Ferenczi’s concept of the ‘identification with the aggressor’ (1949),
Richards suggests that surrendering to the absolutist and persecutory
superego of IS’s vision of Allah has a liberating effect in that the recruit is
freed from all ambivalence and ambiguity, all doubts and insecurities as
to her/his existence and role in life. This escape from ambivalence and
insecurity thus continues on from what King observes as rigid modes of
self-fashioning caused by a state of comprehensive disorientation.
In the chapters following Richards’s, we will turn to discursive phe-
nomena and their violent dynamics. Maria Brock (“Pussy Riot, or the
Return of the Repressed in Discourse”) analyses the widespread public
calls, circulating in Russian mainstream and social media, for harsh phys-
ical punishment of the female members of the band Pussy Riot, following
their satirical performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in
Moscow in 2012 and their subsequent imprisonment. What she finds in
the language and rhetoric used in these calls are residues of a linguistic
repertoire of Stalinism. Using Freud’s concept of the ‘return of the
repressed’ as a means with which to understand the significance of this
discursive afterlife of Stalinism in contemporary Russia, Brock suggests
that language which is ‘uprooted and retrieved from a previous historical
context … can retain a violent charge that comes back to haunt the
speaking subject.’ What this charge entails, as well as the fruits it has
borne, can be witnessed today, six years after Pussy Riot’s notoriety, in the
Russian government’s repressive treatment of journalists, activists, and
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 11

the political opposition. While these repressions are widely known, the
Putin government nevertheless has the support of the majority of Russians
and especially young adults (Troianovski 2018).
Continuing on Brock’s path, Steffen Krüger’s analysis of anti-asylum,
anti-migration Facebook pages in Germany (“Violence and the Virtual:
Right-wing, Anti-asylum Facebook Pages and the Fomenting of Political
Violence”) offers a similar connection between language and violence.
Applying Alfred Lorenzer’s (1986) interactionist paradigm to the posts
on those pages, Krüger identifies two main forms of interaction becoming
established there. Firstly, news reports about crimes committed by for-
eigners throughout Germany and Austria are condensed into a coherent,
agonistic reality. Secondly, the intolerableness of this reality is emphasised
time and again. In this way, a disposition towards violence is gradually
built up and, by implicitly making the users and audiences of the
Facebook pages responsible for the ongoing injustice, ways of violent dis-
charge are tacitly suggested. The disposition created on the pages can be
paraphrased: How can you be a witness to such injustice without doing
something?
The repeated plaints of an ongoing injustice done to the German peo-
ple, which Krüger finds in the posts of right-wing German Facebook
pages, are traced back to their historical roots in Roger Frie’s chapter on
the present state of Holocaust remembrance in Germany (“Shaping
Prejudice? Holocaust Remembrance and the Narrative of German
Suffering”). What Frie finds in the memory discourses advanced in
German families and closely knit communities is people’s tendency to
perceive of themselves as victims of World War II. In a development of
Krüger’s observation of the rhetoric of ‘endless suffering,’ Frie finds that
such suffering is put on a par with that of the Nazi regime’s victims.
Right-wing extremism, Frie warns, is able to profit from such perceived
victimhood and from Germans’ aggressive rejection of their role as
perpetrators.
While Brock, Krüger, and Frie thus point to the ways in which a vio-
lent charge can seep into and be built up in everyday exchanges, James
Martin (“The Rhetorical Satisfactions of Hate Speech”) puts forth the
question of what can be done with such charges and the language which
bears them. Approaching the 2015 controversy over antisemitism in the
12 S. Krüger et al.

British Labour Party, Martin argues for a view of political speech (includ-
ing hate speech) as a means to sublimate, rather than overcome violence.
Whereas rhetorics of hate tend to distract from the satisfactions that the
haters draw from them, it is important that we identify and analyse the
desires that drive them. Our task cannot be to eliminate hate altogether,
writes Martin, but, rather, to find ‘better ways to let our hate speak.’
Martin’s identification of a particularly harmful form of hateful
speech – one that acts as ‘a refusal to accept any symbolic mediation with
one’s opponent’ – prepares the ground for Karl Figlio’s argument
(“Fundamentalism and the Delusional Creation of an Enemy”). In his
contribution the author offers an understanding of fundamentalism by
way of acts upon objects that have lost – again in Martin’s words – ‘any
symbolic mediation.’ Reconstructing an incident in which an agitated
mob attacked the house of a paediatrician, smearing ‘paedo’ on the win-
dows of the doctor’s house, Figlio interprets this expletive, ‘paedo,’ as the
object of/for the attack itself. Staking out the wider bearings of this claim,
Figlio takes a theoretical detour to Freud’s concept of primary narcissism
(1914). From the first, Figlio states, narcissism creates a tension and, ulti-
mately, a rift in the ego due to the ego’s desire to take itself as object and,
at the same time, its fear of being replaced by such an object. The higher
the perceived degree of sameness between ego and object, the higher the
fear of replacement by that object and, consequently, of extinction.
Subsequently, Figlio claims, there exists within us a drive towards making
a difference which can then help us create the object upon which our worst
fears can be projected. He uses historical analyses of the establishment of
antisemitism at state level in Nazi Germany to illustrate this claim of the
difference that begs to be made.
Figlio’s observation that, under extreme stress and in near psychotic
states, people’s use of words can begin to act as objects builds a bridge to
Deborah Wright’s concept of spatialisation (“Spatialisation and the
Fomenting of Political Violence”). Spatialisation, Wright argues, is a psy-
chic mechanism by which intolerable, anxiety-provoking feelings and
thoughts, which cannot be contained in the self, are projected onto, and
placed inside, objects in the physical world, such as buildings, parts of
landscapes, furniture, but also people and animals. These objects are
manipulated and modified, moulded and marked, so as to inscribe into
 Fomenting Political Violence: An Introduction 13

them the charge that the subject is unable to bear. This concept represents
a fertile extension of Melanie Klein’s notion of projective identification
(1946). Like the latter, spatialisation projects intolerable feelings into an
Other that then becomes identified with these feelings. In spatialisation,
however, this Other is also physically modified so as to fit the projection.
This modification in turn facilitates the transmission of unconscious feel-
ings in that the object is made to bear the stigma that the self is unwilling
to accept.
Wright’s concept of spatialisation, in turn, offers a fertile tool with
which to approach the conflicted and embattled politics of remembrance
in contemporary Hungary, analysed by Jeffrey Murer (“Four Monuments
and a Funeral: Pathological Mourning and Collective Memory in
Contemporary Hungary”). The four memorials and a funeral site, which
Murer refers to in his chapter’s title, are all positioned in walking distance
from one another in Budapest’s city centre. They all can be understood as
the material renderings of the Hungarians’ struggle with their unfinished,
conflicted past. Contending interpretations of this past are thus inscribed
into the urban space, where they disseminate undigested affective states
amongst Budapest’s inhabitants. In this way ­memorials can be seen to play
an active role in Hungary’s ongoing authoritarian turn.
Finally, in the volume’s last chapter, we take an evolutionary perspec-
tive to the theme of fomenting political violence. While such universalis-
ing, ‘big’ narratives of the root causes of political violence have fallen out
of favour – and rightly so (see Bosi et al. 2015, pp. 1–2) – our psychoana-
lytic viewpoint justifies the present attempt in that it helps us uncover an
invariable aspect inherent in the manifold manifestations of political vio-
lence analysed in this volume. Thus, in “Darwin, Freud, and Group
Conflict,” Jim Hopkins integrates psychoanalytic theories of identifica-
tion and projection with recent advances in computational and affective
neuroscience and Darwin’s (1871) concept of in-group cooperation for
out-group competition and conflict (‘the competition of tribe with tribe’).
The problem of political violence, writes Hopkins, can be seen as arising
from this evolutionary arrangement:

For insofar as we cooperate in groups only to compete in groups, we can-

not cooperate as a single group, however important the shared interests
14 S. Krüger et al.

that might impel us to do so. … Attempts at species-wide cooperation thus

constantly regress to forms of all of us against the foreigner. (Hopkins, this
volume)

Confronted with the recent turn to authoritarianism in various parts

of the world, Hopkin’s claim rings painfully true – and so does Karl
Figlio’s argument of the ‘difference that begs to be made.’ With James
Martin, then, we must conclude that it cannot be our aim to overcome
hatred, but rather to find ways to ‘hate better’ so that aggression becomes
sublimated into symbolic contention and not fomented into violence.

Notes
1. This reading is supported by Peter Kreutzer’s (2009) analysis of Duterte’s
political rhetoric: ‘Duterte makes abundantly clear that there can be secu-
rity, but only he himself can provide it. Security is provided according to
his personal ideas of justice and adequateness. In his political symbolism,
Duterte clearly is above the law. It is him, who indicts, passes judgement
and orders the executioners to do their job. It is a personalized fight
between those who do not follow the rules and the rightful vigilante
whose rules reign supreme. It is boss-rule in pure form’ (p. 59).
2. Indeed, in an earlier incident from 2016, Duterte joked about the rape
and murder of an Australian woman, Jacqueline Hamill, during a prison
riot in the Philippines in 1989, that ‘I was mad she was raped but she was
so beautiful. I thought, the mayor [i.e. Duterte himself ] should have been
first’ (The Guardian 2016).

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 There I first met Mr. Frederick E. Sickels, the inventor of the trip
cut-off; that immortal man who conceived the idea of tripping the
valve mechanism of a steam-engine at any point in its opening
movement, thus releasing the valve and permitting it to be suddenly
closed. He had come over to exhibit his steam steering gear, which
is now used throughout the world. It was astonishing how little
attention it attracted. He had it connected and showed it in operation.
While he turned the wheel precisely as the steersman did, the steam
did all the work of moving the rudder and holding it in any position.
Nobody seemed to take the slightest interest in it. I attributed this
largely to his mistake in showing a very rough affair, the very thing
which he thought would add to its effect. He had an apparatus that
had been used on a coasting steamer which was captured by the
Confederates and employed by them as a blockade-runner, and
afterwards captured by our cruisers, taken into New York and
condemned. He bought this gear out of it at auction and sent it to the
exhibition just as it was. He believed that the more evidences of
neglect and rough usage it showed, the greater admiration its perfect
action would inspire. He learned better. Polished iron and brass and
mahogany would have led people to believe that he himself thought
it was worth showing properly.
The picture gallery in the second story of the main building of this
exhibition was really wonderful. Its most prominent feature was a
collection of paintings representing the progress of British art from
the days of Hogarth. All Europe was represented. I was told that the
entire wall surface was seven eighths of a mile long.
We also had a gallery of American art, consisting of a number of
remarkable large photographs of the Yosemite Valley, California, and
one painting. Mr. J. F. Cropsey, an American landscape artist of
considerable celebrity at home, had formed a scheme for
establishing himself in London. He took with him a number of his
works. His pièce de résistance was “Autumn on the Hudson,” which
was greatly admired and for which he was offered a large price, but
he preferred to show it in London. He had sent it to the National
Gallery, and, to his consternation, it was refused, the committee
declaring that there were no such colors in nature. It also offended
the English taste, by which our autumnal tints are regarded as “very
gaudy,” so he hung it in Mr. Holmes’ office at the exhibition. He and I
had each a lot to learn about the way things look to our cousins.
 CHAPTER VIII

Sale of Governors. Visit from Mr. Allen. Operation of the Engine Sold to Easton,
Amos & Sons. Manufacture of the Indicator. Application on Locomotives.

he governor seemed to please every one. In

anticipation of a demand for them, I had shipped a
number to London, which met a ready sale. The most
appreciative persons as a class were the linen-
manufacturers of Belfast. One of them early took a
license to sell them there. The first one I sold in
London was to my friends Easton, Amos & Sons. As soon as they
saw it in operation it struck them as the very thing they needed. In
connection with their engineering works they carried on the
manufacture of lead pipe by hydraulic pressure. The engine which
drove a large section of their machine tools also drove the hydraulic
pumps for this manufacture. It was a very trying service. The
resistance was very heavy and came on and off the engine instantly.
The action of the common governor was not prompt enough to
control it, and they had to employ a man handling a disk valve with a
very short motion. He had to keep his eye fixed on a column of
mercury. When this rose he must open the valve, and when it
dropped he must shut it. It had been found that this was a poor
reliance for the instantaneous action required. They got a governor
from me at once. I received a message from them the next day. The
governor would not answer at all; would I come down and see about
it? I happened first to meet an old man, foreman of the turners.
“What is the matter?” “Matter! The governor won’t work, that’s what’s
the matter.” I was rather an impulsive young man and replied, “It will
work, or I’ll eat it.” He sharply responded, “If it does work I’ll eat it,
and I haven’t a tooth in my head.” Foolish old man! he was more
rash than I. I saw at a glance that the governor went through but half
its action. There was evidently some resistance in the valve, a
common fly-throttle. After they shut down at night I had the valve
pulled out, and found that the chamber was larger than the pipe and
that the wings of the valve were long and their points caught on the
ends of the pipe. The wings of the valve were soon shortened and
rebedded in the chamber, and when started again the governor
controlled the motion of the engine perfectly, to the great gratification
of everybody, and the delight of the boys, who had heard the old
man promise to eat it. The valve had been put in for my governor to
work, and the fitters had put up a job on me. The old man was not in
the secret. So the laugh was on him instead of on me.
Directly after this triumph I received an order from Mr. John Penn
for a governor to regulate the engine driving his marine-engine works
at Greenwich. This was the first and only engine I ever saw of the
grasshopper class, quite common, I learned, in earlier days. The
superintendent of his works afterwards told me, laughingly, that he
had a large account against me for loss of time; that he had become
so fascinated with the governor action that he had stood watching it
sometimes for twenty minutes. He knew by the position of the
governor every large tool that was running and what it was doing, if
light or heavy work, and especially every time a planer was reversed.
One day a gentleman asked me if I thought the governor could
regulate his engine. He was a manufacturer of the metal thread used
in making gold lace. A bar of silver, 2 inches in diameter and 2 or 3
feet long, was covered with three or four thicknesses of dentists’ gold
leaf, and then drawn down to exceedingly fine threads, and the gold
surface was never broken. I have often wondered how thick that gold
covering finally was. The heavy drawing of the cold bars required a
great deal of power, and when they shot out the engine would run
away and the fine threads would be broken. No governor nor heavy
fly-wheel would help the matter, and they had to do their heavy
drawing in the night. My governor maintained the motion absolutely.
Not only were the finest threads not broken by the sudden changes
in the heavy drawing, but the occasional breakages that they had
been accustomed to nearly ceased.
In this connection I cannot refrain from telling a good story on Mr.
Ramsbottom and Mr. Webb, although the incident happened the next
year. I received an order for a governor for the engine driving the
shops of the London & Northwestern Railway at Crewe. Soon after
its shipment there came a line from the office there that the governor
was behaving badly and I would have to go and see about it. I found
that the engine consisted of a pair of locomotive cylinders set upright
on the floor and directly connected above, the cranks at right angles
with each other, to the line-shaft, a plan which I have always
admired, as a capital way of avoiding belts or gearing. They were
running at 120 revolutions per minute, and were connected in the
middle of the shaft, which was about 400 feet long. The governor
was flying up and down quite wildly. I had never seen such an action
before, and was at a loss what to make of it. I saw no fly-wheel, but it
did not seem that its absence could account for this irregularity.
Indeed, with coupled engines running at this speed, and only trifling
changes of load, and a governor requiring no time to act, a fly-wheel
seemed superfluous. Pretty soon it came out that the want of fly-
wheel could not cause the trouble, for they had two. Where were
they? There was one at each end of the shaft, close to the end walls
of the building, where wall boxes afforded excellent supports. Fly-
wheels at the ends of 2-inch shafts and 200 feet from the engine! I
fairly shouted with laughter, told them to take off their fly-wheels, and
came home. The fly-wheels were taken off, and there was no further
trouble. Well, what should railway engineers, absorbed in locomotive
designs and everything pertaining to railroading, be expected to
know about fly-wheel inertia and shaft torsion?
About midsummer I had the pleasant surprise of a visit from Mr.
Allen, whose gratification at the show I had made was unbounded.
We saw much of the exhibition together. Perhaps the most
interesting exhibits in the machinery department, to us both, were
the working models shown by the marine-engine builders. There
were a large number of these, generally not much over one foot in
any dimension, but complete to every bolt and nut, superbly finished,
and shown in motion. They had evidently been made regardless of
cost. In the progress of engineering science, everything represented
by these elegant toys has long since vanished. We were much
impressed by a cylinder casting, 120 inches in diameter, shown by
Mr. Penn, one of a pair made for a horizontal engine for a British
warship, to work steam at 25 pounds pressure. Everything there
shown pertaining to steam engineering, except our own engine, was
about to disappear forever. How long before that also shall follow?
Soon after Mr. Allen’s return he sent me a drawing of his four-
opening equilibrium valve with adjustable pressure-plate. I realized
the great value of this most original invention, now so well known,
but its adoption required a rescheming of the valve-gear, and that
had to be postponed for some years.
In setting up the engine in the works of Easton, Amos & Sons, I
had a curious example of English pertinacity. Old Mr. Amos said to
me, “Porter, where is your pump?” “The engine has no pump.” “No
pump!” “No, sir; we consider a feed-pump as an adjunct to the boiler,
never put it on the engine, and generally employ independent feed-
pumps which can be adjusted to the proper speed. Besides, a feed-
pump could not be run satisfactorily at the speed of this engine.” He
heard me through, and then, with a look of utter disgust, exclaimed:
“If a man should sell me a musket and tell me it had no stock, lock,
or barrel, these were all extra, I should think it just about as
sensible.” Nothing would do but that this engine must have a pump. I
had intended to cut off the projecting end of the shaft, but Mr. Amos
ordered this to be left, and had an eccentric fitted on it, and set a
vertical pump on the floor to be driven by this eccentric, at 225
double strokes per minute. Also the feed-pipe had to be over 50 feet
long, with three elbows.
Of course, as the boys say, we had a circus. A mechanic had a
daily job, mornings, when the engine was not running, securing that
pump on its foundation. The trembling and pounding in the feed-pipe
were fearful. I suggested an air-chamber. They sent word to me that
they had put on an air-chamber, but it did no good. I went to look at
it, and found a very small air-chamber in the middle of the length of
the pipe, where it seemed to me more likely to do harm. At my
suggestion they got one of suitable size and attached it to the pump
outlet, when the noise and trembling mostly disappeared, as well as
the disposition of the pump to break loose. It did fairly well after that,
and they made it answer, although I do not suppose it ever one
quarter filled.
 Mr. Amos was the consulting engineer of the Royal Agricultural
Society. At this exhibition American reapers made an invasion of
England. Mr. Amos set his face against them, and in reply to my
question, what objection he made to them, he said, “We prefer to get
our grain into the barn, instead of strewing it over the field.” And yet
this man, the engineering head of this firm, was the only man in
England, so far as I knew, advanced enough to take up the Wolff
system of compounding, and who had bought my engine to run at
225 revolutions per minute, which it continued to do with complete
satisfaction until some years later, when these works were removed
to a location on the Thames, east of London, when I lost sight of
them.
During the latter part of the exhibition I learned that the McNaught
and the Hopkinson indicators were in common use in England; that
one or both of these were to be found in the engine-rooms of most
mills and manufacturing establishments, and that if the Richards
indicator were properly put on the market there would probably be
some demand for it, although at existing engine speeds the
indicators in use appeared to be satisfactory. A special field for its
employment would doubtless be found, however, in indicating
locomotives. I felt sufficiently encouraged to set about the task of
standardizing the indicator, and during the winter of 1862-3 made a
contract with the firm of Elliott Brothers, the well-known
manufacturers of philosophical apparatus and engineering and
drawing instruments, to manufacture them according to my plans.
This was my first attempt to organize the manufacture of an
instrument of any kind, and I set about it under a deep sense of
responsibility for the production of an indicator that should command
the confidence of engineers in its invariable truth. I found that the
opportunity I had enjoyed for studying the subject had been most
important. The daily use of the indicator which I had brought to the
exhibition was an invaluable preparation for this work.
I decided, first, to increase the multiplication of the piston motion,
by means of the lever, from three times to four times, thus reducing
by one quarter the movement of the piston required to give the same
vertical movement to the pencil, and, second, to increase the
cylinder area from one quarter to one half of a square inch. The latter
was necessary in order to afford sufficient room for springs of proper
size, and correct reliable strength in their connections.
The first problem that presented itself was how to produce
cylinders of the exact diameter required, .7979 of an inch, and to
make an error in this dimension impossible. This problem I solved in
the following manner: At my request Elliott Brothers obtained from
the Whitworth Company a hardened steel mandrel about 20 inches
in length, ground parallel to this exact size and certified by them.
Brass tubes of slightly larger size and carefully cleaned were drawn
down on this mandrel. These when pressed off presented a perfect
surface and needed only to be sawed up in lengths of about 2 inches
for each cylinder. Through the whole history of the manufacture that
removed all trouble or concern on this account.
The pistons were made as light as possible, and were turned to a
gauge that permitted them to leak a little. The windage was not
sufficient to affect their accuracy; a thickness of silk paper on one
side would hold the pistons tight; but they had a frictionless action,
and the cover of the spring case having two holes opening to the
atmosphere, there could be no pressure above the piston except that
of the atmosphere.
 SPRING-TESTING INSTRUMENT.
USED IN THE MANUFACTURE OF THE RICHARDS INDICATOR.
Designed by Charles T. Porter.
LONGITUDINAL SECTION.
SCALE, HALF SIZE.
END VIEW

The second problem was to insure the accuracy of the springs.

This was more serious than the first one. The brass heads of the
springs were provided with three wings instead of two, which mine
had. The spring, after being coiled and tempered, was brazed into
the grooves in the first two wings, and the third wing was hammered
firmly to it. This prevented the stress on the spring from reaching the
brazed joints, and these heads never worked loose. One head was
made fast at once; the other was left free to be screwed backward or
forward until the proper length of the spring was found. To insure
freedom from friction, I determined to adjust and test the springs in
the open air, quite apart from the instrument. For this purpose I had a
stout cast-iron plate made, with a bracket cast on it, in which the
slides were held in a vertical groove, and bolted this plate on the
bench, where it was carefully leveled. The surface of the plate had
been planed, a small hole drilled through it at the proper point, and a
corresponding hole was bored through the bench. A seating for the
scales also was planed in the bracket, normal to the surface of the
block. The spring to be tested, in its heads as above described, was
set on the block, and a rod which was a sliding fit in the hole was put
up through the bench, block, and spring. This rod had a head at the
lower end, and was threaded at the upper end. Under the bench a
sealed weight, equal to one half the extreme pressure on the square
inch to be indicated by the spring, was placed on the rod.
Between the spring and the scale I employed a lever, representing
that used in the indicator, but differing from it in two respects. It was
of twice its length, for greater convenience of observation, and it was
a lever of the first order, so that the weight acting downward should
represent the steam pressure in the indicator acting upward.
The weight was carried by a steel nut screwed on the end of the
rod and resting on the upper head of the spring to be tested. This nut
carried above it a hardened stirrup, with a sharp inner edge, which
intersected the axis of the rod, produced. A delicate steel lever was
pivoted to turn about a point at one fifth of the distance from the axis
of the rod to the farther side of the scale seat. The upper edge of this
lever was a straight line intersecting the axis of its trunnions. The
short arm of the lever passed through the stirrup, in which it slid as
the spring was compressed, while the long arm swung upward in
front of the scale. The latter was graduated on its farther side, and
the reading was taken at the point of intersection of the upper edge
of the lever with this edge of the scale.
The free head on the spring was turned until the reading showed it
to be a trifle too strong. It was then secured, and afterwards brought
to the exact strength required by running it rapidly in a lathe and
rubbing its surface over its entire length with fine emery cloth. This
reduced the strength of each coil equally. This was a delicate
operation, requiring great care to reduce the strength enough and
not too much. A great many springs had to be made, several being
generally required, often a full set of ten, with each indicator. This
testing apparatus was convenient and reliable, and the workmen
became very expert in its use.
The spring when in use was always exposed to steam of
atmospheric pressure. At this temperature of 212° we found by
careful experiment that all the springs were weakened equally,
namely, one pound in forty pounds. So the springs were made to
show, when cold, 39 pounds instead of 40 pounds, and in this ratio
for all strengths.
This system of manufacture and testing was examined in
operation by every engineer who ordered an indicator, the shop on
St. Martin’s Lane being very convenient. They generally required that
the indicator should be tested by the mercurial column. The Elliotts,
being large makers of barometers, had plenty of pure mercury, so
this requirement was readily complied with, and the springs were
invariably found to be absolutely correct. We never used the
mercurial column in manufacturing, but were glad to apply it for the
satisfaction of customers.
I employed the following test for friction. The indicator when
finished was set on a firm bracket in the shop. The spring was
pressed down as far as it could be, and then allowed to return to its
position of rest very slowly, the motion at the end becoming almost
insensible. Then a fine line was drawn with a sharp-pointed brass
wire on metallic paper placed on the drum. The spring was then
pulled up as far as possible and allowed to return to its position of
rest in the same careful manner. The point must then absolutely
retrace this line. No indicator was allowed to go out without satisfying
this test. The workmanship was so excellent that they always did so
as a matter of course.
Mr. Henry R. Worthington once told me, long after, that on the test
of an installation of his pump in Philadelphia, after he had indicated it
at both steam and water ends, the examining board asked him to
permit them to make a test with their own indicator, which they did
the next day. They brought another indicator, of Elliott’s make like his
own, but the number showed it to have been made some years later.
“Would you believe it,” said he, “the diagrams were every one of
them absolutely identical with my own!” I replied that the system of
manufacture was such that this could not have been otherwise.
 Plan of Spring-testing Instrument.

I wish to acknowledge my obligation to Elliott Brothers for their

cordial co-operation, their excellent system of manufacture, and the
intelligent skill of their workmen, by one of whom the swiveling
connection of the levers with the piston-rod was devised.
The indicator was improved in other important respects, but I here
confine myself to the above, which most directly affected its
accuracy. This soon became established in the public confidence.
During my stay in England, about five years longer, the sale of
indicators averaged some three hundred a year, with but little
variation. The Elliotts then told me that they considered the market to
have been about supplied, and looked for a considerable falling off in
the demand, and had already reduced their orders for material. Eight
years after my return I ordered from them two indicators for use in
indicating engines exhibited at our Centennial Exhibition at
Philadelphia. The indicators had from the first been numbered in the
order of their manufacture. These came numbered over 10,000.
The indicators were put on the market in the spring of 1863, and I
sought opportunity to apply them on locomotives. In this I had the
efficient co-operation of Zerah Colburn, then editor of The Engineer.
The first application of them was on a locomotive of the London and
Southwestern Railway, and our trips, two in number, were from
London to Southampton and return. The revelations made by the
indicator were far from agreeable to Mr. Beattie, the chief engineer of
the line. Mr. Beattie had filled his boilers with tubes ⁷⁄₈ of an inch in
diameter. The diagrams showed the pressure of blast necessary to
draw the gases through these tubes to average about ten pounds
above the atmosphere, the reduction of the nozzles producing this
amount of back pressure throughout the stroke. Another revelation
was equally disagreeable. The steam showed very wet. We learned
that Mr. Beattie surrounded his cylinders with a jacket. This was a
large corrugated casting in which the cylinder was inserted as a liner.
To keep the cylinder hot the exhaust was passed through this jacket.
Mr. Colburn made both of these features the subjects of editorials in
The Engineer, written in his usual trenchant style. The last one was
entitled “Mr. Beattie’s Refrigerators,” and produced a decided
sensation.
Our next trips were made on the Great Eastern Road, one from
London to Norwich and one from London to Great Yarmouth. On
these trips we were accompanied by Mr. W. H. Maw, then head
draftsman of the Great Eastern Locomotive Drawing Office, under
Mr. Sinclair, the chief engineer, and by Mr. Pendred. These
gentlemen were afterwards, respectively, the editors of Engineering
and The Engineer.
 Diagrams from English Locomotives taken with Richards Indicator.

The diagrams from the Great Eastern engines were, on the whole,
the best which were taken by us. On one of these trips I was able to
get the accompanying most interesting pair of diagrams, which were
published by me in the appendix to my treatise on the Indicator. One
of them was taken at the speed of 50 revolutions per minute, and the
other at the speed of 260 revolutions per minute, running in the
same notch with wide-open throttle. The steam pressure was higher
at the rapid speed. They afford many subjects of study, and show the
perfect action of the indicator as at first turned out, at this great
speed. I learned afterwards that the almost entire freedom from
vibration at the most rapid speed was due to the gradual manner in
which the pressure fell from the beginning of the stroke. This fall of
pressure before the cut-off I fancy was caused largely by a small
steam-pipe.
Our last diagrams were taken from a locomotive on the London
and Northwestern, by the same four operators as on the Great
Eastern trips. We ran from London to Manchester. On our return trip
Mr. Webb joined us at Crewe, and accompanied us to London. I am
sorry to say that in one respect the revelation of the indicator here
was almost inconceivably bad. Mr. Ramsbottom did not protect his
cylinders, but painted these and the steam-chests black, and in this
condition sent them rushing through the moist air of England. If the
steam cooled by “Mr. Beattie’s refrigerators” was wet, that in Mr.
Ramsbottom’s cylinders seemed to be all water. A jet of hot water
was always sent up from each of the holes in the cover of the spring
case to a height of between one and two feet. We had much trouble
to protect ourselves from it, and it nearly always drenched the
diagram. I never saw this phenomenon before or since. I have seen
the steam blow from the indicator cocks white with water when the
indicators were removed. But I never saw water spurt through the
spring-case cover, except in this instance. Truly, we said to each
other, Mr. Ramsbottom has abundant use for his trough and scoop to
keep water in his tanks. It was on this trip that I observed how
enormously the motion of a black surface increased the power of the
surrounding air to abstract heat from it. While we were running at
speed I many times laid my hand on the smoke-box door without
experiencing any sensation of warmth. I wondered at this, for I knew
that a torrent of fire issuing from the tubes was impinging against the
opposite surface of this quarter-inch iron plate. In approaching
Rugby Junction I observed that the speed had not slackened very
much when I could not touch this door, and when we stopped,
although the draft had mostly ceased, I could not come near it for the
heat. At the full velocity with which the air blew against this door the
capacity of the air to absorb heat evidently exceeded the conducting
power of the metal.
W. H. Maw
 CHAPTER IX

Designs of Horizontal Engine Beds. Engine Details. Presentation of the Indicator at

the Newcastle Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of
Science.

uch of my time was now devoted to working out

improvements in the design of the engine, some of
which had occurred to me during the exhibition, and
which I was anxious to have completed before
bringing the engine to the notice of builders. The first
point which claimed my attention was the bed. The
horizontal engine bed had already passed through three stages of
development. The old form, in common use in the United States,
was a long and narrow box, open at top and bottom. The sides and
ends of this box were all alike, and their section resembled the letter
H laid on its side, thus ⌶. This on some accounts was a very
convenient form. The surface of the bed was planed, and everything
was easily lined from this surface. The cylinder was made with two
flanges on each side, which rested on the opposite surfaces of the
bed, permitting the cylinder to sink between them as desired. The
pillow-block rested on one or the other of these surfaces, according
as the engine was to be right or left hand. The guide-bars were
bolted on these opposite surfaces.
The first break in this monotony was made by Mr. Corliss, and was
remarkable for the number and the radical nature of its new ideas.
The cylinder was provided with broad feet near its ends, and was
planted on the foundation. The pillow-block was provided with similar
supports and was also secured to the foundation. The bed, so called,
was a tie-beam uniting the cylinder and pillow-block, and not
otherwise supported. It was of T section. The horizontal member was
behind the center line of the engine, and was made very deep in the
middle of its length to prevent deflection. The vertical member
extended equally above and below the former and carried the
guides, which were top and bottom V-grooves, between which the
cross-head ran and the connecting-rod vibrated. The cross-head
was provided with shoes fitting these V’s, and was adjustable
vertically between them. The connection with the cylinders was
made by a circular head supported by curved brackets. This
connection was firm on one side only. The bed was reversible to suit
right- or left-hand engines by merely turning it over.
In the bed for my engine, Mr. Richards struck out another design,
which avoided some objections to the Corliss bed. The guides were
supported from the foundation, and the connection with the cylinder
was more substantial, but the reversible feature had to be sacrificed.
Mr. Richards’ bed, shown in the illustration facing page 70, was
designed in the box form, the superior rigidity of which had been
established by Mr. Whitworth. It was a box closed at the top and
flanged internally at the bottom. It rested on the foundation through
its entire length. The main pillow-block was formed in the bed, as
were also the lower guide-bars. The cylinder was secured on its
surface in the old-fashioned way.

Engine Bed Designed by Mr. Porter. Engraving made from an Old Print.
 It occurred to me that the best features of the Corliss and the
Richards designs might be combined to advantage. This idea I
worked out in the bed shown in the accompanying illustration, taken
from a circular issued by Ormerod, Grierson & Co., of Manchester,
and which was made from a photograph of an engine sent by that
firm to the Oporto International Exhibition in 1865. It will be seen that
this is Mr. Richards’ bed with the cylinder bolted to the end after Mr.
Corliss’ plan. The great strength of the bed enabled the supports
under the cylinder to be dispensed with. This left the cylinder free to
expand by heat, and made it convenient to attach the steam or
exhaust connections or both underneath. This bed has remained
without change, except in one important respect. I made the first
cylinders with a bracket which was keyed up from the base of the
bed. In the illustration a corner of this bracket appears. At the Paris
Exposition in 1867 Mr. Beyer, of the firm of Beyer & Peacock, the
Manchester locomotive-builders, when he saw it, told me I did not
need that bracket. I then left it off, but found the cylinder to wink a
little on every stroke when the heavy piston was at the back end. To
find the weak place, I tried the following experiment on an engine
built for the India Mills in Manchester. I filed two notches in the edges
of the brackets on the bed, opposite each other and about ten inches
forward of the head, and fitted a piece of wire between them. This
wire buckled very decidedly on every revolution of the engine, when
the piston was at the back end of its stroke. I then united these
brackets into a hood, and lengthened the connection with the surface
of the bed, as it is now made. This affords a perfect support for the
cylinder. Experiments tried at the Cambria Iron Works on a cylinder
of 40-inch bore and 48-inch stroke, with a piston weighing 3600
pounds and running at 100 double strokes per minute, showed the
back end of the cylinder standing absolutely motionless. This
experiment will be described hereafter.