Youth ‘Without Qualities’ and the Desire for Fascism: links between psychoanalysis, education and politics

Abstract

This article presents a reading about the construction of adolescence that experiences totalitarian social atmospheres through the analysis of socio-political variables present in the coming-of-age novel Young Törless, by Robert Musil. In this dialogue between psychoanalysis, education and politics, we articulate the author’s concern about the moral ambivalence of his generation, with the educational and political proposals presented to the youth of our time. In the novel, the notion of formation was eroded in Modernity and replaced by socialization with homogenizing and massifying practices. In the face of adolescence without qualities, it is necessary to restore desire, forging a unique version of the fate of the subject’s political body and society.