{"id":11840,"date":"2013-08-30T13:08:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T18:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=11840"},"modified":"2013-08-30T13:29:17","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T18:29:17","slug":"mcgowan-death-drive-violence-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/08\/30\/mcgowan-death-drive-violence-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"mcgowan death drive violence politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis.<\/em> 2013.<\/p>\n

The conceptual breakthrough involved with the abandonment of the seduction theory paved the way for the discovery of the death drive because it permitted Freud to consider violence not as primarily coming from someone else but as what the subject itself fantasizes about. After this development in his thought, it would make theoretical sense to conceive of an original violence that the subject does to itself as the genesis of subjectivity and the death drive<\/strong>, which is the move that Freud makes in 1920.<\/p>\n

The seduction theory would have prevented Freud from recognizing that subjectivity has its origin in violence that the subject does to itself \u2013 the violent sacrifice of the privileged object that begins<\/span> desire<\/span><\/strong>. The death drive, the structuring principle of the psyche, engages the subject in a perpetual repetition of this violence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both nostalgia and paranoia try to flee the subject\u2019s original self-inflicted violence<\/strong>. But even the attempt to avoid violence leads back to it. Nostalgia and paranoia lead almost inevitably to violence directed toward the other who appears as a barrier to the subject\u2019s enjoyment<\/strong><\/p>\n

[\u2026] Violence against the other attempts to replace violence against the self; this type of violence attempts to repeat the subject\u2019s <\/span>initial moment of loss<\/span> on the cheap, so to speak. It seeks repetition while sparing the subject itself the suffering implicit in this repetition<\/span><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Aggressive violence toward the other tries to separate the enjoyment of repetition<\/strong> (which it reserves for the subject) with the suffering of it (which it consigns to the other).<\/p>\n

Understood in terms of the<\/span> death drive,<\/span><\/strong> one can readily see the appeal of aggressive violence. It provides a seemingly elegant solution to the troubling link between<\/span><\/strong> enjoyment and suffering.<\/strong> 49-50<\/p>\n

[\u2026] Aggressive violence is nothing but a detour or prolongation of the path toward self-inflicted violence<\/span>. In this sense, the other\u2019s violent act of vengeance in response to the subject\u2019s own violence is precisely what the subject unconsciously hopes to trigger when committing a violent act in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other\u2019s violent response allows us to experience the loss that we have hitherto avoided<\/span>. Violence directed to the other does not satisfy the subject in the way that violence directed toward the self does<\/span>. In order to accomplish the repetition that the death drive necessitates, external violence must finally lead back to violence directed at the self.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The power of repetition in the psyche leaves the subject no possibility for escaping self-inflicted violence.<\/strong> This is what psychoanalytic thought allows us to recognize and to bring to bear on our political activity.<\/p>\n

The only question concerns the form that this violence will take. Will the subject use the other as a vehicle for inflicting violence on itself, or will it perform this violence directly on itself?<\/p>\n

By recognizing the power of unconscious repetition, we can grasp the intractability of the problem of violence, but we can also see a way out of aggressive violence that doesn\u2019t involve utopian speculation.<\/p>\n

Rather than trying to avoid violence, we can restore to it its proper object \u2013<\/span><\/span> the self.<\/span> The more the subject engages in a violent assault on its own forms of symbolic identity,<\/strong> its own ego, its own deepest convictions,<\/span> the more the subject finds an enjoyable alternative to the satisfactions of aggression<\/strong>. 51<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McGowan, Todd. Enjoying What We Don\u2019t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. 2013. The conceptual breakthrough involved with the abandonment of the seduction theory paved the way for the discovery of the death drive because it permitted Freud to consider violence not as primarily coming from someone else but as what the subject itself fantasizes … Continue reading “mcgowan death drive violence politics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125,21,40,72,76,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drive","category-jouissance","category-lack","category-objet-a","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11840"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11842,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11840\/revisions\/11842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}