{"id":8309,"date":"2011-09-29T08:26:21","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T13:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=8309"},"modified":"2013-01-28T20:43:01","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T01:43:01","slug":"jodi-dean-critique-of-browns-left-melancholy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/09\/29\/jodi-dean-critique-of-browns-left-melancholy\/","title":{"rendered":"dean revolutionary desire vs. democratic drive 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jodi Dean draft version that is not to be cited<\/a><\/p>\n

As is well-known, Freud distinguishes melancholia<\/span> from mourning<\/span>. Mourning responds to the loss of an object of love, whether that object is a person, country, freedom, or ideal. \u00a0Reality confronts the subject with its loss and piecemeal, painfully, and over time, the subject withdraws its attachment from the lost object until the work of mourning<\/span> is complete and the ego is again free, uninhibited, and capable of love. Although similar to mourning<\/span> with respect to the absence of interest in the outside world and the general inhibition of activity, melancholia<\/span> evinces a crucial difference: a lowering of self-regard that is manifest in self-reproach and self-reviling to the point not only of self-punishment but of the very \u201cover-coming of the instinct which compels every living thing to cling to life.\u201d Freud writes:<\/p>\n

The melancholic<\/strong> displays something else besides which is lacking in mourning<\/span> \u2014 an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale. In mourning<\/span> it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia<\/span> it is the ego itself. The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished. He abases himself before everyone and commiserates with his own relatives for being connected with anyone so unworthy [Freud cited in Dean 2011].<\/p>\n

To account for this difference in self-regard, Freud distinguishes between mourning\u2019s consciousness of loss and the unknown and unconscious dimension of object loss in melancholia<\/strong>. Something about the melancholic\u2019s loss remains unconscious.<\/p>\n

Even when the melancholic knows that<\/em> he lost, he does not know what<\/em> he has lost, in what his loss consists for him. Psychoanalysis addresses this unconscious element of melancholic loss.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Freud\u2019s gesture to the melancholic\u2019s loss of self-respect points in a similar direction. To be sure, he isn\u2019t explicit here. His discussion evades, somewhat, the reason for the loss of self-respect (to which I said I would return). Nonetheless, the example he takes from the clinic hints at why the subject loses self-respect. Describing a woman who \u201cloudly pities her husband for being tied to such an incapable wife,\u201d Freud observes that she is really accusing her husband of incapacity. Her self-reproaches, some of which are genuine, \u201care allowed to obtrude themselves, since they help to mask the others and make recognition of the true state of affairs impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, these reproaches \u201cderive from the pros and cons of the conflict of love that has led to the loss of love\u201d (247). Might it not be the case, then, that the woman is quite rightly recognizing her own incapacity in finding a capable husband, one capable of sustaining her desire?<\/p>\n

Might she not be punishing herself for compromising, for making due, for allowing the pros and cons of the conflict of love to constrain her desire as she acquiesces to a reality of acceptance and moderation to which there seems to be no alternative?<\/p>\n

If the answer to these questions is yes, then the woman\u2019s loss of self-respect is an indication of the guilt she feels at having ceded her desire.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To use the terms given to us by Lacan, \u201cthe only thing one can be guilty of is giving ground relative to one\u2019s desire.\u201d<\/span> [Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis<\/em>, 321]<\/p>\n

The woman\u2019s identification with her husband is a compromise, the way she sublimates her desire so as to make him the object of it. The ferocity of her super-ego and the unrelenting punishment to which it subjects her indicates that she has given up on the impossibility of desire, desire\u2019s own constitutive dissatisfaction, to accommodate herself to everyday life.<\/p>\n

The enjoyment, jouissance<\/em>, that desire can\u2019t attain, drive can\u2019t avoid. Unable to satisfy or maintain desire, the subject enjoys in another way, the way of the drive.<\/p>\n

If desire<\/span> is always a desire to desire<\/span>, a desire<\/span> that can never be filled, a desire<\/span> for a jouissance<\/em><\/strong> or enjoyment that can never be attained, drive<\/span> functions as a way to enjoy through failure. In drive<\/span>, one doesn\u2019t have to reach the goal to enjoy. The activities one undertakes to achieve a goal become satisfying own their own. Because they provide a little kick of enjoyment, they come themselves to take the place of the goal. Attaching to the process, enjoyment captures the subject. \u00a0Further, as Slavoj Zizek argues, the shift from desire to drive<\/span> effects a change in the status of the object. Whereas the object of desire is originally lost, \u201cwhich emerges as lost,\u201d in drive loss itself is an object<\/strong> [Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, In Defense of Lost Causes <\/em>(London, Verso: 2008) 328]. In other words, drive<\/span> isn\u2019t a quest for a lost object; it\u2019s the enactment of loss or the force loss exerts on the field of desire<\/strong>. So drives<\/span> don\u2019t circulate around a space that was once occupied by an ideal, impossible object. Rather, drive<\/span> is the sublimation of desire as it turns back in on itself, this turning thereby producing the loop of drive<\/span> and providing its own special charge.<\/p>\n

An emphasis on the drive<\/span> dimension of melancholia, on Freud\u2019s attention to the way sadism in melancholia is \u201cturned round upon the subject\u2019s own self,\u201d leads to an interpretation of the general contours shaping the left that differs from Brown\u2019s. \u00a0Instead of a left attached to an unacknowledged orthodoxy, we have one that has given way on the desire<\/span> for communism, betrayed its historical commitment to the proletariat, and sublimated revolutionary energies into restorationist practices that strengthen the hold of the capitalism.\u00a0 This left has replaced commitments to the emancipatory, egalitarian struggles of working people against capitalism, commitments that were never fully orthodox, but always ruptured, conflicted, and contested, with incessant activity (not unlike the mania Freud also associates with melancholia) and so now satisfies itself with criticism and interpretation, small projects and local actions, particular issues and legislative victories, art, technology, procedures, and process.<\/p>\n

It sublimates revolutionary desire to democratic drive,<\/span><\/p>\n

to the repetitious practices offered up as democracy (whether representative, deliberative, or radical), having already conceded to the inevitably of capitalism, \u201cnoticeably abandoning any striking power against the big bourgeoisie,\u201d to return to Benjamin\u2019s language.\u00a0 For such a left enjoyment comes from its withdrawal from power and responsibility, its sublimation of goals and responsibilities into the branching, fragmented practices of micro-politics, self-care, and issue awareness. Perpetually slighted, harmed, and undone, this left remains stuck in repetition, unable to break out of the circuits of drive in which it is caught, unable because it enjoys.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jodi Dean draft version that is not to be cited As is well-known, Freud distinguishes melancholia from mourning. Mourning responds to the loss of an object of love, whether that object is a person, country, freedom, or ideal. \u00a0Reality confronts the subject with its loss and piecemeal, painfully, and over time, the subject withdraws … Continue reading “dean revolutionary desire vs. democratic drive 1”<\/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":[111,24,144,85,90,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-lacan","category-marx","category-melancholia","category-resistance","category-subjectivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309","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=8309"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8312,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions\/8312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}