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destructive. While we can agree with Nietzsche that nihilism is a motor of modern history, it is a mistake to see it in purely negative terms. One of the greatest myths about contemporary violence is still connected to rather old psycho-analytical insights concerning fatalism and the egotistical downfall of the deluded man. Freud’s notion of the death drive in many ways is integral to the de-legitimation of the violence we do not like on account of its negation of human existence ( Freud, 1991 ). Of course, it is necessary to understand the psychic life of violence, and to
sovereignty. But it is more likely that the world system will go through a prolonged period of turbulence and wars provoked by sudden changes and increasingly unstable alliances, precisely because it is reproducing the history of the formation of the European state system on a planetary scale. Notes 1 Translated from Portugese by Juliano Fiori. 2 In the psychological and psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as in the structural anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, mythology occupies a
it is through such fictional representations that the ‘real’ of this period can be accessed. Humour, according to Sigmund Freud, can be ‘purposive’, and he goes on to define this purposivity in terms of its ‘tendency’ to run ‘the risk of ruffling people who do not wish to hear it’ (Freud 1922, p. 128). Howard’s work is an example of such tendency- wit. Even the rhyming slang has an exclusionary quality to it, as those who are part of the elite group are aware of the rhyming significations, while those who are not part of this group are not, and are left at an
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has written extensively on the European Union.
This is the only in-depth account of his project. Published now in a second
edition to coincide with the celebration of his ninetieth birthday, a new
preface considers Habermas’s writings on the eurozone and refugee crises,
populism and Brexit, and the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.
Placing an
emphasis on the conception of the EU that informs Habermas’s political
prescriptions, the book is divided into two main parts. The first considers the
unfolding of 'social modernity' at the level of the EU. Among the
subjects covered are Habermas's concept of juridification, the
latter's affinities with integration theories such as neofunctionalism, and
the application of Habermas's democratic theory to the EU. The second part
addresses 'cultural modernity' in Europe – 'Europessimism'
is argued to be a subset of the broader cultural pessimism that assailed the
project of modernity in the late twentieth century, and with renewed intensity
in the years since 9/11.
Interdisciplinary in approach, this book engages
with European/EU studies, critical theory, political theory, international
relations, intellectual history, comparative literature, and philosophy. Concise
and clearly written, it will be of interest to students, scholars and
professionals with an interest in these disciplines, as well as to a broader
readership concerned with the future of Europe
English radicalism has been a deep-rooted but minority tradition in the political culture since at least the seventeenth century. The central aim of this book is to examine, in historical and political context, a range of key events and individuals that exemplify English radicalism in the twentieth century. This analysis is preceded by defining precisely what has constituted this tradition; and by the main outline of the development of the tradition from the Civil War to the end of the nineteenth century. Three of the main currents of English radicalism in the twentieth century have been the labour movement, the women’s movement and the peace movement. These are discussed in some detail, as a framework for the detailed consideration of ten key representative figures of the tradition in the twentieth century: Bertrand Russell, Sylvia Pankhurst, Ellen Wilkinson, George Orwell, E.P. Thompson, Michael Foot, Joan Maynard, Stuart Hall, Tony Benn and Nicolas Walter. The question of ‘agency’ – of how to bring about radical change in a predominantly conservative society and culture – has been a fundamental issue for English radicals. It is argued that, in the twentieth century, many of the important achievements in progressive politics have taken place in and through extra-parliamentary movements, as well as through formal political parties and organisations – the Labour Party and other socialist organisations – and on occasion, through libertarian and anarchist politics. The final chapter considers the continuing relevance of this political tradition in the early twenty-first century, and reviews its challenges and prospects.
who could be upbraided by the parish priest, but a potential consumer convinced that he/she can buy their way to happiness. By encouraging the rise of new needs, capitalism raises individual expectations, exacerbates the sense of a unique, separate self and creates the illusion of unlimited freedom of access to all forms of pleasures. The limits of human desire thus seem to constantly recede, and everybody is induced to take it for granted that the unattainable is in our reach. But human desire, or ‘jouissance’, as Freud and Lacan have shown, are not meant to be
the Liberal Parliamentary Party was Clement Freud. Restaurateur, television presenter and night-club owner, Freud had become a Liberal MP in 1973 with the encouragement of 151 Cole_01_Ch1.indd 151 29/01/2011 12:07 In Parliament Jeremy Thorpe, whom he repaid by supporting him through his resignation, even cooking dinner for him each night during the former Leader’s trial. Stories abound of Freud’s womanising in the office he shared with Wainwright and spending days placing large bets on the office telephone – on horses and on by-election results. Sir Menzies
of austerity against which it railed while in opposition. This would appear to go against political wisdom and economic sense, which is where once more a cultural analysis can be useful. Sigmund Freud postulated that, as well as the pleasure principle, the desire to achieve some form of pleasure as a core motivation of human behaviour, there existed ‘in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle’ (Freud 1961, p. 16). Cultural analysis of the First World War further developed this thesis: Victims of shell shock were regularly reported to
, 1982: 136). In an idiom that Derrida takes up in Rogues, this end of democracy refers to democracy’s ‘death instinct’. This ‘instinct’, Freud explains, seems to violate nature, insofar as it seeks what is beyond pleasure, beyond the simple biological homeostasis that all previous ideals of ‘the good’ attempt to reach, and thus beyond the human thought as anthropos, beyond human rights, or justice rendered commensurable with law. The way Derrida thinks beyond the ‘human’ is important for my purposes. As Leonard Lawlor recently put it, ‘[i]f, on the basis of Aristotle
existence, of Dasein’s turning away from itself. In his effort to locate the origin of fear in the awareness of mortality, Bauman thus seems to be alluding to what Heidegger describes as ‘anxiety’. In that case, the ‘roots of fear’ cannot be extirpated, since they are constitutive of who we are as humans in the ontological, and also psychoanalytic, sense. Writing from a psychoanalytic perspective and drawing on Freud’s discussion of the uncanny, Julia Kristeva locates the sources of fear in the self-other dynamic of the unconscious (1991). As described by Freud, the