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Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism / Benjamin Y

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Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism / Benjamin Y !"#$% #&! '#($")* &"+ !,)"-$,.&( ,& -),$,-#/ $%".)* New Directions in Critical Theory Amy Allen, General Editor New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contempo- rary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex interconnections. Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment, María Pía Lara The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, Amy Allen Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Noëlle McAfee The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment, Alessandro Ferrara Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Adriana Cavarero Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Nancy Fraser Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, Axel Honneth States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, Jacqueline Stevens The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity, Donna V. Jones Democracy in What State?, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross, Slavoj Žižek Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues, edited by Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics, Jacques Rancière The Right to Justification: Elements of Constructivist Theory of Justice, Rainer Forst The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment, Albena Azmanova The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, Adrian Parr Media of Reason: A Theory of Rationality, Matthias Vogel Social Acceleration: The Transformation of Time in Modernity, Hartmut Rosa The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization, María Pía Lara Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism, James Ingram Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, Axel Honneth Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, Chiara Bottici Alienation, Rahel Jaeggi The Power of Tolerance: A Debate, Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst, edited by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey Radical History and the Politics of Art, Gabriel Rockhill The Highway of Despair: Critical Theory After Hegel, Robyn Marasco A Political Economy of the Senses: Neoliberalism, Reification, Critique, Anita Chari The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, Amy Allen Recognition or Disagreement: A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity, Axel Honneth and Jacques Rancière, edited by Katia Genel and Jean-Philippe Deranty What Is a People?, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Georges Didi-Huberman, Sadri Khiari, Jacques Rancière, and Pierre Bourdieu !"#$% #&! '#($")* Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism Benjamin Y. Fong Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2016 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fong, Benjamin Y., author. Title: Death and mastery: psychoanalytic drive theory and the subject of late capitalism / Benjamin Y. Fong. Description: New York: Columbia University Press, [2016] | Series: New directions in critical theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016014150| ISBN 9780231176682 (cloth) | ISBN 9780231542616 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Death instinct. | Death—Psychological aspects. | Capitalism—Psychological aspects. Classification: LCC BF175.5.D4 F66 2016 | DDC 150. 19/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014150 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover design: Rebecca Lown You are using one part of your force to fight the other part. —Sigmund Freud Contents Acknowledgments ,3 Introduction: In Defense of Drive Theory 1 Part I: Dream 21 1. Death, Mastery, and the Origins of Life: Sigmund Freud’s Strange Proposal 23 Part II: Interpretation 39 2. Between Need and Dread: Hans Loewald and the Primordial Density 41 3. Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (Reprised): Jacques Lacan and the Genesis of Omnipotence 59 viii———-.&$"&$( Part III: Working Through 79 4. The Psyche in Late Capitalism I: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and the Crisis of Internalization 81 5. The Psyche in Late Capitalism II: Herbert Marcuse and the Technological Lure 109 Conclusion 126 Notes 135 Bibliography 201 Index 219 Acknowledgments This book grew out of dialogue with a diverse set of intellectu- ally stimulating and nourishing colleagues, mentors, friends, and family members for which I am tremendously grateful. I would like specifically to thank Mark C. Taylor and Wayne Proudfoot, for the extraordinary guidance and feedback; Kevin Kelly, whose perspicuous exposition of Freudian metapsychology helped lay the foundation for this project; Fred Neuhouser, for his valuable comments on a longer paper that eventu- ally became chapters 1 and 2, but also for directing me to the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, where I was an Affiliate Scholar for two years; Lisa Cerami, who helped me work through some of the more impenetrable passages in Adorno; Joshua Dubler, a sounding board of unusual warmth and clarity; Yonatan Brafman and Liane Carlson, for the continuing education; Andrea Sun- Mee Jones, who is in many ways responsible for the existence of this proj- ect; that remarkable organization that is the Society for Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and in particular Jeremy Cohan, Chris Crawford, Greg Gabrellas, Scott Jenkins, Ben Koditschek, Christie Offenbacher, and Allan Scholom for their leadership; Gil Anidjar, Fabian Arzuaga (and the Social Theory Workshop at the University of Chicago), Courtney Bender, Alison Brown, Ashleigh Campi, Shanna Carlson, Bernard Faure, Daragh Grant, Jack Hawley, Phillip Henry, Andy Junker, Jonathan Lear, Mark Loeffler, x———#-7&.+/"!8'"&$( Birte Löschenkohl, Moishe Postone, Jonathan Schorsch, and Simon Taylor for discussing various chapters with me; and Isaac Balbus, Jared Holley, Gabriel Levine, and Eric Santner, all of whom read the entire man- uscript at critical moments in its development and whose lucid feedback gave me the confidence to move forward. I presented a portion of this book’s introduction at the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Annual Meeting in January 2015 as an APsaA Fellow, and I would like to thank Charles Amrhein, Rosemary Johnson, and Lynne Zeavin for coordinating the fellowship and Bruce Reis and Paul Schwaber for responding to my presentation. Parts of chapters 1 and 2 were presented at the Hans W. Loewald Conference in February 2014 at the New School; thanks go to Ryan Gustafson and Hunter Robinson for organizing the conference, Brian Kloppenberg and Aleksandra Wagner for responding to my paper, and Elliot Jurist for organizing the special issue of Psychoanalytic Psychology in which the proceedings were published. More generally, thanks to the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, Julia Clark- Spohn, Meryl Marcus, Deborah Neibel, and the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago for their support, and to all fellow Fellows for their friendship and collegiality. Thanks also to Amy Allen, Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, the two anonymous readers, and the team at Columbia University Press for the excellent feedback, encouragement, and patient attention to my many questions and requests. To my parents, Hon and Jo Fong, my sister, Christina Fong, and my mother-in-law, Rosemary Easter, who are all unjustifiably supportive of my work, I owe a debt that far transcends the bounds of this project. Finally, not a day goes by where I do not feel an overwhelming appre- ciation for the love and support of my wife, Alison Easter, who is kind enough to welcome unsolicited ramblings about the conditions under which it possible to say “I,” and my kids, Jaya and Ziggy, baffled as they justifiably are that their second-favorite grown-up disappears for large swaths of time in order to drink coffee and stare blankly at a laptop. * * * A very early version of chapter 5 appeared as “Death Drive Sublimation: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Technological Development” in Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society 18, no. 4 (December 2013): 352–67. Bits of chapters 1 and 2 appeared as “Hans Loewald and the Death Drive” in Psychoanalytic Psychology 31, no. 4 (October 2014): 525–36. I am grateful to these journals for their permission to reprint materials here. !"#$% #&! '#($")* The theory of the instincts [Triebe] is so to say our mythology. Instincts are myth- ical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness. In our work we cannot for a mo- ment disregard them, and yet we are never sure that we are seeing them clearly. —Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis Introduction In Defense of Drive Theory One could say that this book is an attempt to illuminate the var- ied psychic and social impediments to the achievement of mastery. When we hear the word mastery, it is natural to turn to Hegel or to think of some kind of domination or subjugation, but we very often use the word in a more everyday sense to designate the acquisition of a skill, a certain deftness of practice,
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