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Can the Left Enjoy? (Ft. Todd McGowan)
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2022
- Alfie and Eliot talk to Todd McGowan about why the Right get enjoyment right so often, whether liberal capitalism shares the same pleasures as facism and what a leftist enjoyment would look like.
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Pleasant surprise! I don't know whether the left can enjoy but I enjoy Todd McGowan's interviews.
Petition to give the super-ego back to the Right
thank you for a show for psychoanalysis nerds
I think complicating notions and simplifying assumptions is essential to right wing enjoyment. The inverse to me seems to be not only the radical left form of enjoyment but the goal of art and philosophy, to complicate our assumptions about the world while simplifying notions about it in order to make them more intelligible and useful for communication.
Only thing I’d push back on here are the largely squishy terms you’re using here of assumptions versus notions. Each fall under the banner of ideology and therefore remind us why ideology must always be pointed out and explained. Assumptions and notions come from material circumstances; the things in one’s head are directly related and shaped by the material relations and conditions which shape and construct the world before us.
@@anhedonic-antediluvian I don’t think my use of these squishy terms neglect the fact that they are both products of material conditions. My statement only clarifies how they are operationalized through both political(and as a result economic) forms of enjoyment.
death drive / jouissance begins at 20:17 for the fellow Lacanians
Once you understand that the movie you are agreeing with is primarily a vehicle to make a few producers and actors filthy rich by capitalizing on our desperate desire for change, it does take the shine off of things.
knowing one's ideology probably helps w/enjoying things
He is getting Trotskys permanent revolution confused with Bernestein's notorious quote "the movement is everything the goal is nothing.
Theoretically this approach just doesn't work.
The first problem: If we agree with Lacan that talking can provide the same satisfaction as fucking, and that desire is mediated by language, which is open ended and contains an excess which can be enjoyed, then the conclusion to be drawn is that there are infinite forms of symbolic enjoyment available to the speaking subject. That means that every political position offers multiple forms of enjoyment, but those forms of enjoyment don't necessarily have any relationship to the material conditions and social contradictions that give rise to political antagonisms.
The second problem: When one distinguishes between left and right forms of enjoyment, while claiming that the left position is theoretically correct, and claiming to be a leftist, one immediately experiences the right wing form of enjoyment of being correct and not falling into the trap of right wing enjoyment. Even if one does not consciously posit an enemy, one enjoys the moral superiority of being on the right side of history, and one divides the world into those who have the proper relationship to enjoyment (friends) and those who disagree (enemies).
From an immanent point of view, based on McGowan's own work, I would suggest that the stereotypical Zizekian-Hegelian question would be: what is the third term that represents the negation of the negation and allows us to transcend the apparent opposition between right and left wing forms of enjoyment?
I would suggest the Hegelian move here is to realize that as long as we live in a world where politics exists, the contradiction between friend and enemy will persist, and there will always be some enjoyment of engaging in a political struggle for a position that one believes is correct. Nevertheless, one must not follow Carl Schmitt into the belief that this is an EXISTENTIAL STRUGGLE TO THE DEATH. Instead, one must realize it is a strategic and tactical struggle, that political positions are relative and how is a friend or enemy changes over time, and that overcoming enemies is not the goal of political struggle, but merely a necessity in the struggle for structural transformation and political change. We cannot get rid of so called "right wing enjoyment" but by becoming aware of it, we can be aware of the fact that EVERY political struggle for freedom has the potential to turn into its opposite and turn into a nightmare and a bloodbath. That is simply the risk of acting politically.
Is Todd's book out yet?
It may be so simple as liberals have a Kantian bias towards ‘absolute evil’ where conservatives have been forced dialectically, against their awareness, toward a Hegelian process philosophy. Regarding the variations on the characterology of ‘Hitler.’
I agree with the first part, but I'm not so sure on the second part concerning conservatives. could you elaborate?
😂 The title!
If you want to pure gen-X energy go to 42:26.
I loved it. the only point on which we differ is I think Wynona looked cute as hell.
For me being Gen X was about DIY culture, metal, punk, indie rock, techno, raves, zines, drugs, hacking, etc... not watching lame mainstream movies and TV shows. I can be a bit more charitable towards some mainstream popular culture these days, but having lived through it, I do think it's that DIY / underground spirit that really defines Gen X.
@@TheCyborgk The Gen X is strong with you
There is a slippery slope from 'woman doesn't exist' to men can literally opt into the category and make of it what they will. I am sure Todd is in no way unsure that his wife/partner is a woman however contradictory she may be.
I think the line "The woman does not exist" refers to the fact that patriarchal men will conjure up the image of a perfect women, perfectly pure and kind and caring, static beings etc. that don't suffer from the sense of incompleteness or lack that men feel when they (we) try to constantly prove ourselves etc. in the same way ideology conjures up many different kinds of "other" who somehow don't suffer from lack, like "somewhere deep in the Amazon jungle, there is an indigenous tribe that doesn't suffer like we do in modernity, they have fully fulfilled lives and live in perfect harmony with nature bla bla bla" - it's an attempt to fill the lack of the symbolic plane with a fantasmatic object that cannot exist. The longer you hold on to the idea of "the woman" as a fully substantial non-lacking entity, the longer you will stay stuck in patriarchal sexist ideology. It does women no favors.
according to me anyway, I'm not super confident about my understanding of these Lacanian concepts, so take it for what it's worth.
@@lotoreo Nice comment, just adding also that all of this man/woman _sex_ talk is in reference to the symbolic order, not biological essences. Woman is synonymous with “feminine position” in the symbolic order, which anyone can take up.
“THE” woman does not exist-women obviously exist plainly speaking, so what Lacan is putting into question is not the noun “woman” but the definite article before it, “THE”. There is no analogue in the feminine position to “THE man”, to the masculine posture of _having the phallus,_ having certainty/wholeness. There is no feminine ideal to aspire to, no feminine counterpart to the primal father-the position of woman in the symbolic order is the masquerade of _being the phallus._
Masculine power comes from its possession of woman, a “real man” _has the phallus_ through his possession of a “trophy wife”. By adopting an objectifying passivity to the symbolic phallus, woman IS the phallus, becomes the phallus for man, she embodies this mythological object-her beauty/sexiness/self-objectification is the indicator of her man’s power. Being the phallus is the way woman effects man’s desire. Woman wears a mask, woman is non-all, _the woman does not exist._ Behind the mask of woman, behind all positive elements is _nothing,_ the name for this void which makes the domain of masks not-all is the subject qua void.
@@nightoftheworld yo thanks, and I just wanna say I appreciate all the timestamps etc I've seen you posting, it's been really helpful, also, well done explaining this in your comment, really insightful
@@lotoreo Thanks, CZcams _can_ be great for getting into real discussions. I’m sure there are a pile of recommendations you are already plagued with, but let me recommend reading some of the articles “The Dangerous Maybe” (Michael Downs) has written. He is on medium, and has some of the most clear coverage of the phallus/objet a that I’ve heard outside of McGowan and Peter Rollins. See you around my friend.
Maybe I'm being a simp but, isn't the fascism come from corporations joying the state? I really don't see how we enjoy any different then Trumpers. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
I'll try to answer this the best I can, but just understand that I'm no expert by any means, just a youtube viewer such as yourself..
"doesn't fascism come from corporations joining with the state" (I think that's what you meant?) I've seen this definition going around a lot of times but I don't fully agree with it. I think this is what tends to happen under fascism, but this is by no means unique to fascism or what defines it. If anything "Corporations joining with the state" sounds more like a definition of Neo-Liberalism.
I think, if I have to try and define fascism right here and now, I'd say it's an ideology that is hyper-nationalist; that fetishizes military culture, war and violence; that perpetuates the myth that the "Nation" was wrongfully led to decay and that through the will of the "real" people resurrects itself; it constantly fetishizes "natural harmony" and wants the nation to run like a well oiled hierarchy where every citizen has a fixed role and status in society, and above all; it needs an "other" to vilify, that supposedly is less-then-human and always conspiring to undermine the "true" people, to motivate their supporters into action.
Another way of describing fascism may be: it looks for and invents an outside cause of all the problems and failings of society to fight, rather than examining the internal causes for these failures and problems.
The enjoyment of the fascist is then the enjoyment over the idea of exacting revenge on this "other". It's a sadistic enjoyment.
"I really don't see how we enjoy any different then Trumpers." - maybe, but if so, then this needs to change (according to Todd at least and I agree). We need to find a fundamentally different type of enjoyment for the Left, or our leftist project will be doomed to turn right wing.
-again, this is only how I understand it. I could be wrong.
@@lotoreo Thanks, I like your expatiation. This came out just as the only people against ww3 where the republicans. Even some people that call themselves left started talking like Neo-cons. Right now, I don't know how you can draw a conclusion from any differences from those factions.
@@TheYoungtrust those people blindly supporting NATO are not Leftist. Now, of course, we should support Ukraine as they deserve to be sovereign and Putin has no fucking right to invade them, but this doesn't mean we should uncritically support NATO's actions just because NATO supports Ukraine.
@@lotoreo I'm not sure if I even agree with that. By the Geneva conventions you are allowed to attack a country if an attack is imminent. Given what we know there it seem to be in a gray area. I wish the best for the civilians but I don't support the state at all.
I haven't read Todd's book but based on what he says here it's hard to see how any of this amounts to more than self-flattery. The entire problem of left-wing pleasure he set out solve seems entirely of his own contrivance.
Any discussion of "the left" that does not start with you defining what you mean by "the left" is useless, unfortunately
The whole point is defining it by a specific kind of enjoyment