From: <kenneth.mackendrick-AT-utoronto.ca> Subject: Re: Psychoanalysis Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 17:09:28 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time) On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 08:00:19 -0400 Neil McLaughlin <nmclaugh-AT-mcmaster.ca> wrote: > It is time, I think, to start a serious discussion among contemporary critical theorists about the origin myth and conventional wisdom that suggests that Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and later Lasch and Jacobby were right to dismiss Fromm's revision of psychoanalysis. My impression: laziness (perhaps this is just my excuse). It is easiest to reject Fromm via the FSers because it is convenient to do so, and there is printed evidence (that one can also avoid reading by living on the reviews) to strengthen this conviction. The last thing a good many people, pressed for time and energy, are looking to do is take seriously arguments that it would be nice not to have to read. This probably has a lot to do with the lack of a popular and cliche defence of Fromm. It would be interesting, although tedious, to figure out why certain FS authors get read and others don't (perhaps this is all just very obvious). The problem, as always, is largely that interdisciplinary work, and I don't mean quoting from Weber and Freud and Marx in the same sentence, is truly a difficult and daunting task. It is difficult enough to keep up with the growing literature on any one of the critical theorists - let alone the latest developments in sociology, object relations theory, literary criticism, criminology and so on and so on... The structure of the University system(s) doesn't make this any easier (at least from my perspective as a student). Students are continually pressed into individualistic projects, with the rare exceptions of various e-journals that have sought to create virtual communities (in light of the impossibility of other forms of community and organization) there doesn't seem to be much hope for collaborative research (and competition within departments, within journals and 'academic' organizations is equally fierce and violent) - although I'm quite hopeful about the emerging international resistance that we've seen expressed in Seattle and DC recently - esp. the way in which this has been organized 'online' and according to an anarchist / affinity group model(s). I'm not sure if this will boil over into collaborative theoretical interventions. > But even a brief look at developments within contemporary psychoanalytic thought will find that Fromm's theoretical insights have stood the test of time while Adorno and Marcuse's instinct theories seem increasingly outmoded. Do you have any handy references? One person I recall speaking with mentioned something to the effect that psychoanalysis has fallen into disrepute because it hasn't had a good idea since the 50s. Which makes me think that critical theorists just haven't been looking close enough at the diversity and breadth of the field. The most provocative developments in the field, it seems to me, are arriving from intersubjective theorists like Jessica Benjamin (Bonds of Love, Shadow of the Other, Like Subjects, Love Objects), Lacanians (Copjec, MacCannell, Fink, Jameson) and the Slovene Lacanian School (Zizek, Salecl, Zupancic, Dolar, Bozovic) who are slowly making their way into North America - especially those who are well aware of the Marxian traditions and working to find intersections between the psychotic dynamics of capitalism and critical theory. off-hand, ken
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