Valentin Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique

Valentin Voloshinov, Freudianism: A Marxist Critique

Formats Available

.PDF

Freudianism is a major icon in the history of ideas, independently rich and suggestive today both for psychoanalysis and for theories of language. It offers critical insights whose recognition demands a change in the manner in which the fundamental principles of both psychoanalysis and linguistic theory are understood. Volosinov went to the root of Freud's theory adn method, arguing that what is for him the central concept of psychoanalysis, "the unconscious," was a fiction. He argued that the phenomena that were taken by Freud as evidence for "the unconscious" constituted instead an aspect of "the conscious," albeit one with a person's "official conscious."

For Volosinov, "the conscious" was a monologue, a use of language, "inner speech" as he called it. As such, the conscious participated in all of the properties of language, particularly, for Volosinov, its social essence. This type of argumentation stood behind Volosinov's charge that Freudianism presented humans in an inherently false, individualistic, asocial, and ahistorical setting.

Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009)

Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009)

Formats Available

.PDF

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.Billions of dollars have been hastily poured into the global banking system in a frantic attempt at financial stabilization. So why has it not been possible to bring the same forces to bear in addressing world poverty and environmental crisis? In this take-no-prisoners analysis, Slavoj Zizek frames the moral failures of the modern world in terms of the epoch-making events of the first decade of this century. What he finds is the old one-two punch of history: the jab of tragedy, the right hook of farce. In the attacks of 9/11 and the global credit crunch, liberalism dies twice: as a political doctrine and as an economic theory. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a call for the Left to reinvent itself in the light of our desperate historical situation. The time for liberal, moralistic blackmail is over.