> Yes, I'm familiar with the quote, and the argument it condenses. It just
> strikes me as utter nonsense. It seems to have more to do with F's own
> psycho-intellectual battle with Marx and Althusser than it does with
> actually existing social reality. It also seems symptomatic of F's habit of
> exaggerating historical breaks. "Economics" is a 19th century concern, etc.
> The psychoanalyst Paul Schilder once lamented the lack of a psychoanalysis
> of work.
But this seems to me to hint at the truth of F's argument, rather that prove
its nonsensicality. Man as a being that works is _not_ how psychoanalysis
constructs its subject. Neither is it how, say, analytic philosophy
constructs its subject. Both of these have "curative" aspirations, but in
neither does sending the patient off to do some satisfying, useful work -- in
the manner Chekhov would prescribe for his characters -- figure as part of
the therapy (except for Wittgenstein, but he was a freak). Neither does
estrangement from work, estrangement from notions such as "usefulness", figure
as a central problematic in psychoanalysis' view of the psyche. You yourself
quote labor statistics as proof of the importance of work, but what they
show is the prevalence of _labor_, not the centrality of work in how we,
psychologically or philosophically, think of ourselves as human beings.
Or am I all wet?
-m
> strikes me as utter nonsense. It seems to have more to do with F's own
> psycho-intellectual battle with Marx and Althusser than it does with
> actually existing social reality. It also seems symptomatic of F's habit of
> exaggerating historical breaks. "Economics" is a 19th century concern, etc.
> The psychoanalyst Paul Schilder once lamented the lack of a psychoanalysis
> of work.
But this seems to me to hint at the truth of F's argument, rather that prove
its nonsensicality. Man as a being that works is _not_ how psychoanalysis
constructs its subject. Neither is it how, say, analytic philosophy
constructs its subject. Both of these have "curative" aspirations, but in
neither does sending the patient off to do some satisfying, useful work -- in
the manner Chekhov would prescribe for his characters -- figure as part of
the therapy (except for Wittgenstein, but he was a freak). Neither does
estrangement from work, estrangement from notions such as "usefulness", figure
as a central problematic in psychoanalysis' view of the psyche. You yourself
quote labor statistics as proof of the importance of work, but what they
show is the prevalence of _labor_, not the centrality of work in how we,
psychologically or philosophically, think of ourselves as human beings.
Or am I all wet?
-m