We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays by Claude Lévi-Strauss

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On Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. "Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism," said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Lévi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context.

These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Lévi-Strauss measures the short distance between "complex" and "primitive" societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.

The Urban Uncanny: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Studies

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The Urban Uncanny explores through ten engaging essays the slippage or mismatch between our expectations of the city―as the organised and familiar environments in which citizens live, work, and go about their lives―and the often surprising and unsettling experiences it evokes. The city is uncanny when it reveals itself in new and unexpected light; when its streets, buildings, and people suddenly appear strange, out of place, and not quite right.

Bringing together a variety of approaches, including psychoanalysis, historical and contemporary case study of cities, urban geography, film and literary critique, the essays explore some of the unsettling mismatches between city and citizen in order to make sense of each, and to gauge the wellbeing of city life more generally. Essays examine a number of cities, including Edmonton, London, Paris, Oxford, Las Vegas, Berlin and New York, and address a range of issues, including those of memory, death, anxiety, alienation, and identity. Delving into the complex repercussions of contemporary mass urban development, The Urban Uncanny opens up the pathological side of cities, both real and imaginary.

This interdisciplinary collection provides unparalleled insights into the urban uncanny that will be of interest to academics and students of urban studies, urban geography, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, social studies and film studies, and to anyone interested in the darker side of city life.

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The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold us Well-Being

Why are we so interested in measuring happiness?

What was a Buddhist monk doing at the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos lecturing the world’s leaders on mindfulness? Why do many successful corporations have a ‘chief happiness officer’? What can the chemical composition of your brain tell a potential employer about you?

In the past decade, governments and corporations have become increasingly interested in measuring the way people feel: ‘the Happiness index’, ‘Gross National Happiness’, ‘well-being’ and positive psychology have come to dominate the way we live our lives. As a result, our emotions have become a new resource to be bought and sold.

In a fascinating investigation combining history, science and ideas, William Davies shows how well-being influences all aspects of our lives: business, finance, marketing and smart technology. This book will make you rethink everything from the way you work, the power of the ‘Nudge’, the ever-expanding definitions of depression, and the commercialization of your most private feelings. The Happiness Industry is a shocking and brilliantly argued warning about the new religion of the age: our emotions.

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Feeling ashamed for not being happier? On an endless quest to transform yourself?

The Collected Papers of Roger Money-Kyrle

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Thirty-five papers from a variety of technical and intellectual journals trace fifty years of distinguished service to psychoanalysis, sociology, politics and anthropology.

Political Freud: A History

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In this masterful psychological-intellectual history, Eli Zaretsky shows Freudianism to be something more than a method of psychotherapy. When considered alongside the major struggles of the twentieth century, Freudianism becomes a catalyst of the age. Political Freud is Zaretsky's account of the way twentieth century radicals, activists, and thinkers used Freudian thought to understand the political developments of their century. Through his reading, he shows the ongoing, formative power of Freudianism in contemporary times.

The role played by political Freudianism was chaotic and oftentimes contradictory. Nevertheless, Zaretsky's conception of political Freudianism unites the two great themes of the century--totalitarianism and consumerism--in one framework. He shows how important political readings of Freud were to the theory of fascism and the experience of the Holocaust, the critical role they played in African American radical thought, particularly in the struggle for racial memory, and in the rebellions of the 1960s and their culmination in feminism and gay liberation. Yet Freudianism's involvement in history was not one-sided. Its interaction with historical forces shaped the Freudian tradition as well, and in this illuminating account, Zaretsky tracks the evolution of Freudian ideas across the decades so we can better recognize its manifestations today.

Eli Zaretsky: "Freudianism and the Twentieth Century Left”

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Georges Bataille: The Sacred and Society

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In this comprehensive and engaging study Georges Bataille’s central ideas – the sacred, community and eroticism – are explored in detail. Bataille’s project to understand social bonds and energies at their most fundamental level and to re-energise society by challenging individualism is argued to be of continuing relevance to sociological thought. Bataille’s infamous Collège de Sociologie is placed in the intellectual context of Durkheimian and Maussian sociology. Social effervescence, gift exchange, and the dual, ambivalent and volatile nature of the sacred emerge as the central threads of Bataille’s thought, ideas which challenge both capitalist hegemony and the reductive notion of society as exclusively normative and repressive. The study concludes by applying Bataille’s ideas to contemporary issues including de-secularisation and the rise of religious fundamentalism, the vicarious experience of transgressive violence, and finally, to consumerism and the violence of globalisation. The study seeks to reposition Bataille as a key figure in sociological theory.

Social Theory Since Freud: Traversing Social Imaginaries

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In this compelling book, Anthony Elliott traces the rise of psychoanalysis from the Frankfurt School to postmodernism. Examining how pathbreaking theorists such as Adorno, Marcuse, Lacan and Lyotard have deployed psychoanalysis to politicise issues such as desire, sexuality, repression and identity, Elliott assesses the gains and losses arising from this appropriation of psychoanalysis in social theory and cultural studies.

Moving from the impact of the Culture Wars and recent Freud-bashing to contemporary debates in social theory, feminism and postmodernism, Elliott argues for a new alliance between sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives.

Orientalism by Edward W. Said

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For generations now, Edward W. Said's Orientalism has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition contains a preface written by Said shortly before his death in 2003.

In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West's romantic and exotic picture of the Orient. Drawing on his own experiences as an Arab Palestinian living in the West, Said examines how these ideas can be a reflection of European imperialism and racism.

Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian-American cultural critic and author, born in Jerusalem and educated in Egypt and the United States. His other books include The Question of Palestine, Culture and Imperialism and Out of Place: A Memoir.
 

From the Conscious Interior to an Exterior Unconscious: Lacan, Discourse Analysis and Social Psychology

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This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacans work bridges the gap between discourse-analytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavon Cuellar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR).

Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan's psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Zizek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory.

Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure and Society

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This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.

The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender by Nancy J. Chodorow

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When this best-seller was published, it put the mother-daughter relationship and female psychology on the map. The Reproduction of Mothering was chosen by Contemporary Sociology as one of the ten most influential books of the past twenty-five years. With a new preface by the author, this updated edition is testament to the formative effect that Nancy Chodorow's work continues to exert on psychoanalysis, social science, and the humanities.

Respect, Plurality, and Prejudice: A Psychoanalytical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Dynamics of Social Exclusion and Discrimination

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This book helps us understand the current resurgence of social prejudice against ethnic minority groups, the logics of scapegoating and the resulting violence.

Our time is characterised by a growth in expressed hostility and violence towards people who are perceived as 'others'. Hatred towards and discrimination against minorities is on the rise. This book presents a new understanding of prejudice, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, islamophobia, sexism and homophobia. It combines philosophy with psychoanalytic thinking, sociology and psycho-social studies, analysing the unconscious elements of social processes.

The author makes a case for framing a questioning of prejudice, not in terms of normality versus pathology or deviance, but in what is socially unconscious. Hypocrisy and double standards are inherent in our social practices, reflecting the contradictions present in our thinking about these issues: that we both believe and do not believe in equality. Thus this study takes account of conflicts between theory and practice, layers of implicit- and explicitness, pre- and unconscious experience and the power differentials that shape these constellations.

There is no neutral point of view from which prejudice can be addressed. The chapters in this study approach the problem of how to understand prejudice from different angles, aiming at ways of enabling listening to voices that are rarely heard. It questions how to reshape society so as to make room for people who appear to embody so-called contemptible qualities - for extension of respect across differences and inequalities.

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The Sane Society - Quotes by Erich Fromm

The Sane Society (1955) by Erich Fromm is a summation of his social and political philosophy wherein he critiques and psychoanalyzes the modern industrial capitalist society and its necessarily alienated, commercialized and conformed citizenry. Rather than explaining pathologies of individuals, he analyzes the pathologies of society contributing to the sickness of individuals.

Ch. 1: Are We Sane?

We... have created a greater material wealth than any other society in the history of the human race. Yet we have managed to kill off millions of our population in an arrangement which we call "war."
p.4

A few days after the mutual slaughter is over, the enemies of yesterday are our friends, the friends of yesterday are our enemies and again ... we begin to paint them in with appropriate colors of black and white.
p.4

The fact that millions of people share the same mental pathology does not make these people sane.

Ch. 2: Can A Society be Sick?—The Pathology of Normalcy

Just as man transforms the world around him, he so transforms himself in the process of history. He is his own creation, as it were.
p.13

It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health. Just as there is a folie à deux there is a folie à millions. The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same mental pathology does not make these people sane.
p.14

Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly. He says: "...greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as 'illness.'"

Spinoza formulated the problem of the socially patterned defect very clearly. He says: "Many people are seized by one and the same affect with great consistency. All his senses are so affected by one object that he believes this object to be present even when it is not. If this happens while the person is awake, the person is believed to be insane. … but if the greedy person thinks only of money and possessions, the ambitious one only of fame, one does not think of them as being insane, but only has annoying; generally one has contempt for them. But factually greediness, ambition, and so forth are forms of insanity, although usually one does not think of them as 'illness.'"
These words were written a few hundred years ago; they still hold true, although the defects have been culturally patterned to such an extent now that they are not even generally thought any more to be annoying or contemptible.
p.16

The culture provides patterns which enable them to live with a defect without becoming ill.
p.16

If he [man] lives under conditions which are contrary to his nature and to the basic requirements for human growth and sanity, he cannot help reacting; he must either deteriorate and perish, or bring about conditions which are more in accordance with his needs.
p.19

That human nature and society can have conflicting demands, and hence that a whole society can be sick, is an assumption which was made very explicitly by Freud, most extensively in his Civilization and Its Discontent.
p.19

Suppose that in our Western culture movies, radios, television, sports events and newspapers ceased to function for only four weeks. With these main avenues of escape closed, what would be the consequences for people thrown back upon their own resources? I have no doubt that even in this short time thousands of nervous breakdowns would occur, and many more thousands of people would be thrown into a state of acute anxiety, not different from the picture which is diagnosed clinically as “neurosis.” If the opiate against the socially patterned defect were withdrawn, the manifest illness would make its appearance.
p.24

Ch. 3: The Human Situation

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
Sect.C "Rootedness — Brotherliness vs. Incest”

Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

Man may be defined as the animal that can say "I,” that can be aware of himself as a separate entity.
Sect.D "Sense of Identity — Individuality vs. Herd Conformity”

Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted.
Sect.E "The Need for a Frame of Orientation and Devotion — Reason vs. Irrationality”

Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.
Ch.3 Sect. E "The Need for a Frame of Orientation and Devotion — Reason vs. Irrationality”

Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Ch. 4: Mental Health and Society

Needs and passions which are specifically human... the need for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, the need for a sense of identity and the need for a frame of orientation and devotion. ...his destructiveness as well as his creativeness, every powerful desire which motivates man's actions, is rooted in this specific source, not in the various stages of his libido as Freud's construction postulated.
p.67-68

If one of the basic necessities has found no fulfillment, insanity is the result; if it is satisfied but in an unsatisfactory way... neurosis is the consequence.
p.68

Only if he [man] develops his reason and his love, if he can experience the natural and the social world in a human way, can he feel at home, secure in himself, and the master of his life.
p.68

Of the two possible forms of transcendence, destructiveness is conducive to suffering, creativeness to happiness.
p.68-69

Ch. 5: Man in Capitalistic Society

By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts — but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, are experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively.
p.120 Sect.C.2.b "Alienation”

We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.
p.134 Sect.C.2.b "Alienation”

Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. He would wander around open-mouthed in this heaven of gadgets and commodities, provided only that there were ever more and newer things to buy, and perhaps that his neighbors were just a little less privileged than he.
p.135 Sect.C.2.b "Alienation”

Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.
p.147

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced — by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
p.87

Authority is not a quality one person "has,” in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him. But there is a fundamental difference between a kind of superiority-inferiority relation which can be called rational authority and one which may be described as inhibiting, or irrational authority.
p.96 Sect.B "Nineteenth-Century Capitalism”

I experience myself as "I" because I doubt, I protest, I rebel. Even if I submit and sense defeat, I experience myself as "I"—I, the defeated one. But if I am not aware of submitting or rebelling, if I am ruled by an anonymous authority, I lose the sense of self, I become a "one," a part of the "It."
p.153

I experience myself as "I" because I doubt, I protest, I rebel.

The mechanism through which the anonymous authority operates is conformity.
p.153

Feeling inferior stems from feeling different, and no question is asked whether the difference is for the better or the worse.
p.155

The reality behind this concept of freedom is the presence of anonymous authority and the absence of individuality.
p.155

The alienated person finds it almost impossible to remain by himself, because he is seized by the panic of experiencing nothingness.
p.155

Another aspect of alienated conformity is the leveling-out process of taste and judgement...
p.156

All that matters is that nothing is too serious, that one exchanges views, and that one is ready to accept any opinion or conviction (if there is such a thing) as being as good as another.
p.156-7

Indescriminating sociability and lack of individuality is called being outgoing.
p.157

"No one, they point out, ever need face a problem alone." We may add that it would be more correct to say that never do they face a problem.
p.157

Virtue is to be adjusted and to be like the rest. Vice, is to be different.
p.158

The new suburbs are matriarchies, yet the children are in effect so dictatorial that a term like filiarchy would not be entirely facetious.
p.160

They feel that "responding to group mores is akin to moral duty—and so they continue, hesitant and unsure, imprisoned in brotherhood.
p.162

They are all in the same boat, but... "where is the boat going? No one seems to have the faintest idea; nor, for that matter, do they see much point in even raising the question."
p.162

These people are young, they are middle class and they move upwards, they are mostly people who in their work career manipulate symbols and men, and whose advancement depends on whether they permit themselves to be manipulated.
p.162

There is undoubtedly a difference between people who manipulate other people and people who create things...
p.163

His work is alienated and only to a limited extent a meaningful expression of his energy and reason.
p.163

A feature in the social character of modern man... constitutes one of the most striking contrasts to the social character of the nineteenth century. ...the principle that every desire must be satisfied immediately, no wish must be frustrated.
p.164

It is considered immoral to keep one "love" partner beyond a relatively short period of time. "Love" is short-lived sexual desire, which must be satisfied immediately.
p.165

This lack of inhibition of desires leads to the same result as the lack of overt authority—the paralysis and eventually the destruction of the self.
p.165

I have no need to be aware of myself as myself because I am constantly absorbed having pleasure. I am—a system of desires and satisfactions... constantly stimulated and directed by the economic machine.
p.165-6

Having fun consists mainly in the satisfaction of consuming and "taking in"; commodities, sights, food, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies—all are consumed, swallowed.
p.166

How can we help being disappointed if our birth stops at the breast of the mother, if we are never weaned, if we remain overgrown babes, if we never go beyond the receptive orientation?
p.166

How do they deal with their troubles, which stem from the passivity of constant taking in? By another form of passivity, a constant spilling out, as it were, by talking.
p.166

When you do not let your thoughts and feelings build up pressure... they do not become more fruitful. It is exactly the same with unobstructed consumption. You are a system in which things go in and out continuously and within it is nothing, no tension, no digestion, no self.
p.167

Freud's discovery of free association had the aim of finding out what went on in you underneath the surface, of discovering who you really were; the modern talking to the sympathetic listener has the opposite... function... to make man forget who he is... to lose all tension, and with it all sense of self.
p.167-8

Today the function of psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.
p.168

Ch. 6: Various Other Diagnoses

Durkheim points out that only the political state survived the French Revolution as a solitary factor of collectivization. As a result, a genuine social order has disappeared, the state emerging as the only collective organizing activity of the social character. The individual, free from all genuine social bonds, finds himself abandoned, isolated, and demoralized. Society becomes "a disorganized dust of individuals."
p.217

Lewis Mumford, with whose writings my own ideas have many points in common, says this about our contemporary civilization: "The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastraphes, it is not humanly interesting...
p.222

Ch.7: Various Answers

Whether we think of Burckhardt or Proudhon, of Tolstoy or Baudelaire, of Marx or Kropotkin, they had a concept of man which was essentially a religious and moral one. Man is the end, and must never by use as a means; material production is for man, not man for material production; the aim of life is the unfolding of man's creative powers; the aim of history is a transformation of society into one governed by justice and truth—these are the principles on which explicitly and implicitly, all criticism of modern Capitalism is based.
p.233

Religion as an organization and a profession of dogma was carried on in the churches; religion in the sense of religious fervor and living faith was largely carried on by the antireligionists.

Ch. 8: Roads to Sanity

Schooling, be it transmission of knowledge or formation of character, is only one part, and perhaps not the most important part of education; using "education" here in its literal and most fundamental sense of "e-ducere"="to bring out," that which is within man.

I shall use "collective art," meaning the same as ritual; it means to respond to the world with our senses in a meaningful, skilled, productive, active, shared way.

"Collective art,"... is not an individual "leisure time" occupation, added to life, it is an integral part of life. It corresponds to a basic human need, and if this is not fulfilled, man remains as insecure and anxious as if the need for a meaningful thought picture of the world were unrealized.
p.348

In order to grow out of the receptive into the productive orientation, he [man] must relate himself to the world artistically and not only philosophically or scientifically.
p.348

A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture.
p.348

The need for the creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basis is at least as important as literacy and higher education.
p.349

The transformation of an atomistic into a communitarian society depends on creating again the opportunity for people to sing together, walk together, dance together, admire together—together, and not, to use Riesman's succinct expression, as a member of a "lonely crowd."
p.349

On the whole, our modern ritual is impoverished and does not fulfill man's need for collective art and ritual.
p.349

It was an error of the nonbelievers to focus on attacking the idea of God; their real aim ought to be to challenge the religionists to take their religion... seriously.
p.351

It is time to cease to argue about God, and instead to unite in the unmasking of contemporary forms of idolatry.
p.351

It is not too far-fetched to believe that a new religion will develop within the next few hundred years, a religion which corresponds to the development of the human race; the most important feature of such a religion would be its universalistic character, corresponding to the unification of mankind which is taking place in this epic... its emphasis would be on the practice of life, rather than on doctrinal beliefs.
p.352

Ch. 9: Summary — Conclusion

In the 19th century inhumanity meant cruelty; in the 20th century it means schizoid self-alienation. The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots. True enough, robots do not rebel. But given man’s nature, robots cannot live and remain sane, they become "Golems”; they will destroy their world and themselves because they cannot stand any longer the boredom of a meaningless life.
Fromm is here referencing a statement made by Adlai Stevenson at Columbia University in 1954, which he had quoted earlier in the work: "We are not in danger of becoming slaves any more, but of becoming robots.”
p.102

In the development of both capitalism and communism, as we visualize them in the next fifty or a hundred years, the processes that encourage human alienation will continue. Both systems are developing into managerial societies, their inhabitants well fed, well clad, having their wishes satisfied, and not having wishes that cannot be satisfied. Men are increasingly automatons, who make machines which act like men and produce men who act like machines; there reason deteriorates while their intelligence rises, thus creating the dangerous situation of equipping man with the greatest material power without the wisdom to use it.
p.360

In spite of increasing production and comfort, man loses more and more the sense of self, feels that his life is meaningless, even though such a feeling is largely unconscious. In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead; in the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
p.360

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that men may become robots.

Erich Fromm - Quotes

Introducing Critical Theory: A Graphic Guide

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What might a ‘theory of everything’ look like? Is science an ideology? Who were Adorno, Horkheimer or the Frankfurt School? The decades since the 1960s have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories. Deconstructionists, poststructuralists, postmodernists, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vie for our attention. Stuart Sim and Borin Van Loon’s incisive graphic guide provides a route through the tangled jungle of competing ideas and provides an essential historical context, situating these theories within tradition of critical analysis going back to the rise of Marxism. They present the essential methods and objectives of each theoretical school in an incisive and accessible manner, and pay special attention to recurrent themes and concerns that have preoccupied a century of critical theoretical activity.

Introducing Baudrillard: A Graphic Guide

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Illustrated guide to the controversial sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who died in 2007. Did the Gulf War take place? Is it possible to fake a bank robbery? Was sexual liberation a disaster? Jean Baudrillard has been hailed as one of France’s most subtle and powerful theorists. But his provocative style and assaults on sociology, feminism and Marxism have exposed him to accusations of promoting a dangerous new orthodoxy – of being the ‘pimp’ of postmodernism. Introducing Baudrillard cuts beneath the controversy of this misunderstood intellectual to present his radical claims that reality has been replaced by a simulated world of images and events ranging from TV news to Disneyland. It provides a clear account of Baudrillard’s work on obesity, pornography and terrorism and traces his development from critic of mass consumption to prophet of the apocalypse. Chris Horrocks’ text and Zoran Jevtic?s artwork invite us to decide whether Baudrillard was a cure for the vertigo of contemporary culture – or one of its symptoms

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Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial

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Inspired by Antonio Gramsci's writings on the history of subaltern classes, the authors in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial sought to contest the elite histories of Indian nationalists by adopting the paradigm of 'history from below.' Later on, the project shifted from its social history origins by drawing upon an eclectic group of thinkers that included Edward Said, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. This book provides a comprehensive balance sheet of the project and its developments, including Ranajit Guha's original subaltern studies manifesto, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak.

See also:

Mapping Ideology

Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault

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Perhaps the French philosopher's masterpiece, which is concerned with an extraordinary question: What does it mean to be mad?

Foucault's first major book, it is an examination of the evolving meaning of madness in European culture, law, politics, philosophy and medicine from the Middle Ages to the end of the eighteenth century, and a critique of historical method and the idea of history. It marks a turning in Foucault's thought away from phenomenology toward structuralism: though he uses the language of phenomenology to describe an evolving experience of "the other" as mad, he attributes this evolution to the influence of specific powerful social structures.

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Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse

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In this classic work, Herbert Marcuse takes as his starting point Freud's statement that civilization is based on the permanent subjugation of the human instincts, his reconstruction of the prehistory of mankind - to an interpretation of the basic trends of western civilization, stressing the philosophical and sociological implications.

Herbert Marcuse - Quotes

Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon

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This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas.

• Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures
• Includes terms from more than a dozen languages
• Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers
• Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more
• Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies
• An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities

The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud ~ Free Download

Erich Fromm - The Sane Society

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Following the publication of the seminal Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm applied his unique vision to a critique of contemporary capitalism in The Sane Society. Where the former dealt with man's historic inability to come to terms with his sense of isolation, and the dangers to which this can lead, The Sane Society took his theories one step further. In doing so it established Fromm as one of the most controversial political thinkers of his generation. Anaylsing how individuals conform to contemporary capitalist and patriarchal societies, the book was published to wide acclaim and even wider disapproval. It was a scathing indictment of modern capitalism and as such proved unwelcome to many. Unwelcome because much of what Fromm had to say was true. Today, as we settle into the challenges of the 21st century, Fromm's writings are just as relevant as when they were first written. Read it and decide for yourself - are you living in a sane society?

The Sane Society - Quotes by Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm is one of the major figures in the field of psychoanalysis. He devoted himself to consultant psychology and theoretical investigation for many years. He was the author of numerous books, including "Fear of Freedom" and "Psychoanalysis and Zen", before his death in 1980.