With characteristic intelligence, wit, and feminist insight, Ellen Willis addresses democracy as she sees it: "a commitment to individual freedom and egalitarian self-government in every area of social, economic, and cultural life." Moving between scholarly and down-to-earth activist writing styles, Willis confronts the conservative backlash that has slowly eroded democratic ideals and advances of the 1960s as well as the internal debates that have frequently splintered the left
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"With characteristic intelligence, wit, and feminist insight, Ellen Willis addresses democracy as she sees it: 'a commitment to individual freedom and egalitarian self-government in every area of social, economic, and cultural life.' Moving between scholarly and down-to-earth activist writing styles, Willis confronts the conservative backlash that has slowly eroded democratic ideals and advances of the 1960s as well as the internal debates that have frequently splintered the left"--Provided by publisher.
Eli Zaretsky's Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis does not focus on the truth claims of psychoanalysis but on its social meanings and its influence, for good or ill. Its central idea is that psychoanalysis came into being as the theory and practice of "personal life"—that is, "the experience of having an identity distinct from one's place in the family, in society, and in the social division of labor." In Zaretsky's account, the self-conscious embrace of individual identity became a major social force with the advent of the "second industrial revolution," which transformed American capitalism into an instrument of mass consumption, stimulating fantasies of personal gratification, weakening familial authority, and promoting greater freedom for women and youth. Sigmund Freud's conception of a personal unconscious, of a distinction between public and private, social and individual meaning, resonated profoundly with these changes.
For most of my politically conscious life, the idea of social transformation has been the great taboo of American politics. From the smug 1950s to the post-Reagan era, in which a bloodied and cowed left has come to regard a kinder, gentler capitalism as its highest aspiration, this anti-utopian trend has been interrupted only by the brief but intense flare-up of visionary politics known as "the sixties." Yet that short-lived, anomalous upheaval has had a more profound effect on my thinking about the possibilities of politics than the following three decades of reaction. The reason is not (to summarize the conversation-stopping accusations routinely aimed at anyone who suggests that sixties political and cultural radicalism might offer other than negative lessons for the left) that I am stuck in a time warp, nursing a romantic attachment to my youth, and so determined to idealize a period that admittedly had its politically dicey moments. Rather, as I see it, the enduring interest of this piece of history lies precisely in its spectacular departure from the norm. It couldn't happen, according to the reigning intellectual currents of the fifties, but it did. Nor—in the sense of ceasing to cast a shadow over the present—can it really be said to be over, even in this age of "9/11 Changed Everything."
Attempts to understand violence, both before & after September 11 (2001), have excluded cultural & psychological elements from their political analysis. The effects of culture & psychology can create a situation where violence, normally constrained by society, erupts into episodes of conflict & war, particularly when influenced by external economic & political pressures. Social & religious movements resulting from this confluence cannot be understood through an appeal to traditional logic, but must be considered through the lens of psychosexual analysis. Similarly, episodes of political & social violence must be understood within the culture that created them. It is concluded that the studies of culture & psychology must be reincorporated into political analyses & that the US must treat culture as a political matter & not shy away from cultural conflicts to protect its own psychological comfort zone. T. Foster
Attempts to understand violence, both before & after September 11 (2001), have excluded cultural & psychological elements from their political analysis. The effects of culture & psychology can create a situation where violence, normally constrained by society, erupts into episodes of conflict & war, particularly when influenced by external economic & political pressures. Social & religious movements resulting from this confluence cannot be understood through an appeal to traditional logic, but must be considered through the lens of psychosexual analysis. Similarly, episodes of political & social violence must be understood within the culture that created them. It is concluded that the studies of culture & psychology must be reincorporated into political analyses & that the US must treat culture as a political matter & not shy away from cultural conflicts to protect its own psychological comfort zone. T. Foster
