Death and Mastery by Benjamin Y Fong

Author:Benjamin Y Fong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI040000, Philosophy/Movements/Critical Theory, PSY026000, Psychology/Movements/Psychoanalysis
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

The Language of Thanatos

In chapter 2 I followed Loewald in arguing that Eros (whose genesis I have attributed to the sublimation of the death drive) is evinced by the use of words to reveal either a latent “thing” that unconsciously structures language use or else a “deficient word” that works to conceal its lack of referent. Sublimation, in this view, is the cathexis of language, the attempt to find drive satisfaction not with language but in language (I take this view of sublimation to meet the two criteria described in the first section). In this chapter I have entertained the possibility of a sublimation of aggressivity and must now confront the obvious conclusion that it is primarily in language that we see the effects of aggressive sublimation, in other words, that there is an intimate relation between technological development and linguistic practice.58 Following through the logic of sublimation unpacked in chapter 2, we can tentatively envision this translation as follows: if, in death drive sublimation, the urge to union of subject and object is sought in the union of word and thing, then, in aggressive sublimation, the drive to subjective omnipotence and objective destitution characteristic of aggressivity similarly finds expression in a kind of dominance of word over thing.

In this view, Eros and sublimated aggressivity—perhaps the word Thanatos could be incorporated here—share the aim of seeking a secondary “wholeness,” just as the urge to union and aggressivity both seek a kind of tensionless repose, but, whereas Eros aims to find words for things and things for words, Thanatos aims to render whole by closing off investigation into unnamed things and deficient words, repressing anything that might threaten the cohesion of the present. It draws a circle around what is and claims it sufficient, everything else being extraneous or hostile to the current configuration of the ego.59 What is being entertained here is the following: that language is a medium not only to bring about better communication between unreconciled entities (its communicative function) and not only to gain further mastery over one’s environment (its instrumental function) but also to silence, to engulf the other, whether it is a conversation partner or one’s own id, into nothingness (its aggressive function).60

Marcuse himself devoted a large number of pages to precisely this problem: that technological rationality enacts a “closure of discourse.”61 To describe this “language of one-dimensional thought,” he employs three adjectives that adequately cover the effects of aggressive sublimation: “functionalized, abridged, and unified.”62

1. Functionalization: The language of Eros, in seeking words for unnamed things and things for deficient words, necessarily transcends function and is thus seen from the functional perspective as strictly useless. The language of Thanatos, by contrast, is a language that serves the ego in pursuit of preestablished ends and thus one that works at the cost of investigating the purpose of working. It is the language of the subject oriented “straight ahead,” only reflective in its capacity to measure success or failure in living up to goals.

2. Abridgment: Similarly, whereas

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.