Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

A culture named desire

Ransacking the excesses of contemporary culture
by
September 2014, no. 364

The Life of I: The new culture of narcissism by Anne Manne

Melbourne University Press, $32.99 pb, 319 pp

A culture named desire

Ransacking the excesses of contemporary culture
by
September 2014, no. 364

It is now approaching eighty-five years since Freud published his seminal book, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). A foundational work of psychoanalytic cultural criticism, Freud’s focus was repression and its cultural consequences. He argued that sexual repression, and its associated guilt, had become the fundamental problem of modern societies. Freud understood society as a kind of trade-off: unfettered sexual pleasure is sacrificed for a sense of collective security. Freedom of the self is limited in the name of social order. ‘Civilization,’ Freud wrote, ‘is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity.’

From today’s vantage point, to speak of culture in terms of unity or order sounds somewhat quaint. In the light of globalisation and the communications revolution, Freud’s cultural analysis looks increasingly out of date. In our global world of 24/7 digital culture – one shot through with religious, racial, and gender divisions – the production of social order may depend less upon consensus than upon a lack of consensus at the very point where cultural divisions could conceivably translate into political action.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.