Death and Mastery

Benjamin Y. Fong is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, the Honors College of Arizona State University. His work has been published in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion), The Stone (New York Times), and the Philosophical Salon (Los Angeles Review of Books).

• Acknowledgments Introduction: In Defense of Drive Theory Part One: Dream 1. Death, Mastery, and the Origins of Life: Sigmund Freud's Strange Proposal Part Two: Interpretation 2. Between Need and Dread: Hans Loewald and the Primordial Density 3. Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis (Reprised): Jacques Lacan and the Genesis of Omnipotence Part Three: Working Through 4. The Psyche in Late Capitalism I: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and the Crisis of Internalization 5. The Psyche in Late Capitalism II: Herbert Marcuse and the Technological Lure Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Benjamin Fong offers the most cogent and compelling case I've encountered in defense of the death drive, showing that it should not be equated with violence and destruction but, to the contrary, seen as a means for individuation and life. -- Noelle McAfee, Emory University At various moments in Death and Mastery, the writing is so down to earth as to make the reader smile: it is wonderful to see academic ideas expressed so matter-of-factly, without the usual rhetorical acrobatics. -- Mari Ruti, University of Toronto In this masterful and enlivening study of the ways in which the concepts of death and mastery have been elaborated in Freudian and post-Freudian social theory, Ben Fong has given us the means to think about human nature and human community now, under conditions of advanced capitalism, without succumbing to the scientism of the new neurobiology or to the social constructivism of recent historicist social and cultural theory. The argument turns on the ambiguity embedded in the notion of mastery: on the one hand, the capacity to engage creatively with the world, to master the tasks of living a historical form of life; on the other, the temptation to enslave, to compel others to exercise this competence in one's place. Fong is able to analyze with remarkable lucidity a complex array of individual and social phenomena by fleshing out the imbrications of these twinned responses to what Freud called the drives' demand for work. Fong makes abundantly clear that drive theory and social theory are strongest when thought together. -- Eric Santner, University of Chicago To the vexed question of the relationship of psychoanalysis to social theory Benjamin Fong brings a distinctive sensibility and tact. Avoiding the portentousness and unduly ambitious abstraction of this now overspecialized field, Fong has made the whole subject both newly intriguing, and wholly engaging. -- Adam Phillips, author of Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst