I enjoyed this essay. Inspired by your video on Wilhelm Reich's Psychology of Fascism, I am outlining my own commentary/analysis on Fascism. Thank you for your continued work with the Unspooked Project. Stirner may always been some niche thinker but his thoughts are important.
I really appreciate this essay, and I believe that your conclusions are rational and likely true, but I have to wonder why you avoided discussing the Death Drive (Sabina Spielrein, and famously Freud from 1921’s _Beyond The Pleasure Principle_ onward)? I feel like literally the entire first entire half of your essay is simply you rediscovering and re-articulating the Death Drive, which is odd to me for someone who is obviously familiar with psychoanalysis via Wilhelm Reich.
I’m not very familiar with Reich beyond his theories of sexuality, orgone energy, and his critique of fascism. Is there a specific reason that you avoided Thanatos completely? It seems to me like it would’ve really helped you explicate your ideas in this essay, which I believe are correct, further and much more easily.
My hesitation to discuss Thanatos is mostly strategic. I didnt feel like naturalizing what I am trying to keep on an institutional level here. I feel like once you name it ‘drive’ it just becomes something that the subject possesses rather than something that is actively produced, trained, displaced and administered by modern regimes of stability.
The focus is refusal, and sharing my own refusal with people who may not be able to name their own.
Death drive is often used to explain away the very contradiction Im interested in preserving.
My concern is that Thanatos risks functioning as another consolation when the entire point of the essay is that modern subjects are systematically taught to fear lived instability and to outsource it into spectacle, fantasy, and symbolic rebellion. Im not asking why people desire dissolution in a psychic sense. I literally want to stir away from this. Im asking why they are so unable to inhabit even minor, survivable forms of instability without immediately translating them into pathology, meaning, or narrative.
And this is also why Reich matters more to me here than Freud because Reich is all about understanding submission as affective regulation rather than as the expression of a drive.
So yea, youre not wrong about the first half of the essay in a way but Id say the more uncomfortable implication is that what gets called the death drive may itself be a conceptual artifact of a culture that refuses to let instability appear without explanation and depth and theory and permission.
I see! That’s quite interesting, I’m actually going to reread the essay with that in mind. I’m familiar with your work on YouTube as well, so I knew there must’ve been a reason. Thanks for answering.
I enjoyed this essay. Inspired by your video on Wilhelm Reich's Psychology of Fascism, I am outlining my own commentary/analysis on Fascism. Thank you for your continued work with the Unspooked Project. Stirner may always been some niche thinker but his thoughts are important.
I really appreciate this essay, and I believe that your conclusions are rational and likely true, but I have to wonder why you avoided discussing the Death Drive (Sabina Spielrein, and famously Freud from 1921’s _Beyond The Pleasure Principle_ onward)? I feel like literally the entire first entire half of your essay is simply you rediscovering and re-articulating the Death Drive, which is odd to me for someone who is obviously familiar with psychoanalysis via Wilhelm Reich.
I’m not very familiar with Reich beyond his theories of sexuality, orgone energy, and his critique of fascism. Is there a specific reason that you avoided Thanatos completely? It seems to me like it would’ve really helped you explicate your ideas in this essay, which I believe are correct, further and much more easily.
I also have to say...the words RATIONAL and TRUE (in the first sentence) feel problematic to me.
That’s ok. It’s simply how I feel, they obviously aren’t statements about the objective Truth of your claims for you or anyone else besides myself.
My hesitation to discuss Thanatos is mostly strategic. I didnt feel like naturalizing what I am trying to keep on an institutional level here. I feel like once you name it ‘drive’ it just becomes something that the subject possesses rather than something that is actively produced, trained, displaced and administered by modern regimes of stability.
The focus is refusal, and sharing my own refusal with people who may not be able to name their own.
Death drive is often used to explain away the very contradiction Im interested in preserving.
My concern is that Thanatos risks functioning as another consolation when the entire point of the essay is that modern subjects are systematically taught to fear lived instability and to outsource it into spectacle, fantasy, and symbolic rebellion. Im not asking why people desire dissolution in a psychic sense. I literally want to stir away from this. Im asking why they are so unable to inhabit even minor, survivable forms of instability without immediately translating them into pathology, meaning, or narrative.
And this is also why Reich matters more to me here than Freud because Reich is all about understanding submission as affective regulation rather than as the expression of a drive.
So yea, youre not wrong about the first half of the essay in a way but Id say the more uncomfortable implication is that what gets called the death drive may itself be a conceptual artifact of a culture that refuses to let instability appear without explanation and depth and theory and permission.
I see! That’s quite interesting, I’m actually going to reread the essay with that in mind. I’m familiar with your work on YouTube as well, so I knew there must’ve been a reason. Thanks for answering.