Mari Ruti combines theoretical reflection, cultural critique,
feminist politics, and personal experience to analyze the
prevalence of bad feelings in contemporary everyday life.
Proceeding from a playful engagement with Freud’s idea of penis
envy, Ruti’s autotheoretical commentary fans out to a broader
consideration of neoliberal pragmatism. She focuses on the emphasis
on good performance, high productivity, constant self-improvement,
and relentless cheerfulness that characterizes present-day Western
society. Revealing the treacherousness of our fantasies of the good
life, particularly the idea that our efforts will eventually be
rewarded—that things will eventually get better—Ruti
demystifies the false hope that often causes us to tolerate an
unbearable present. Theoretically rigorous and lucidly written,
Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is a trenchant critique of
contemporary gender relations. Refuting the idea that we live in a
postfeminist world where gender inequalities have been transcended,
Ruti describes how neoliberal heteropatriarchy has transformed
itself in subtle and stealthy, and therefore all the more
insidious, ways. Mobilizing Michel Foucault’s concept of
biopolitics, Jacques Lacan’s account of desire, and Lauren
Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, she analyzes the
rationalization of intimacy, the persistence of gender stereotypes,
and the pornification of heterosexual culture. Ruti shines a
spotlight on the depression, anxiety, frustration, and
disenchantment that frequently lie beneath our society’s
sugarcoated mythologies of self-fulfillment, romantic satisfaction,
and professional success, speaking to all who are concerned about
the emotional costs of the pressure-cooker ethos of our age.
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