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What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why
did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the
violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth
century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of
events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are
the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance?
And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape
postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the
Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising
account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our
experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about
subjects' destructive desires have combined with fears about
rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem
attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy,
literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary
culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our
histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with
postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving
together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille,
Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and
popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that
the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of
bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the
survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very
premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy
communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make
meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive
powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to
scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science,
philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural
studies.
The contributors to this collection come from disparate fields such
as theology, literature studies, political science, and
communication studies and are guided by a commitment to consider
what we can learn from Camus as opposed to where he was wrong or
misguided in his life and writing. If there is a place to consider
the shortcomings of a human being, especially one as unique as
Albert Camus, it will not be found within this volume. The essays
in this text are built around the theme that Albert Camus functions
as an implicit philosopher of communication with deep ethical
commitments. The title, Creating Albert Camus, is intended to have
a double meaning. First are those voices who inspired Camus and
helped create his ideas; second are those scholars working with
Camus's thoughts during and after his life who help create his
enduring legacy. Bringing together scholars who embrace an
appreciation of the philosophy of communication provide an
opportunity to further situate the work of Camus within the
communication discipline. This new project explores the
communicative implications of Camus's work.
This book demonstrates that Albert Camus' concept of absurdity is
best understood when decoupled from what might be called its
ontological aspirations. Rather than pretend that absurdity
usefully describes 'the human condition,' 'the silence of god,'
'the deprivation of transcendence,' or 'metaphysical revolt,' I
argue that, for absurdity to be a fruitful idea, it must be
approached as a psychological disposition and its basic tenets must
be translated into phenomenal and psychological language. The book
defines the particular psychological disposition of absurdity by
analogizing it with the constructs of ambivalence, integration,
conscious resistance, and creativity. Its central contention is
that absurdity may be interpreted as a kind of ambivalence and,
thus, as an aspect of psychological experience that demands a
creative and mature response. Absurdists' cries of spiritual
anguish need not persuade us that the conditions of loss, terror,
alienation, and deprivation they describe are objectively 'real'.
If, instead, descriptions of absurdity may be understood as
psychological accounts of the powerfully ambivalent impulses toward
merger and toward separateness, toward group-immersion and toward
subjectivity, then absurd revolt involves recognizing, resisting,
and integrating such impulses in order to facilitate mature ethical
action. It may be possible, I argue, by examining the dynamics of
absurdity, ambivalence, resistance, and creativity, to develop a
new grounding for an absurd political morality. This book asks what
unique properties and advantages this renewed political morality
offers and applies this grounding to some of the political and
moral crises of Camus' time and of our own.
What does it mean to describe something or someone as absurd? Why
did absurd philosophy and literature become so popular amidst the
violent conflicts and terrors of the mid- to late-twentieth
century? Is it possible to understand absurdity not as a feature of
events, but as a psychological posture or stance? If so, what are
the objectives, dynamics, and repercussions of the absurd stance?
And in what ways has the absurd stance continued to shape
postmodern thought and contemporary culture? In Rethinking the
Politics of Absurdity, Matthew H. Bowker offers a surprising
account of absurdity as a widespread endeavor to make parts of our
experience meaningless. In the last century, he argues, fears about
subjects' destructive desires have combined with fears about
rationality in a way that has made the absurd stance seem
attractive. Drawing upon diverse sources from philosophy,
literature, politics, psychoanalysis, theology, and contemporary
culture, Bowker identifies the absurd effort to make aspects of our
histories, our selves, and our public projects meaningless with
postmodern revolts against reason and subjectivity. Weaving
together analyses of the work of Albert Camus, Georges Bataille,
Judith Butler, Emmanuel Levinas, and others with interview data and
popular narratives of apocalypse and survival, Bowker shows that
the absurd stance and the postmodern revolt invite a kind of
bargain, in which meaning is sacrificed in exchange for the
survival of innocence. Bowker asks us to consider that the very
premise of this bargain is false: that ethical subjects and healthy
communities cannot be created in absurdity. Instead, we must make
meaningful even the most shocking losses, terrors, and destructive
powers with which we live. Bowker's book will be of interest to
scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science,
philosophy, literature, psychoanalysis, sociology, and cultural
studies.
Matthew H. Bowker offers a novel analysis of "experience": the vast
and influential concept that has shaped Western social theory and
political practice for the past half-millennium. While it is
difficult to find a branch of modern thought, science, industry, or
art that has not relied in some way on the notion of "experience"
in defining its assumptions or aims, no study has yet applied a
politically-conscious and psychologically-sensitive critique to the
construct of experience. Doing so reveals that most of the
qualities that have been attributed to experience over the
centuries - particularly its unthinkability, its correspondence
with suffering, and its occlusion of the self - are part of
unlikely fantasies or ideologies. By analyzing a series of related
cases, including the experiential education movement, the
ascendency of trauma theory, the philosophy of the social contract,
and the psychological study of social isolation, the book builds a
convincing case that ideologies of experience are invoked not to
keep us close to lived realities and 'things-in-themselves,' but,
rather, to distort and destroy true knowledge of ourselves and
others. In spite of enduring admiration for those who may be called
champions of experience, such as Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and others treated throughout the work, the ideologies of
experience ultimately discourage individuals and groups from
creating, resisting, and changing our experience, urging us instead
to embrace trauma, failure, deprivation, and self-abandonment.
Pierre Delion is Professor Emeritus in the faculty of medicine at
Lille, a child psychiatrist, and a psychoanalyst. His work is as
straightforward as it is affecting but is little read in the
English-speaking world due to a lack of translation into English.
Matthew Bowker, in his excellent translation, rectifies this
unfortunate deficit to introduce English-language readers to the
affecting and wide-ranging work of Pierre Delion through two of his
best-known essays. What is Institutional Psychotherapy? examines
the psychiatric establishment and institution, arguing that for
institutional psychotherapy to be effective, we must "care for the
institution" just as we must attend to the "transferential
constellation" of the patient, the latter of which emerges only
when the institution respects all the voices (including the
patient's) involved in the patient's care. And, as Delion duly
notes: "What holds for person-to-person psychiatry also holds true
for democracy." The Republic of False Selves maintains that our
social bonds have been damaged or destroyed to the extent that the
practice and meaning of democracy itself are now in question.
Democracy, for Delion, "refers not only to forms of government, but
also to a society based on freedom and equality, or more generally
still, to a set of values: political, social, or cultural ideals
and principles." The democratic project, then, is threatened by
contemporary political events, media images, neoliberal and
techno-bureaucratic interventions, and even or especially the
treatment of the mentally ill. The combination of these two works
into a single text invites readers to consider the broader
political connections between the clinical institution and society
as a whole. Delion's careful thoughtfulness paired with his vast
experience and understanding opens up new avenues of discovery to
the reader.
In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is
set in conversation with some of today's most talented
psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and
contributors demonstrate that Winnicott's thought contains
underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his
reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful
in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary
political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott's psychoanalytic
theory and practice offer a framework by which the political
subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and
contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this
volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the
potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to
arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and
civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its
contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented
political and social theory. It will be of interest to political
scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the
humanities and social sciences.
Matthew H. Bowker offers a novel analysis of "experience": the vast
and influential concept that has shaped Western social theory and
political practice for the past half-millennium. While it is
difficult to find a branch of modern thought, science, industry, or
art that has not relied in some way on the notion of "experience"
in defining its assumptions or aims, no study has yet applied a
politically-conscious and psychologically-sensitive critique to the
construct of experience. Doing so reveals that most of the
qualities that have been attributed to experience over the
centuries - particularly its unthinkability, its correspondence
with suffering, and its occlusion of the self - are part of
unlikely fantasies or ideologies. By analyzing a series of related
cases, including the experiential education movement, the
ascendency of trauma theory, the philosophy of the social contract,
and the psychological study of social isolation, the book builds a
convincing case that ideologies of experience are invoked not to
keep us close to lived realities and 'things-in-themselves,' but,
rather, to distort and destroy true knowledge of ourselves and
others. In spite of enduring admiration for those who may be called
champions of experience, such as Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and others treated throughout the work, the ideologies of
experience ultimately discourage individuals and groups from
creating, resisting, and changing our experience, urging us instead
to embrace trauma, failure, deprivation, and self-abandonment.
Over the past several decades, colleges and universities in the
United States and United Kingdom have made significant commitments
to increasing diversity, most notably regarding race and gender.
The result has not, however, been an amelioration of conflict over
matters of difference. Instead, there has been continuing, if not
increasing, conflict and strife in universities, often reflecting
conflict in the larger society. A Dangerous Place to Be examines
identity-based conflict in colleges and universities, analyzing the
actions of students, teachers, administrators, and educational
organizations as efforts to manage dilemmas and disturbances
arising in the process of identity formation.
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