Mourning and Modernity

"In the first half of mourning and modernity, political theorist Isaac D. Balbus responds to Marxist, nonpsychoanalytic feminist, and poststructuralist criticisms of the neo-Kleinian, feminist psychoanalytic account of sexual, political, and technological domination he developed in his earlier works. The second half applies Kleinian theory to a number of salient topics, including: reparations for slavery and racism, the fantasies of omnipotence fostered by computer-mediated communication, and the way in which deep ecology and 12-step recovery programs contest omnipotence in the realms of production and consumption." "Balbus conceptualizes modernity as a manic cultural defense against mourning the very losses it mandates and as a source of reparative movements of mourning that challenge its contemporary configuration. Mourning and Modernity thus renews the tradition of critical cultural psychoanalysis that includes Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown, Christopher Lasch, and Dorothy Dinnerstein, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis and social or political theory."--Jacket.