Christoper Lasch

[linebaugh]

Lots of talk here of late, lets have a thread

I think its interesting to think of narcissism as re-concretization of the subject. Where nebulous egos once struggled to solidify as ‘company men,’ perpetually guilt ridden by the failure to exemplify the virtues that uphold established institutions, the narcissist comes preloaded with the axioms of virtue and moves the institutions around him like paste. a reversal of brick and mortar.

The clinical conception of narcissism involves an over identification of the self in object relations, like the subject rematerializing after ego formation abstracts the initially direct conception of subjectivity in the mirror stage. lasch implies this is a move for equilibrium amidst economic and political processes becoming increasingly abstract and immaterial.

 

[linebaugh]

the narcissist comes preloaded with the axioms of virtue and moves the institutions around him like paste. a reversal of brick and mortar.

because its still fresh on the mind- Im thinking of Stalker. The Zone living on the explorers as much as they live within it.

 

[linebaugh]

a fun passage:

In the 1950s, the organization man thought of an attractive, socially gifted wife as an important asset to his career. Today executives are warned of the “apparent serious conflict between marriage and a management career.” A recent report compares the “elite corps of professional managers” to the Janissaries, elite soldiers of the Ottoman empire who were taken from their parents as children, raised by the state, and never allowed to marry. “A young man considering [a managerial] career might well think of himself as a modern-day Janissary—and consider very, very carefully whether marriage in any way conforms to his chosen life.”

 

[constant escape]

Interesting, so a sort of vocational industrialism, maybe even capitalism. A case where individual suffering can pay big for the collective they are suffering for? Or perhaps the individual is convinced that their suffering is for the greater good, assuming they even experience it as suffering per se.

 

[linebaugh]

Interesting, so a sort of vocational industrialism, maybe even capitalism. A case where individual suffering can pay big for the collective they are suffering for? Or perhaps the individual is convinced that their suffering is for the greater good, assuming they even experience it as suffering per se.

theres talk of rage. so far the only emotion discussed, and its a personal suffering.

 

[version]

A few of his quotes on identity politics got quite a bit of traction on /r/stupidpol a month or so back,

“The same benefits misleadingly associated with religion — security, spiritual comfort, dogmatic relief from doubt — are thought to flow from a therapeutic politics of identity. In effect, identity politics has come to serve as a substitute for religion — or at least for the feeling of self-righteousness that is so commonly confused with religion. These developments shed further light on the decline of democratic debate. ‘Diversity’ — a slogan that looks attractive on the face of it — has come to mean the opposite of what it appears to mean. In practice, diversity turns out to legitimize a new dogmatism, in which rival minorities take shelter behind a set of beliefs impervious to rational discussion. … Each group tries to barricade itself behind its own dogmas. ...This parody of ‘community’ — a term much in favor but not very clearly understood — carried with it the insidious assumption that all members of a given group can be expected to think alike. Opinion thus becomes a function of racial or ethnic identity, of gender or sexual preference. Self-selected minority ‘spokespersons’ enforce this conformity by ostracizing those who stray from the party line…”

“The right and the left share another important assumption: that academic radicalism is genuinely ‘subversive.’ ...No doubt they would like to think so, but their activities do not seriously threaten corporate control of the universities, and it is corporate control, not academic radicalism, that has ‘corrupted our higher education.’ It is corporate control that has diverted social resources from the humanities into military and technological research, fostered an obsession with quantification that has destroyed the social sciences, replaced the English language with bureaucratic jargon, and created a top-heavy administrative apparatus whole educational vision begins and ends with the bottom line. One of the effects of corporate and bureaucratic control is to drive critical thinkers out of the social sciences into the humanities, where they can indulge a taste for ‘theory’ without the religious discipline of empirical social observation. ‘Theory’ is no substitute for social criticism, the one form of intellectual activity that would seriously threaten the status quo...Social criticism that addressed the real issue in higher education today — the university’s assimilation into the corporate order and the emergence of a knowledge class whose ‘subversive’ activities do not seriously threaten any vested interest — would be a welcome addition to contemporary discourse.”

“The rhetoric of black power corrupted the white left and the black left alike, substituting a politics of the media for the civil rights struggles earlier waged in deadly earnest in the South. As the black power rhetoricians co-opted the civil rights movement, they also captivated white liberals who sought to appease the guilt associated with ‘white skin privilege’ by adopting the gestures and language of black militancy. Both whites and blacks embraced radical style in place of radical substance.”

“Black Power is itself, in part, a manifestation of the New Left. It shares with the white Left not only the language of romantic anarchism but several other features as well, none of them (it must be said) conductive to its success — a pronounced distrust of people over thirty, a sense of powerlessness and despair, for which the revolutionary rhetoric serves to compensate, and a tendency to substitute rhetoric for political analysis and defiant gestures for political action.”

 

[version]

 

[constant escape]

I just thought, "I should start a thread on this Lasch fellow", and lo and behold.

@Linebaugh have you experienced anything weieieieird in your introduction to this guy? For me, it was rapid fire out of nowhere, coming at you live, perhaps this is a zeitgiest thread. Prompted by the red scare / zizek episode, which I just explained the cultural significance of to my dad.

 

[constant escape]

A brief peek at him (edit: Lasch, that is) gives me the impression of a reactionary turn the far left academic youth may take - or perhaps, ostensibly reactionary. Perhaps this is one of those pacman-reaching-the-edge-of-the-screen-only-to-appear-on-the-other-side type things. Horseshoe, etc.

 

[constant escape]

But hey, again, a very brief peek. An intoxicated wikipedia dive.

 

[constant escape]

Also, I may have exited the proto-Lasch stampede before it even began. Not sure. Feels like I just drifted back out of the alt-right zone, which is largely a reaction to the zealous social progressivism, and into... what is now... something of a synthesis. Really not sure. Bear in mind I've lived in dialectical maps for a while now.

 

[constant escape]

Lasch seems like, again a pure kneejerk reaction, which is valuable for its own reasons - lasch seems like an intellectual validation of certain ostensibly reactionary thrusts within the academic left. Talk of dirtbag, reactionary, heterodox, being willing to have Moldbug on a podcast, etc - all seems to be part of the thrust that would be enamored by Lasch. Not to say that everyone in such a trend would be interested by Lasch, or that everyone interested in Lasch would identify with such a trend - but there is some overlap.

Even reading the first wikipedia paragraph, I was struck by it. Since, I've managed to pivot away, but at first it did register in a mundanely revelatory way.

Also I'm still high - but synchronicity like this can't be disregarded.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

A brief peek at him (edit: Lasch, that is) gives me the impression of a reactionary turn the far left academic youth may take - or perhaps, ostensibly reactionary. Perhaps this is one of those pacman-reaching-the-edge-of-the-screen-only-to-appear-on-the-other-side type things. Horseshoe, etc.

no offense but your brief peek has badly mislead you

he wasn't a youth turning reactionary, he was a traditional leftist on the wrong side of a generation gap from the New Left - i.e. by the late 60s he was already in his 30s and a professor - critiquing what he saw as problems with the New Left - essentially the same ones people make now, a focus on culture (identity politics) instead of what he saw as its priority, challenging capitalism.

he, like his mentor Richard Hofstadter, was always contemptuous of consumer, corporate capitalism and its control over American society. where he and Hofstadter eventually split - hard, in a kill yr idols way - was over what the greatest bulwark against that - Hofstadter thought it was intellectual, managerial elites (i.e. Thurman Arnold, FDR's trust-buster), while Lasch viewed the intellectual elite as essentially parasitic careerists who had long since been co-opted, and thought the greatest force for resistance was crowdsourced populist wisdom, tho me he means more petit bourgeois than prole.

 

[constant escape]

Good to have more insight into him, and that definitely advances my understanding, but I think the significance may lie not in his work in and of itself, but in the discovery of his work by certain strains of the young academic left. One of the hosts of red scare, still couldn;t tell you which, voiced the same thing, just moments after I paused the podcast to voice it to my dad, who suggested we listen to it (which is odd, because I like Zizek too, so its likes I overlooked both trends as they converged).

So good to know not to trust the kneejerk reaction i had, according to your words - but perhaps this is some kind of intellectual/cultural spark within some far left milieus (the ones near those designated as dirtbag, reactionary, heterodox - the ones I would say express an stronger criticism of neoliberalism, generallY).

 

[constant escape]

All about that weird territory emerging on the young academic far left, a territory that seems to converge, along certain dimensions, with some alt-right positions, albeit in a socially progressive way.

 

[constant escape]

Its all so weird, and its been underpinning much of the confusion, generationally, on this forum. Seemingly.

 

[constant escape]

So yeah I read came at him from this kinda alt-left perspective, from which he is a novelty, rather than from a historically/contextually informed perspective.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Lasch resonates in this moment bc 1) it's easy to map his identity politics critique onto new for ppl who want to do that kind of thing 2) his loathing of elites and favor of populism looks visionary in re the last 10-15 years. economically he was always left, if not totally anti-capitalist then certainly always anti-consumer, corporate capitalism.

"reactionary" Lasch is complicated - partially it's being on the wrong side of the 60s generation gap, in between Cold War intellectuals like Hofstadter who had been shaped by McCarthyism etc in the 50s, and the younger New Left types - so that I don't think he really ever understood the cultural importance of feminist, queer, racial, etc liberation movements, while still being correct about their limitations without an economic dimension. his overarching concern was "the creation of a just and decent society is incompatible with the preservation of corporate capitalism" and he was always concerned with what would resist that corporate control. one of those forces he saw as the family, which led to bemoan the decline of the family and the patriarch - which unsurprisingly plenty of feminists took issue with. he's always saying basically that cultural liberation movements will only liberate you to become another recognized consumer demographic and/or marketplace cog - which, yes - but he doesn't reckon with the cultural importance those movements have unto themselves. unfortunately it's probably very easy to misread what he was saying and co-opt it into yr standard anti-cultural Marxist spiel (which I doubt he would have much truck with).

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the discovery of his work by certain strains of the young academic left

Lasch I don't always agree with but I always respect. these people "discovering" his work, I have basically no respect for.

even when (I think) he's wrong, he's x100 smarter than than ppl namechecking him on podcasts + Reddit

and he's one of the most widely read historians of the last 50 years - he was writing social criticism specifically to reach a mass audience

so discovery is a reach, these aren't like, obscure medieval texts

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

and I was going to make a post encouraging ppl to read him in tandem with Hofstadter

between Lasch, Hofstadter, and Charles Beard - Hofstadter's idol - you essentially have the determiners of 20th C progressive American historiography

just as Hofstadter's work should be read grappling with and eventually splitting from Beard, so Lasch and Hofstadter