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Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings

2018-05-29 Literary Criticism
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Release : 2018-05-29
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 769/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings by : Mari Ruti

Download or read book Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings written by Mari Ruti. This book was released on 2018-05-29. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

A World of Fragile Things

2010-03-25 Psychology
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Release : 2010-03-25
Genre : Psychology
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 190/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A World of Fragile Things by : Mari Ruti

Download or read book A World of Fragile Things written by Mari Ruti. This book was released on 2010-03-25. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”

Reinventing the Soul

2020-10-20 Psychology
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Release : 2020-10-20
Genre : Psychology
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 25X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Reinventing the Soul by : Mari Ruti

Download or read book Reinventing the Soul written by Mari Ruti. This book was released on 2020-10-20. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for scholars and students in critical theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. How does the self care for itself in the posthumanist era? What psychic processes might allow the postmodern subject to find meaning and value in its life? Is it possible to delineate a theory of psychic potentiality that is compatible with poststructuralist models of fluid, decentered, and polyvalent subjectivity? Reinventing the Soul offers a new perspective on what it means to be a human being and to strive in the world despite the wounding effects of the socialization process. Drawing on the rich legacies of French poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Ruti builds an affirmative alternative to the post-Foucaultian tendency to envision subjectivity as a function of hegemonic systems of power. She proposes that the subject's encounter with the world also necessarily activates the psyche's innovative potential. By focusing on matters of creative agency, imaginative empowerment, inner metamorphosis, and self-actualization, Ruti outlines some of the mechanisms by which the psyche manages not only to survive its lack, alienation, or suffering, but also to transform its abjection into an existentially livable reality. Central to Ruti's argument is the idea that human beings relate to the world in active rather than merely passive ways—as dynamic creators of meaning rather than as powerless dupes of disciplinary power.

The Call of Character

2013-11-12 Psychology
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Release : 2013-11-12
Genre : Psychology
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 084/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Call of Character by : Mari Ruti

Download or read book The Call of Character written by Mari Ruti. This book was released on 2013-11-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should we feel inadequate for failing to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is such an existential equilibrium realistic or even desirable? Condemning our cultural obsession with cheerfulness and “positive thinking,” Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies, arguing that sometimes the most tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be the most rewarding. Ruti critiques our current search for personal meaning and the pragmatic attempt to normalize human beings’ unruly and idiosyncratic natures. Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. Ruti shows what counts is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, leaving us feeling less “real,” less connected, and unable to metabolize a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.

Fear of Breakdown

2019-06-04 Philosophy
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Release : 2019-06-04
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 911/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Fear of Breakdown by : Noëlle McAfee

Download or read book Fear of Breakdown written by Noëlle McAfee. This book was released on 2019-06-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the globe today? In Fear of Breakdown, Noëlle McAfee uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the subterranean anxieties behind current crises and the ways in which democratic practices can help work through seemingly intractable political conflicts. Working at the intersection of psyche and society, McAfee draws on psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the fear of breakdown to show how hypernationalism stems from unconscious anxieties over the origins of personal and social identities, giving rise to temptations to reify exclusionary phantasies of national origins. Fear of Breakdown contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer: an understanding of how to work through anxieties, ambiguity, fragility, and loss in order to create a more democratic politics. Coupling robust psychoanalytic theory with concrete democratic practice, Fear of Breakdown shows how a politics of working through can help counter a politics of splitting, paranoia, and demonization. McAfee argues for a new approach to deliberative democratic theory, not the usual philosopher-sanctioned process of reason-giving but an affective process of making difficult choices, encountering others, and mourning what cannot be had.

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