The Modern Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment Imagination

by Eyal Chowers

Overview

This book explores the distinct historical-political imagination of the self in the twentieth century and advances two arguments. First, it suggests that we should read the history of modern political philosophy afresh in light of a theme that emerges in the late eighteenth century: the rift between self and social institutions. Second, it argues that this rift was reformulated in the twentieth century in a manner that contrasts with the optimism of nineteenth-century thinkers regarding its resolution. It proposes a new political imagination of the twentieth century found in the works of Weber, Freud, and Foucault, and characterizes it as one of "entrapment."

Eyal Chowers shows how thinkers working within diverse theoretical frameworks and fields nevertheless converge in depicting a self that has lost its capacity to control or transform social institutions. He argues that Weber, Freud, and Foucault helped shape the distinctive thought and culture of the past century by portraying a dehumanized and distorted self marked by sameness. This new political imagination proposes coping with modernity through the recovery, integration, and assertion of the self, rather than by mastering and refashioning collective institutions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674013308
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	06/17/2004
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Eyal Chowers is Senior Lecturer and the Chair of the Political Science Department at Tel-Aviv University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Modernity: Hyper-Order and Doubleness

Modernity and the Imposition of Hyper-Order

Civilization as a Self-Made Other: Doubleness in Kant and Frankenstein

Conclusion

2. Proto-Entrapment Theories

Overcoming Doubleness

From Proto-Entrapment to Entrapment Theories

3. Max Weber: Between Homo-Hermeneut and the Lebende Maschine

Weber's Anthropology

Weber's Concept of "Personality"

The Disciplined Self and the Rights-Protected Space

The Fragility of Meaning

Conclusion

4. Freud and the Castration of the Modern

Freud's Theory of Instincts and the Origins of Discontent

Modernity and das Unheimliche

Narrating the Modern's Subjection: Freud's Theory of the Oedipal Complex

5. Michel Foucault: From the Prison-House of Language to the Silence of the Panopticon

Historicizing the Psychoanalytic Subject, Dispersing the Personality: Foucault's Critique of Freud and Weber

Entrapment and Language

Entrapment and Power

Conclusion

Conclusion

Abbreviations

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

This book identifies the theme of "social entrapment" in three important 20th century social theorists: Weber, Freud, and Foucault. It ably shows how the theme emerged from the problems of the Enlightenment and attempts by Marx and Nietzsche to solve them. It also points out some of the dead ends to which it has led its expositors. An impressive combination of research and argument.

James Tully

This is an erudite and original study of the great entrapment and proto-entrapment theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries, namely, Kant, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Benjamin, Kafka and Foucault. As Chowers convincingly shows, these theorists argue that moderns have come to be subject to and subjectified by historical processes that govern their conduct. Nevetheless, they go on to argue that moderns are able to overcome this state of 'immaturity' and become 'mature' in two diametrically opposed ways: either to overcome this subjection and become sovereign and autonomous over these processes (in proto-entrapment theories); or to acknowledge and learn to live within these processes as an ineliminable condition of being-in-the-world (in entrapment theories). The interpretation of individual authors and the story as a whole are presented with an exemplary depth of scholarship and insight, and the cumulative effect is to throw a critical and foreboding light on the present.
— James Tully, University of Victoria

Bernard Yack

This book identifies the theme of "social entrapment" in three important 20th century social theorists: Weber, Freud, and Foucault. It ably shows how the theme emerged from the problems of the Enlightenment and attempts by Marx and Nietzsche to solve them. It also points out some of the dead ends to which it has led its expositors. An impressive combination of research and argument.
— Bernard Yack, Brandeis University

Editorial Reviews

This book identifies the theme of "social entrapment" in three important 20th century social theorists: Weber, Freud, and Foucault. It ably shows how the theme emerged from the problems of the Enlightenment and attempts by Marx and Nietzsche to solve them. It also points out some of the dead ends to which it has led its expositors. An impressive combination of research and argument.

Bernard Yack

This is an erudite and original study of the great entrapment and proto-entrapment theorists of the 19th and 20th centuries, namely, Kant, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, Benjamin, Kafka and Foucault. As Chowers convincingly shows, these theorists argue that moderns have come to be subject to and subjectified by historical processes that govern their conduct. Nevetheless, they go on to argue that moderns are able to overcome this state of 'immaturity' and become 'mature' in two diametrically opposed ways: either to overcome this subjection and become sovereign and autonomous over these processes (in proto-entrapment theories); or to acknowledge and learn to live within these processes as an ineliminable condition of being-in-the-world (in entrapment theories). The interpretation of individual authors and the story as a whole are presented with an exemplary depth of scholarship and insight, and the cumulative effect is to throw a critical and foreboding light on the present.

James Tully