Description
Book SynopsisThis book proposes a new political imagination found in the works of Weber, Freud, and Foucault. Chowers characterizes it as one of “entrapment,” whereby modern identity is constituted by participation in and internalization of the regulatory norms of the institutions that originated in the modern imagination.
Trade ReviewThis 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
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
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
