On generic masculine language

Returning to Freud for a moment, one thing that stands out from his writing is the sexist language; e.g., "according to them, man is wholly good", and so on. This isn't surprising. He was writing in 1929, and everyone wrote like this. It was always "man", always "he" or "his", etc. Though I've always avoided this myself, my take on it used to be that it was primarily a quirk of the language, and I admit that I felt that people often read too much into it (I believe the sexist language I'm sure I used, if only to myself, was that people overreacted). In certain instances, perhaps I wasn't wrong. It might not be worth getting too upset about the generic "he" in a lot of older writing (not that it's up to me to decide, which is why I've never much argued the point). But I guess it depends on what the writing is about. In Freud, as in Nietzsche, it's the inquiry into origins and the bold claims about human nature that drives the point home, finally, so that I can see it better. Perhaps it helps that I come to their writings late, already believing in a female-centered view of human cultural development, and already interested in exploring what has been left out of the dominant historical narratives (namely, women). For not only do they use the masculine generic pronouns, not only does "man" stand in for "human", but in the context of these claims, we are told about the actions of men, who among other things have wives and, possibly, mothers. Wives and mothers who apparently have little agency of their own. They are certainly not interesting, except insofar as they can be seen to have had effects, probably negative effects, on men.

I have elsewhere already criticized Freud and Nietzsche for their near-exclusive focus on men in this regard. In that post, I noted that it seems that Marx and Engels come off much better in their work on origins. And yet, they certainly do not get a free pass. In another post, I observed that a reason we're only lately getting around to some decent understanding of such areas as childhood development is because science has for so long been the province of men, and science and philosophy have privileged the adult, male standpoint. History, too. Men did things, and that was that. It is my belief that we need to focus more on women, and gender, if we hope to understand anything about how we got here, and if we hope to find better ways to live.

"As usual, I wish to observe..."

Speaking of Freud, as I was below, I was looking at the author forewards to the three Nabokov books I picked up in last week's library sale (about which, decent bounty, but: utter pandemonium) and was delighted to find our man upholding certain expectations, as noted in my little tweak of him in my recent post on Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year.

Here's a passage from the foreward to King, Queen, Knave:

As usual, I wish to observe, as usual (and as usual several sensitive people I like will look huffy), the Viennese delegation has not been invited. If, however, a resolute Freudian manages to slip in, he or she should be warned that a number of cruel traps have been set here and there in the novel.

And The Eye:

As is well known (to employ a famous Russian phrase), my books are not only blessed by a total lack of significance, but are also mythproof: Freudians flutter around them avidly, approach with itching oviducts, stop, sniff, and recoil.

And Nabokov's Quartet:

Kafka and Kafkaesque shall not be dragged in by the student in connection with "The Visit to the Museum," and as usual Freudians should keep out.

The two novels originally appeared in Russian, as did "The Visit to the Museum"; that is, he was, again, framing these works for the (apparently quite dim) American reader of the 1960s. Just for kicks, then, indulge me as I belabor the point by reproducing certain often amusing passages from Nabokov's forewards to his other Russian novels (other than Mary and Laughter in the Dark, which are now the only Russian ones I lack a copies of; while Bend Sinister is the only novel originally written in English that I'm missing, and haven't yet read, not counting the abomination that is the recent posthumous publication of The Original of Laura). Ok, to the novels.

The Defense:

In the Prefaces I have been writing of late for the English-language editions of my Russian novels [...] I have made it a rule to address a few words of encouragement to the Viennese delegation. The present Foreward shall not be an exception. Analysts and analyzed will enjoy, I hope, certain details of the treatment Luzhin is subjected to after his breakdown (such is the curative insinuation that a chess player see Mom in his Queen and Pop in his opponent's King), and the little Freudian who mistakes a Pixlok set for the key to a novel will no doubt continue continue to identify my characters with his comic-book notion of my parents, sweethearts and serial selves. For the benefit of such sleuths I may as well confess that I gave Luzhin my French governess, my pocket chess set, my sweet temper, and the stone of the peach I plucked in my own walled garden.

Glory:

Nowadays, when Freudism is discredited, the author recalls with a whistle of wonder that not so long ago--say before 1959 (i.e., before the publication of the first of the seven forewards to his Englished novels)--a child's personality was supposed to split automatically in sympathetic consequence of parental divorce. His parents' separation has no such effect on Martin's mind, and only a desperate saphead in the throes of a nightmare examination may be excused for connecting Martin's plunge into his fatherland with his having been deprived of his father. No less reckless would it be to point out, with womby wonder, that the girl Martin loves and his mother bear the same name.

Despair (which I believe was more drastically revised than the others, to the point of being almost a different novel entirely):

. . .in kinship with the rest of my books, has no social comment to make, no message to bring in its teeth. It does not uplift the spiritual organ of man, nor does it show humanity the right exit. It contains far fewer "ideas" than do those rich vulgar novels that are acclaimed so hysterically in the short echo-walk between the ballyhoo and the hoot. The attractively shaped object or Wiener-schnitzel dream that the eager Freudian may think he distinguishes in the remoteness of my wastes will turn out to be on closer inspection a derisive mirage organized by my agents. Let me add, just in case, that experts on literary "schools" should wisely refrain this time from casually dragging in "the influence of German Impressionists": I do not know German, have never read the Impressionists--whoever they are. On the other hand, I do know French and shall be interested to see if anyone calls my Hermann "the father of existentialism."

Invitation to a Beheading:

. . . is a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures. No clubwoman will thrill. The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of Lolita, and the disciples of the Viennese witch-doctor will snigger over it in their grotesque world of communal guilt and progresivnoe education.

Only, alas, in his foreward to The Gift, his longest, and last, novel written in Russian, does Nabokov manage to refrain from poking at Freud or Freudians, nor any other figure, though he does take the time to steer the reader away from the crime of identifying the author with the main character in the book ("I had been living in Berlin since 1922, thus synchronously with the young man of the book; but neither this fact, nor my sharing some of his interests, such as literature and lepidoptera, should make one say 'aha' and identify the designer with the design.").

No One Says This

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud writes the following:

The communists believe that they have found the path to deliverance from our evils. According to them, man is wholly good and is well-disposed to his neighbor; but the institution of private property has corrupted his nature. The ownership of private wealth gives the individual power, and with it the temptation to ill-treat his neighbor; while the man who is excluded from possession is bound to rebel in hostility against his oppressor. If private property were abolished, all wealth held in common, and everyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it, ill-will and hostility would disappear among men. Since everyone’s needs would be satisfied, no one would have any reason to regard another as his enemy; all would willingly undertake the work that was necessary. I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communist system; I cannot enquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the system is based are an untenable illusion.

What follows is the typical stuff about man's love of aggressiveness and vague assertions about origins ("Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times..." etc.) With regard to the excerpt, in particular the phrases I've italicized, I have scribbled in the margins of my copy, no one says this (I scribble in italics). The temptation is strong to make allowances for the time in which Freud was writing (1929), as it is to write at length admitting that I haven't read everything that everyone has ever written about capitalism and private property and plans for a better world. But this passage simply made me mad. No one thinks that conflict will disappear if capitalism is overturned. No one thinks that people are "wholly good". Now, I imagine there have existed people who have believed something like what he says, that the removal of the regime of private ownership of capital and the elimination of capitalism will result in paradise on earth and a life free of conflict. I imagine such people exist, but I have never heard of one or seen any writings by one. What we have here is little more than propaganda (which isn't to say Freud didn't believe it), which has the effect of making people believe that communists or anarchists or frankly anyone opposed to capitalism are utopian fantasists, mere dreamers, are fundamentally and necessarily unrealistic. It is part of the time-honored practice of discrediting opposition and keeping people in place.

The Masters of Suspicion

Earlier this week I read Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, a book I was supposed to have read in college, but reading it now, it seems unlikely that I ever did. (I recall having used a lame version of one of his arguments in a paper I wrote. One wonders how I managed even that. I can only have been regurgitating the instructor's gloss.) Anyway, as with Nietzsche, I find reading Freud enjoyable, if frustrating. It's generally a real pleasure following his line of reasoning, but, also as with Nietzsche, I have a hard time taking seriously many of his specific conclusions. For one thing, of course, Freud's point of view was hopelessly male-centric, no minor detail; this stance probably led to many, if not most, of the arguments that I find problematic in what I've read. With both Nietzsche and Freud, it is especially their speculations on the "origins" of things that I find most difficult to take seriously, though they are often brilliantly argued.

In this focus on origins, I am reminded again of Gabriel Josipovici's great On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion. In the early pages of the book, Josipovici employs the language of Paul Ricoeur, who called Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx the "masters of suspicion", their work a "hermeneutics of suspicion". As Josipovici puts it, these writers

revealed that what we had taken to be natural, a 'given', was in fact man-made, the result of choices and decisions made by individuals and communities. Thus Marx laid bare the workings of capital, Nietzsche the workings of morality, Freud the workings of sexuality. Where the Enlightenment had seen all men as essentially one, and human nature as unchanging, the nineteenth-century masters of suspicion set about exploring the genealogies, the secret histories, of morals and social institutions, with the aim of freeing men from bonds to which they did not even know they were subject.

Nietzsche noted that, though men had (so it apparently seemed to him) largely abandoned Christianity, they "are a long way from being free spirits, because they still believe in truth" and "Any meaning is better than none". But for him, "inquiry [the search for truth] itself stands in need of justification". Josipovici uses these Nietzsche remarks as his springboard into his larger discussion, moving onto, first, Kierkegaard and, more generally, the problems for the writer posed by the crisis of modernity. Interestingly, of the three "masters of suspicion", it is Marx who emerges as the most accurate in his "laying bare" project. All three are still valuable thinkers, since the value of a thinker resides not completely in the accuracy of the conclusions reached, and, indeed, simply arguing persuasively that what had seemed natural was not has liberated other thinkers investigating the same areas. But Marx is the only one of the three whose particular conclusions remain relevant (I'm talking analysis here, not prognostication).

Returning to the matter of origins, an important factor in my having difficulty with the arguments on the origins of things made by Freud or Nietzsche has to do with my familiarity with the work of Chris Knight, which I have referred to several times on the blog, at some length here. One thing that Knight shows, in his application of feminist insights and "selfish gene" theory to the extensive anthropological record, is how right it appears that Marx and Engels were in their writings about the origins of things. Nietzsche and Freud seem to assume a Hobbesian state of nature when they consider such matters; thus, for example, Freud's focus on the so-called "aggressiveness" instinct, which must be repressed into aggression against one's own ego, against the instinct for primal freedom, itself necessarily suppressed by "civilization". Such accounts seem to bypass the emergence of language and culture, assuming that in our original human moment we would have necessarily been much like the other primates, when it's the very differences between humans and other primates that must be explained when one is attempting to explain human nature. Thus one must take into account language. Knight's theory of the sex strike, which puts female humans at the forefront of this process, would no doubt have been anathema to Freud, who, quite aside from his theories on women and sexuality, like Nietzsche, sees men at the origin, with women relegated to child-bearing and child-rearing. That these natural processes might be crucial to any understanding of human nature and origins is, for them, necessarily a priori out of the question.