Enjoying Left and Right

This talk took place online on 17 November 2021 as part of a lecture series at the University of Dundee. Frank Ruda was the host. The talk argues that there are two distinct forms of enjoyment associated with right-wing and left-wing politics, even if these become blurred in particular political activities.

[@TheDangerousMaybe]

Seeing the title of this video was so enjoyable!

[@tomp8632]

Todd you gotta get Zuppanic on your podcast, the people need it!

[@usagi-z]

The people have spoken!

[@yawnathanlin7080]

Can’t help but notice the Gojira shirt and would like to hear your thoughts on the genre from perhaps psychoanalytic POV.

[@lacanian_lifter]

Is it a shirt for the band or the films, I wonder?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

@@lacanian_lifter It's from a concert by the band. I would do a talk on them, but they are really my son's thing. I don't know enough to say anything and just went along with him, although it was great fun.

[@metal_analysis]

My work will look into this topic, and I've corresponded with Todd on the potentials for linking metal to death drive - there's definitely something there. There's a great article by Rosemary Overell on objet a and the scream which was published in Continental Thought and Theory too.

[@usagi-z]

I thought I was 'guilty' of this sort of right wing enjoyment sometimes, but what really cheered me up was my reaction to the monastery joke. That's a great one. Thank you.

[@macguffin8540]

Thank you for putting this up, such a great talk! The monastery joke is wonderful. I love how my laughing at the monks (who don’t actually exist) engaged in laughing at a joke that isn’t there, is itself the same as laughing at a joke that isn’t there, and so I immediately find myself realising the position of the monk, that now exists. Gives me the giggles like a four year old on a see-saw.

[@alaspooryorick9946]

Great talk as ever, comrade Todd! Thought of something you might like. A recent protest song 'the red flag and the blue flag' which is the Ambedkarite Dalit movement and the Communists joining forces in a beautiful way. If I can find the videos I'll send em to you. Thanks mate

[@toddmcgowan8233]

That's terrific.

[@hmanoff]

Hey Todd, i have may be a naive question for u. What is way to self realization for Hegel? Is it just to contemplate and follow the contradictions to the absolute? And What is ur opinion of reaching that state through buddhist way of discipline and meditation?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Yes, that's basically it, although Hegel wouldn't call it self-realization. It's more like self-diremption. I think that there are forms of Buddhism that are close to this position, others less so and more about evacuating desire (which would not be Hegel's position at all).

[@pabilbadoespecial]

Very interesting argument, similar to your arguments on the superego and id episodes of why theory

[@alexb7533]

I actually spit out some of my sandwich at the monastery joke

[@kiDchemical]

I really enjoyed watching this (I think I mean enjoyed in the colloquial sense, not in this psychoanalytic way, but who knows 😆). In the example you give, wouldn’t the left enjoyment be contingent on the right enjoyment, ie you need to create alienated subjects to emancipate? So it would be cyclical, something we could never transcend? I’m not sure if I’m properly articulating myself, I’m not an academic.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

It's a very good point and, I think, a danger. But I believe that there can be nonbelonging without anyone in the position of belonging. It can just be a structural position that is actually empty, because, in fact, it is.

[@daaave_m]

loved the talk! is any of this in of your books specifically? universality and identity politics?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

It's in a book coming out this year but not out yet.

[@colorzeppelin]

Hi Todd, great lecture, your channel is my favorite on youtube. Have you come across Yanis Varoufakis's book Another Now, where a post-capitalist alternate reality (with all its failures) is imagined?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

I know of it but haven't read it. It's in my queue.

[@usagi-z]

@@toddmcgowan8233 Wonder what you'd think of the character named Iris and what she ends up doing in the conclusion of the novel. I hope for a swift response! ;)

[@feelthewyrd]

So are you suggesting that the left give auditions for speakers who can stimulate the populace via both scapegoating and belonging? To sell enjoyment? ..... nice lecture. thank you.

[@alexander63736]

bruh im tryna read ur book film theory after lacan rn and it kinda makes sense but rlly doesnt

[@toddmcgowan8233]

That would be my fear.

[@nightoftheworld]

I need some help grasping your concept of a leftist politics of non-belonging. I am a fan of the view that we should reconcile ourselves to contradiction/find solidarity in our relation to lack but when you say we don’t rely on an excluded other to keep our position functioning-you literally mean right/liberals need to demonize an “other” to stay afloat? That without the other to exclude their positions fall apart? What about the left opposing the ideology of the right/liberals? It seems difficult to describe to others how a position of non-belonging transcends exclusion especially when the left positions itself so strongly against others views on class struggle/solidarity etc. Lack is universal but how does that fit into the picture of standing opposed to others worldviews like Zuckerberg, Bezos or Gates who believe like too many others in private ownership of the commons, etc. Is being against Zuckerberg/Bezos not excluding them? They may be subject to lack, but they don’t fit with us.. I’m not sure how to think about this.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Yes, good question. Clearly, there are adversaries to the leftist position. But in order for it to remain a leftist position, the adversary cannot become the enemy, which means that eliminating the enemy would bring the end of lack. I also think it's important not to think of Bezos or Gates as figures of enjoyment. They are just as castrated as everyone else. That seems essential to the leftist position, as I see it.

[@nightoftheworld]

@@toddmcgowan8233 Yes I don’t imagine that eliminating these figures would secure perfect happiness on earth or that they have/are blocking access to my complete enjoyment-but the worldviews that figures like these uncompromisingly pursue (anti-unionization/predatory economics/worker precarity/privatization of the commons) have tangible negative impacts on countless aspects of our everyday work and lives. Vanquishing the “enemy” and/or their ideological constellations to regain full enjoyment is not in my dreams, as full enjoyment is an illusion-but what I do dream of is emancipation from the most oppressive impacts of such narrowly domineering and unaccountable forms of power. By standing against these outlooks and holding them liable for the damage they are doing, by drawing a line in the sand here between that view and ours.. does this not qualify as relying on a form of exclusion? I don’t know how to say it exactly but is opposing the _view_ of predatory domination still a wrong way to position myself in leftist thought? In other words-if I am _hating the game, not the player,_ am I partaking in a politics of non-belonging? I don’t feel as though my reliance is on an excluded other here per se, but rather an advocation for an inclusion of the excluded perspectives of those left behind/left out of the conversation about the game. But I’m an idiot, so maybe I’m all tangled up here.. thanks for the replies as always man.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

@@nightoftheworld Not tangled up. I find that formulation exactly what I was talking about--hating the game, not the player, which is a version of Christ's charge to his disciples (hate the sin, not the sinner). So yes, fighting against predatory domination in the strongest terms, without apology. But one is always open to the possibility that the adversary comes over to the universal position, which is what differentiates it from conservative, exclusionary politics.

[@aaron.umbarger]

Kim Kardashian (and more recently Rihanna) have been trying to popularize maternity lingerie, and the right's reaction is I think demonstrative of exactly the dynamic you speak of regarding contradiction inherent to women in a sexist society.

[@macguffin8540]

I like my humour as I like my coffee; with-without milk.

[@nlothervoicessc4286]

Hey Professor Todd, here’s an Off topic Vermont Question: are you a phish fan?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Nice question. I like Phish but am not a devoted fan, although many of my students here are.

[@aaron.umbarger]

A quibble: "I can't breathe" was Eric Garner's last words, not George Floyd's.

[@alaspooryorick9946]

The non-universality of belonging is really interesting. How would you say this applies to third world inclusive nationalism of the 20th century anti colonial variety? I don't think one can deny the emancipatory character there, and the necessary positive content of anti imperialism that isn't merely a negation of imperialism. Is it the ambiguous class character of a national liberation government and the class compromise of the third world/non aligned movement as a whole inherently exclusionary? Or an impossible project of universal belonging within the structure of class society?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

I think that these national liberation movements were often universalist in structure, since they typically did not see the nation itself as an end point.

[@TheCyborgk]

I'd like to see you materialize your theory of enjoyment, and position it in relationship to technology, the environment, exploited labor and the human body under conditions of precarity and climate change. Achille Mbembe's essay on the aesthetics of Congolese music might offer an interesting jumping off point: "Congolese dance is a carnal endeavour. Against platonizing ideologies that would cast the body as a prison for the soul, dancing here is a celebration of the flesh. The body is absolute flux and music is invested with the power to enter it, penetrating it to the core. Music produces psychic, somatic and emotional effects on the organs and limbs, subjecting them to the rule of waste. Music “breaks bones” (buka mikuwa) and “hurls bodies” (bwakanka nzoto), causing women and men to “behave like snakes” (na zali ko bina lokolo nioka). The body is not so much “harmed” as it becomes a site of transgression, the locus of a blurring - between the transcendental and the empirical, the material and the psychic. In addition to existing as flux, the body is also a force-field of contrasts. Music engages in a struggle with these forces. Never simply movement of the human form, Congolese dance embodies something that resembles a search for original life, for perpetual genesis, and, through this, for an ideal of happiness and serenity. Paradoxically, a state of serenity is attained through noise, screams and trance... The very notion of serenity assumes that each subject is an ego endowed with the ability to act on its own body. Subjects can dispossess or rid themselves of their bodies, even if only temporarily. Thus, in Congolese urban dance, the opposition between body and mind becomes blurred. Dance emerges as the site of a “dual life”,wherein all truth, all beauty has multiple meanings. In a sociological context where misery, anguish, trauma, terror and horror are not only daily realities, but also constitute the state of the subject, dancing becomes a way of journeying outside the self." www.cairn.info/revue-politique-africaine-2005-4-page-69.htm Variations on the Beautiful in the Congolese World of Sounds Achille Mbembe

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Thanks so much for this.

[@The.Iron.Felix.]

Hey Todd, great monastary joke, and interesting talk! Implicit in it I think you come to some of the same roadblocks as Mark Fisher in his lectures on post-capitalist desire and acid communism. Namely, the need for a counter-libidinal future orientation that isn't structurally subject to easy annexation/reification by consumer-capitalist ideology/subjectification; in other words, that isn't doomed to fail. Historically, the October Revolution is arguably the most effective state-constructing event for manifesting a leftist alternative, though of course in a seriously deformed and direly constrained way. Does the seige nature of the early years of the Soviet Union, and the dictatorship of the proletariat (or soviets), and doubly of the party therein, according to your theory, undermine the leftist form of enjoyment in Russia in 1917-1923, constitute it, or challenge the essentialness of your thesis? Does the fact that they had the White counterrovolutionaries as concrete enemies, more immediate to defeat than the success of the emancipatory project the Whites were aiming to put a halt to; does that make the Bolshevik's form of enjoyment conservative in terms of your thesis; since contradiction as direct opposition is the essense of war, after all. In the broader sense for in particular the Soviet leadership, Russian emancipation by and large was tied to the success of the German revolution and more immediately to the holding at bay the forces of counter-revolution, so perhaps in such a situation the left/right distinction in the structure of enjoyment doesn't play an essential role, though is there as a spectral possibility or perhaps it remains a lodestar? Yet if that is the case, it begs the question of how vital the construction of a post-capitalist libidinal economy is in the revolutionary process today, to the degree that war is always a real possibility and general obstacle for revolutionary politics, as well as it being a consequence of that struggle and only secondarily a retrospective precondition of it - which perhaps is where the enjoyment of failure comes in; it is doomed to fail when you put the cart before the horse. Perhaps it is more about the structure of the dream of the future, with the uses and limitations that come in the sphere of that common dreamworld.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Great points. I do think that the Soviet situation is made problematic by civil war, in which an enemy announces itself to them. The only thing I would say about that critically is that one need not treat the adversary who wants to be an enemy as one, at least in the psychic structure of the society. But in general, I think that their hands were more or less tied. You're absolutely right that war is always a conservative gesture, even if a necessary one (like against fascism). Changing the underlying fantasy structure or libidinal economy is the revolutionary gesture even if doomed to fail: there I agree again totally.

[@CrazyAl1991]

Nice Gojira shirt lml

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Thanks. My son will be very happy because it's his favorite band.

[@javierrodriguez3098]

Oh, nevermind m, got it 😂

[@punchgod]

Bro are you wearing a gojira shirt?????

[@toddmcgowan8233]

One of our twins is a fan, and I took him to a concert. Not so bad.

[@luisneiva9893]

Then how could the cancel culture be explained? Isn't that a form of exclusion mostly done by the Left?

[@toddmcgowan8233]

Not a leftist activity, no matter who does it.

[@luisneiva9893]

@@toddmcgowan8233 thank you! Another question? Would you place the moderates, both on the right and left, within the pleasure principle and not seeking jouissance? As they don't want any radical change on the status quo and see stability as necessary to survival.

[@toddmcgowan8233]

@@luisneiva9893 yes, that seems right to me

[@danletras]

From one leftist to another, is there a danger that the non-belonging which leftists recognize and whose paradoxical universality among humans leftists can even use as a form of enjoyment can instead become stalled out and turn into the creation of an identity of belonging based around victimhood (which is the perpetual allegation of the right about leftists)? Put another way - can the road toward recognizing the universality of non-belonging and embracing that contradiction wind up being only half-traveled by members of the left and therefore get stuck in our self-identifying as victims? My own answer is no. As a lifelong leftist, I have heard this characterization from the right thousands of times and yet I have never observed it as any kind of a substantial or chronic problem among the left. Unless one is very young and still trying on new identities or unless one is potentially battling a severe psychological condition, identifying as the member of a victimized group offers very little when compared to the enjoyment offered by accepting the contradiction of universal non-belonging. However, maybe I am missing something and maybe a victimhood group identity really is a danger among oppressed and colonized people seeking emancipation...

[@toddmcgowan8233]

I agree that this could potentially be a danger, but like you, I think the danger is typically overblown. The point of nonbelonging is structural, not an identity to take up.

[@javierrodriguez3098]

I’m a lefty but the joke about the monastery does involve laughter at the expense of the visitor for not belonging. In this interpretation the monks laugh because only they knew the visitor’s joke wasn’t really a joke. Or am I a killjoy 😂

[@leonsalter6808]

I like your argument as an antidote to right wing hate but not sure how universal non-belonging can be emancipatory. Rather than enabling a coherent collective identity surely its just going to lead to yet more fracturing and inertia on the left? A left-wing movement that offers non-belonging is never going to compete with a right-wing one that offers belonging (something you touch on in the introduction), especially in the contemporary era where we're all isolated and atomised

[@toddmcgowan8233]

This is why I think it's vitally important to emphasize the universality of nonbelonging, the solidarity of nonbelonging. It seems to me like atomization occurs only when one seeks the purported security of a particular identity as a political position. All belonging is a fiction, so the right-wing position cannot even provide the belonging that it sells.

[@nightoftheworld]

The leftist position doesn’t need the other as a crutch to keep themselves erect so it’s a stronger position fundamentally, not dependent in that way. It can move beyond the desire to rally around a scapegoat because rather than being a club of fixated haters it sources it’s strength from the relation to lack inherent to all positions and can focus that critical energy on the struggle for ethical responsibility to each other. That we are all atomized and isolated should make this point of non-belonging even more apparent and personal for people today I feel-can’t we all relate to lack today? I think facing that reality (becoming reconciled to contradiction) guarantees a more powerful emancipatory ground for solidarity in human struggles than the circular fantasy of the other who has stolen all my enjoyment.

[@Cyberphunkisms]

50:00 self-depreciation is a necessary entity for all forms of standup; is bill burr right wing comedy? dude shts on himself as much as everyone else. is dave chappelle right wing comedy? what kind of comedy are we thinking of where self-depreciation isn't first a foremost? bad comedy.

[@ronrice1931]

I cannot abide Mr. McGowan's negativist take on enjoyment. Yes, it is "always excessive", but there is no reason to think it must always be "bad for us." What an unmitigated downer! He seems to believe that our current, historically determined human nature is transhistorical. Once outside the capitalist epoch we will undoubtedly find positive ways of producing surplus enjoyment/value -- something besides just eating too much ice cream.