My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority

Sacred Order/Social Order #1

by Philip Rieff, James Davison Hunter (Introduction)

With "My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, " the renowned cultural theorist and Freud scholar Philip Rieff inaugurates a trilogy that signals the summation of his scholarly lifework. With this series, "Sacred Order/Social Order, " to be published in consecutive volumes, Rieff both continues and supersedes the lines of thought that characterize the earlier, influential works upon which his reputation was forged. Readers familiar with Rieff's distinctive oeuvre will recognize central themes and find final recitations on the cultural impact of Freud and his creation "psychological man" or "the therapeutic," which Rieff here renames the "new man." Whether conversant with Rieff's work or new to its unique interpretive power, readers of "Sacred Order/Social Order" will discover a series of provocative insights, illuminated by Rieff's wide-ranging expositions, theoretical advances, and stylistic innovations.

In this first volume, Rieff articulates a comprehensive, typological theory of Western culture. Using visual illustrations and unique juxtapositions, he displays remarkable erudition in drawing from such disciplines as sociology, history, literature, poetry, music, plastic arts, and film; he contrasts the changing modes of spiritual and social thought that have struggled for dominance throughout Western history. Our modern culture--to Rieff's mind only the "third" type in western history--is the object of his deepest scrutiny, described here as morally ruinous, death-affirming rather than life-affirming, and representing an unprecedented attempt to create a culture completely devoid of any concept of the sacred.

For Rieff, culture represents the "form of fighting before the firing begins" in a literal life-and-death struggle for a particular type of world-creation. Having concluded in this final phase of his career that there is no neutral ground in this struggle, Rieff takes aim at many of the most significant "deathworks" in modern literature, art, and history--from Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Duchamp's Etant donnes to Hitler's death camps--in an attempt to undo them by using them against themselves. In so doing, he seeks to show the reader what really animates, and is ultimately at stake, in the contemporary "culture wars" raging over such issues as euthanasia, education, medical research, sexuality, race, class, and gender.

Genres: Philosophy, Cultural, Psychology, Sociology, Nonfiction, Religion, Criticism

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anti-modern book written with postmodern language and admiring the intellect of some postmodernists, especially Joyce. Wins points for intellectual honesty, erudition, completeness, and moral insight; loses points for clarity.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that Rieff writes with tortured syntax is to give him too much credit. Writing style aside, Rieff in fact is very clear about the current status of the West, after the effects of the culture wars (which he pushes back for at least 200 years, and longer in some instances). What academia considers the culture wars is just the past few decades, and conducted primarily on U.S. college campuses.

Rieff drives home that the elites of the current anti-culture do not claim to be next in Western culture, but instead aim to destroy all cultural antecedents, freeing Man / Woman from all claims of history, biology, culture, dependence, God, etc.

However, despite the fact that Rieff says this position is unique and opines that it is doubtful any culture can survive in such a posture, it is most likely that this anti-culture is just "next" in the prevailing view of the West. The West may or may not survive, or may suffer another 1000 years of a new dark age, but a universal denial will doubtfully be the last word in philosophy, or anti-philosophy.

Of the making of books there is no end. And there is nothing new under the sun or moon if you prefer (Thrasymachus got there earlier).

[Ben Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important, sophisticated work of cultural criticism since Eliot’s Christianity and Culture. It’s rivaled only by Rieff’s earlier book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic.

Beware, however, as this book is not for the faint of heart. Rieff’s obscure prose, made-up jargon, and frequent assumptions of knowledge about Freudian psychoanalysis, force the reader to do a lot of intellectual heavy lifting.

But the price of entry is repaid a hundredfold for those who have the courage to tolle, lege!

[Aaron Crofut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for the fainthearted. I hardly know what else to say. A deconstruction of postmodernism using the very style of postmodernism. Brilliant flashes mixed in with muddle. For that reason, I'm just going to bullet point a few ideas that really struck me.

* 1st World (paganism) based on Fate, 2nd World (monotheism) based on Faith, 3rd World based on criticism of that which came before. No positive message that is taken seriously, no true Utopia despite the occasional bits of rhetoric. Modern art and scholarship resembles what the Catholic schoolmen would call the via negativa. We cannot say anything positive without it being fiction, but we sure can use the acid of criticism and mockery to destroy all that came before.

* Man's place in this world is related to our social order, which itself is based on sets of authority about the Truth (the sacred order). To deny any order is to fully liberate man, straight into the freedom of nihilism and pointlessness. Hence the need of therapists to replace priests.

*Teaching Higher Illiteracy. The best way to destroy all of the knowledge and tradition of the past is not to criticize it, but just not to present it at all. Basic elements of the Western World, such as the Bible, are now complete strangers to the newest generations. They wouldn't even know to go looking for them, and just to make sure they don't, we'll entertain them with pop culture designed to shorten their attention span to such a point that they couldn't put in the work needed to rediscover the past.

*Plato was right about those damn artists.

* Culture is the expression of the sacred. Multiculturalism is nonsense; you cannot express multiple sacred orders. What you end up expressing is none.

*Art does not represent, it is the thing merely crystallized. Modern art *is* nonsense.

* "Right reading is inseparable from right living."
“Different day/same shit” as a creed of the 3rd world. No holy days (a la Charles Taylor). We quite literally are shit.
* Abortion as part of the “throw away” culture. “life unworthy of life” is a Nazi phrase, and pro-choice. The anti-mother.
* The horror of life unremembered- no Masses for the Dead in modern culture.
* “The third culture expects too much from sexuality.” Archbishop Sheen said the same!
* Our society sees all as a lie, and lies all the time. The Truth will set you free…(not mentioned: and the Law of that Truth will not be reduced one iota).
*I/Thou distinction. We must love something other than ourselves…or hate something other than ourselves. Current culture’s cynicism too acidic for love, hence hate.
* Race/class/gender as primary truths in third culture. True primordial truth is deeper than this, however.
* Nations must have a declaration of dependence upon their sacred order and it must be continually ratified (teachers as police/prophets/those who either pass this along or do not)
* Not mentioned by Reiff: The Giver as prophecy. We must continually speak, create, paint, sculpt, sing the Truth. Not enough to just hand over what we inherited; we must respeak the Truth. Surprised Reiff did not mention the parable of the talents here. Traditional Catholics must, absolutely must, do this. Cannot live in 1920.
* “The Gulag Archipelago is the greatest book of remembrance, the greatest martyrology …” I agree.
* Laughter as anti-prayer. Not mentioned, but the role of late night TV “comics” in the rise of Trump has a lot to do with how much average folks have noticed that the elites truly despise them.
*Not mentioned but should have been: the role of Martin Luther in creating this catastrophe.
* When the sacred is gone and not even remembered, who will we hate then? What cause will keep us going?
* If all that is sacred is to be mocked as an outdated, silly notion, than so is the sacred nature of human life. The third world ends in Auschwitz, and that Reiff does mention explicitly.

I would recommend this book, but only if you really mean to dedicate yourself to understanding it.

[Christian Brewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd book, and a very dense book, but a helpful diagnosis of our cultural moment. In some ways, it is like a more academic, non-Christian version of Schaeffer’s “How Should We Then Live?” The parts that kill me are the connections he draws between Paul (esp. his letter to the Galatians) and modern, third world conceptions of the self.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rieff was a hard pill to swallow. Actually, I found that I had to chew over Rieff's words to even begin to scratch the surface of what he has written in this book. I am fascinated by his insights and observations, as well as his perspective on Freud (and Nietzsche) and his impact upon the world (both the second and third). But I must admit that I am sure I will not come to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of this book for years to come, for it is much more than can be absorbed in the first reading (at least for me).

That said, I did greatly enjoy the book. It was not an easy read, but his insights and his ways of putting his thoughts together were brilliant and challenging and even inspiring (at least to the writer in me). Some more sensitive readers may be bothered by some of the art that he interacts with, but it must be observed that he doesn't interact with it necessarily to complement it or affirm it. No, rather, he delves into the arts (of many different types of art) to explore how they both personify and further the world they are born out of.

The term 'deathworks' really applies to the arts and specifically the cultural artifacts he sees as emerging from the third culture or world (which some would identify as the modern [or even post-modern] age). His inclusion of the Holocaust death camps makes this assertion rather poignant and the ideological linkage rather devastating. It is anything but clever or affirmative. Rather it is sobering and causes (or should cause) one to evaluate where he or she stands in regards to the art (or deathworks) of the age.

[Michael Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of what we might mean when we use the world "culture." Unlike Goering who would reach for his pistol, Rieff explains culture as a human response to the ultimate in life. There have been, throughout history, different responses to the ultimate: fate, faith, and now, in our own time, fiction. Okay, so it sounds a little contrived: fate, faith, and fiction. But it's something that can organize a preliminary discussion.

By fate, all ancient cultures grasped that mankind does not negotiate the terms of its existence. Things happen which are well beyond the reach of humankind to "correct," death and illness the most likely candidates. With faith, things change, because now we can understand these imponderables as signs of a higher purpose grasped tentatively through statements of faith. In our own time, having abandoned the call of faith, we now must produce fictions. The Great Art Works of this period, our own I repeat, are Auschwitz, the Gulag, the abortion mills, and the endless ideological wars inherited from the twentieth century. You are invited, reader, to join Mr. Rieff on his tour of the Deathworks.

[RWB · Rating 5 out of 5]

How much insight and prognostication do you need, especially when he writes, "Third world scourges are killers, released from sacred order by retreating second and oncoming third world elites so as to destroy the injustices of the world. For a third world scourge, this means destroying white males, patriarchy, biological constraints on sexuality, the ruling class, capitalism.......... Schools that teach self-esteem therapy are preparatory schools for scourges who will have nothing but an ideology of anger and hatred" The book is a hard read which will entitle you to put it down after reading a few pages and think. You will need patience with Rieff's terminology. But the insights he provides on cultural change and the central role that his conceptualization of authority plays in his views are profound.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Difficult to understand, and I’m afraid that does hurt how I rate it. My third Rieff book to read and after reading this and Triumph of the Therapeutic, I’m at least sympathetic to the theory that Sontag actually wrote the text for that, because it was at least clear and lucid. In this book he has moments of clarity, but there are long stretches where I don’t really understand what he means.

[Abhi V]

Read the first fifteen pages--the book is unreadable. Maybe when I know more of what I want to know (I feel at home with some of the references), it will become legible, I don't know. But for an author originally writing in English: the writing was difficult in a way that may have been highly erudite (but was it?), but above what I could yet handle....

[Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough, tough read. Plenty of brilliance. A mix of philosophical poetry, meditation on 3rd world art and reflection on the sophisticated stupidity of a world set on what he calls negative self-erasure against the Sacred.

[David M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I return to this book again someday, I hope to understand it better.

For now, what I did understand was extremely helpful.

[David Bruyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impenetrable.

[Edward Hooban · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prescient

[… · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Triumph of the Therapeutic was Rieff at his best and for anyone wanting to understand modernity and the attendant psychopathologies it produced, it is a must read. This, however, just didn’t do it for me. It’s redundant and garbled and really just lack rigor.