Enjoying What We Don't Have Quotes

“The production of knowledge itself points, often despite itself, toward a better future.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“By enjoying in a public way, the subject becomes what we might call a fool. The fool is a subject who ceases to court the social authority's approbation and becomes immune to the seduction of social recognition or rewards. Recognition has a value for the subject only insofar as the subject believes in the substantial status of social authority-that is, insofar as the subject believes that the identities that society confers have a solid foundation. The fool grasps that no such foundation exists and that no identity has any basis whatsoever. The only possible foundation for the subject lies in the subject itself-in the fantasy that organizes the subject's enjoyment. Such a subject becomes a fool because it constantly acts in ways that make no sense to the social authority. It acts out of the nonsense of its own enjoyment.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“We enjoy the lost object only insofar as it remains lost.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“Ideology develops in order to convince subjects that loss is not absolute and that it can become profitable. No subsequent acquisition or reward can redeem the loss of the privileged object that founds subjectivity; it is a loss without the possibility of recompense. And yet, ideology proclaims that every loss has a productive dimension to it. In this sense, ideology is singular: all ideologies are nothing but forms of ideology as such. According to Christian ideology, our suffering on earth finds its reward in heavenly bliss. According to capitalist ideology, our labor today has its reward in tomorrow's riches. According to Islamic fundamentalist logic, our suicidal sacrifice results in an eternity in paradise.
No ideology can avow a completely unproductive loss, a loss that doesn't lead to the possibility of some future pleasure, and yet an unproductive loss is precisely what defines us. One challenges ideology not by proclaiming that loss or sacrifice is unnecessary that we might live lives of plenitude but by insisting on the unproductivity of loss. Once a subject grasps that no future gain can redeem the initial loss, ideology loses its ability to control that subject.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“Rather than the death that occurs at the end of life, the death drive comes out of a death that occurs within life.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“The very act of enunciating the most pessimistic system attests to a fundamental optimism and hope for progress beyond the status quo. Though the good may be impossible to realize, it is also impossible to abandon entirely. The production of knowledge itself points, often despite itself, toward a better future.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“The act of articulating a system of thought implies the belief that a better world is possible and that the knowledge the system provides will assist in realizing the better world.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“The fundamental wager of psychoanalysis - a wager that renders the idea of a psychoanalytic political project thinkable - is that repetition undergoes a radical transformation when one adopts a different attitude toward it. We may be condemned to repeat, but we aren't condemned to repeat the same position relative to our repetition.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis

“The death drive is the revolutionary contribution contribution psychoanalysis makes to political thought.”
― Todd McGowan, Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis