Life Against Death

Long before running into Norman O. Brown while on sabbatical leave at UC Santa Cruz, I was fascinated by this book’s attempt to re-assert the priority of psychology over the political economy and history by claiming that infants’ refusal to accept the limits of parental care creates separation-anxiety that causes the historical dynamic known as “progress.”

But it wasn’t until much later that Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that capitalism represses the death instinct provided an alternative explanation that rescued Brown’s insights for me by putting the explanation back in the realm of political economy and history–because dependence on the market… show more.

This is another absolutely delirious book. One part detailed study of Freud’s most divisive concept, the death drive, and one part messianic call-to-love in the style of Nietzsche, I was very skeptical to begin with. But as I persisted, I began to see the charm and power of Brown’s project. He is someone who really wants to make history by talking about it in such grand terms. He wasn’t the first to try this, but there is perhaps a case to be made that he was the last.