Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings

By Mari Ruti,

Book cover of Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life

Book description

Mari Ruti combines theoretical reflection, cultural critique, feminist politics, and personal experience to analyze the prevalence of bad feelings in contemporary everyday life. Proceeding from a playful engagement with Freud's idea of penis envy, Ruti's autotheoretical commentary fans out to a broader consideration of neoliberal pragmatism. She focuses on the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Although Ruti’s book is not directly about capitalism, it includes perhaps the best psychoanalytic proposal of confronting the imperatives of capitalist society that I have ever read. Ruti discusses how sexism operates within capitalism primarily in the book, but her point is always about how concepts from psychoanalysis that seem retrograde—such as penis envy—can actually be the basis for a critique of capitalism and sexism. 

From Todd's list on psychoanalysis and capitalism.

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