Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings

Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231546769

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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 emphasis on good performance, high productivity, constant self-improvement, and relentless cheerfulness that characterizes present-day Western society. Revealing the treacherousness of our fantasies of the good life, particularly the idea that our efforts will eventually be rewarded—that things will eventually get better—Ruti demystifies the false hope that often causes us to tolerate an unbearable present. Theoretically rigorous and lucidly written, Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings is a trenchant critique of contemporary gender relations. Refuting the idea that we live in a postfeminist world where gender inequalities have been transcended, Ruti describes how neoliberal heteropatriarchy has transformed itself in subtle and stealthy, and therefore all the more insidious, ways. Mobilizing Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, Jacques Lacan’s account of desire, and Lauren Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, she analyzes the rationalization of intimacy, the persistence of gender stereotypes, and the pornification of heterosexual culture. Ruti shines a spotlight on the depression, anxiety, frustration, and disenchantment that frequently lie beneath our society’s sugarcoated mythologies of self-fulfillment, romantic satisfaction, and professional success, speaking to all who are concerned about the emotional costs of the pressure-cooker ethos of our age.

A World of Fragile Things

A World of Fragile Things
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2010-03-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1438427190

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Psychoanalytic perspective on what Western philosophers from Socrates to Foucault have called “the art of living.”

Reinventing the Soul

Reinventing the Soul
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 163542125X

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Essential reading for scholars and students in critical theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. How does the self care for itself in the posthumanist era? What psychic processes might allow the postmodern subject to find meaning and value in its life? Is it possible to delineate a theory of psychic potentiality that is compatible with poststructuralist models of fluid, decentered, and polyvalent subjectivity? Reinventing the Soul offers a new perspective on what it means to be a human being and to strive in the world despite the wounding effects of the socialization process. Drawing on the rich legacies of French poststructuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Ruti builds an affirmative alternative to the post-Foucaultian tendency to envision subjectivity as a function of hegemonic systems of power. She proposes that the subject's encounter with the world also necessarily activates the psyche's innovative potential. By focusing on matters of creative agency, imaginative empowerment, inner metamorphosis, and self-actualization, Ruti outlines some of the mechanisms by which the psyche manages not only to survive its lack, alienation, or suffering, but also to transform its abjection into an existentially livable reality. Central to Ruti's argument is the idea that human beings relate to the world in active rather than merely passive ways—as dynamic creators of meaning rather than as powerless dupes of disciplinary power.

The Call of Character

The Call of Character
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2013-11-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0231164084

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Should we feel inadequate for failing to be healthy, balanced, and well-adjusted? Is such an existential equilibrium realistic or even desirable? Condemning our cultural obsession with cheerfulness and “positive thinking,” Mari Ruti calls for a resurrection of character that honors our more eccentric frequencies, arguing that sometimes the most tormented and anxiety-ridden life can also be the most rewarding. Ruti critiques our current search for personal meaning and the pragmatic attempt to normalize human beings’ unruly and idiosyncratic natures. Exposing the tragic banality of a happy life commonly lived, she instead emphasizes the advantages of a lopsided life rich in passion and fortitude. Ruti shows what counts is not our ability to evade existential uncertainty but to meet adversity in such a way that we do not become irrevocably broken. We are in danger of losing the capacity to cope with complexity, ambiguity, melancholia, disorientation, and disappointment, leaving us feeling less “real,” less connected, and unable to metabolize a full range of emotions. Heeding the call of our character may mean acknowledging the marginalized, chaotic aspects of our being, for they carry a great deal of creative energy. Ruti shows it is precisely this energy that makes us inimitable and irreplaceable.

The Case for Falling in Love

The Case for Falling in Love
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2011-02-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1402250819

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Praise for The Case for Falling in Love "Why play 'hard to get' when you can just get what you want? Mari Ruti's lively research, from Plato to Freud to Gossip Girl to her own bedroom, finally puts an end to playing games, and provides a resource for lovers and the love-scorned alike. A must-read for anyone who has ever fallen in love, wants to, or wants to know what went wrong." —Arianne Cohen, creator of TheSexDiariesProject.com "At last, a relationship advice book that will actually work. If you're intelligent, interested in love, and like a book you can't put down, this is it. John Gray, move over. The brilliant Mari Ruti has arrived." —Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College, and author of Born to Buy and Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth "Groundbreaking...Ruti opens the eyes of her readers so that they can love better...A must-read." —Nancy Redd, New York Times bestselling author of Body Drama "Finally, a book that takes love seriously. Written with passion and verve...I wish I had read this book years ago!" —Sean Carroll, author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Are you tired of reading book after book and playing game after game, trying to avoid heartbreak? It seems impossible, and maybe that's because you can't lock up your heart like that—not if you want the real thing. And maybe that's one of the best things about love. We've been thinking about it all wrong. Our culture's insistence that women need to learn how to catch and keep a man is actually doing much more harm than good. The more we try to manipulate our relationships, the less we are truly able to experience love's benefits and wonders. Love is a slippery, unruly thing, and trying to control and manage it robs us of its delicious unpredictability. Sure, letting go of the reins a bit might mean a broken heart, but heartbreak, in fact, offers a wealth of possibilities—creativity, wisdom, and growth—that we need in order to make the most of our lives. Liberating for women who are frustrated by the idea that they just need to learn the right "formula," The Case for Falling in Love shows that there isn't a method to mastering the madness of love. But that might be exactly what's so wonderful about it.

Universality and Identity Politics

Universality and Identity Politics
Author: Todd McGowan
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2020-07-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231552300

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The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politics.” Others, both centrists and conservatives, associate universalism with twentieth-century totalitarianism and hold that it is bound to lead to catastrophe. This book develops a new conception of universality that helps us rethink political thought and action. Todd McGowan argues that universals such as equality and freedom are not imposed on us. They emerge from our shared experience of their absence and our struggle to attain them. McGowan reconsiders the history of Nazism and Stalinism and reclaims the universalism of movements fighting racism, sexism, and homophobia. He demonstrates that the divide between Right and Left comes down to particularity versus universality. Despite the accusation of identity politics directed against leftists, every emancipatory political project is fundamentally a universal one—and the real proponents of identity politics are the right wing. Through a wide range of examples in contemporary politics, film, and history, Universality and Identity Politics offers an antidote to the impasses of identity and an inspiring vision of twenty-first-century collective struggle.

How to Look for Love

How to Look for Love
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Change (Psychology)
ISBN: 9781402264627

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This book was previously published in hardcover as The Case for Falling in Love. Men and women are not as different as we've always been told. We're not from Venus or Mars; we were all born on planet Earth. Flying in the face of traditional relationship advice, How to Look for Love offers up a refreshing take in a world full of tired rules and fake games. This is an inspirational manifesto that brilliantly skewers the status quo while using everything from Freud to Gossip Girl to help us rethink our notions of how love works. "Funny and thought-provoking...an extremely refreshing take." Publishers Weekly, starred review

The Ethics of Opting Out

The Ethics of Opting Out
Author: Mari Ruti
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231543352

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In The Ethics of Opting Out, Mari Ruti provides an accessible yet theoretically rigorous account of the ideological divisions that have animated queer theory during the last decade, paying particular attention to the field's rejection of dominant neoliberal narratives of success, cheerfulness, and self-actualization. More specifically, she focuses on queer negativity in the work of Lee Edelman, Jack Halberstam, and Lynne Huffer, and on the rhetoric of bad feelings found in the work of Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant, David Eng, Heather Love, and José Muñoz. Ruti highlights the ways in which queer theory's desire to opt out of normative society rewrites ethical theory and practice in genuinely innovative ways at the same time as she resists turning antinormativity into a new norm. This wide-ranging and thoughtful book maps the parameters of contemporary queer theory in order to rethink the foundational assumptions of the field.

Fear of Breakdown

Fear of Breakdown
Author: Noëlle McAfee
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231549911

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What is behind the upsurge of virulent nationalism and intransigent politics across the globe today? In Fear of Breakdown, Noëlle McAfee uses psychoanalytic theory to explore the subterranean anxieties behind current crises and the ways in which democratic practices can help work through seemingly intractable political conflicts. Working at the intersection of psyche and society, McAfee draws on psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott’s concept of the fear of breakdown to show how hypernationalism stems from unconscious anxieties over the origins of personal and social identities, giving rise to temptations to reify exclusionary phantasies of national origins. Fear of Breakdown contends that politics needs something that only psychoanalysis has been able to offer: an understanding of how to work through anxieties, ambiguity, fragility, and loss in order to create a more democratic politics. Coupling robust psychoanalytic theory with concrete democratic practice, Fear of Breakdown shows how a politics of working through can help counter a politics of splitting, paranoia, and demonization. McAfee argues for a new approach to deliberative democratic theory, not the usual philosopher-sanctioned process of reason-giving but an affective process of making difficult choices, encountering others, and mourning what cannot be had.

The Rough Beast: Psychoanalysis in Everyday Life

The Rough Beast: Psychoanalysis in Everyday Life
Author: Denise Cullington
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0429833067

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The past continues to operate powerfully, wordlessly, in that less conscious part of our human mind and can trip us up unexpectedly. We can perceive and respond to situations in ways which are more to do with early experiences than the present. We can push from mind what we would rather not know. Feelings such as doubt and sadness can seem too weak; envy and anger, too bad; feeling small and in any way in need, could leave us too vulnerable. Though most will never have their own experience of psychoanalysis (or less intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy), psychoanalytic ideas can be profoundly helpful in making sense of ourselves. Having some access to those more hidden parts of our human mind, we can feel more alive, more real and less likely to act out in unexpected ways. An accessible, sympathetic and challenging guide, The Rough Beast: Psychoanalysis in Everyday Life is for all those who are curious and sceptical as to what, why and how psychoanalytic understanding is useful in everyday life.