D. W. Winnicott and Political Theory: Recentering the Subject
Book Details
- Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
- Published : July 2018
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 395
- Category :
Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 98088
- ISBN 13 : 9781349954186
- ISBN 10 : 1349954187
Also by Matthew H. Bowker
Also by Amy Buzby
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In this volume, the work of British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott is set in conversation with some of today’s most talented psychodynamically-sensitive political thinkers. The editors and contributors demonstrate that Winnicott’s thought contains underappreciated political insights, discoverable in his reflections on the nature of the maturational process, and useful in working through difficult impasses confronting contemporary political theorists. Specifically, Winnicott’s psychoanalytic theory and practice offer a framework by which the political subject, destabilized and disrupted in much postmodern and contemporary thinking, may be recentered. Each chapter in this volume, in its own way, grapples with this central theme: the potential for authentic subjectivity and inter-subjectivity to arise within a nexus of autonomy and dependence, aggression and civility, destructiveness and care. This volume is unique in its contribution to the growing field of object-relations-oriented political and social theory. It will be of interest to political scientists, psychologists, and scholars of related subjects in the humanities and social sciences.
Reviews and Endorsements
True scholarship must encompass the rediscovery of sorely neglected sources of valuable knowledge. Bowker and Buzby and their likewise excellent contributors do us a great service in bringing Winnicott's profound psychoanalytic wisdom back into the fray of political theory, front and un-decentered. I couldn't recommend this stimulating and provocative volume too highly
Kurt Jacobsen, University of Chicago, USA and author of Freud's Foe and Pacification and Its Discontents
The shared premise of this book is illustrated with admirable deftness, theoretical sophistication, and lucidity across a wide spectrum of themes. The result is a volume which, in its totality, is much more than the sum of its parts. Anyone interested in the potential of free, humane subjectivity, and in the critique of anti-humanism, will find it deeply rewarding.
David N. Smith, Professor and Chair of Sociology, University of Kansas, USA
This book is a fine volume of uncommon depthand reach. A clinician rather than a political thinker, Winnicott’s work nevertheless emerges as a significant resource for our understanding of political agency and what a good society might be. Readers already persuaded of that fact will find their thinking taken in new and surprising directions. Those unfamiliar with Winnicott’s ideas will find many reasons to take seriously his relevance to political thought and to matters of pressing political concern.
Peter Redman, Editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
Table of Contents
Introduction
Matthew H. Bowker, Amy Buzby
The Subject’s Creation: Aggression, Isolation, and Destruction
1. Being and Encountering: Movement and Aggression in Winnicott
Jeremy Elkins
2. The Isolation of the True Self and the Problem of Impingement: Implications of Winnicott’s Theory for Social Connection and Political Engagement
David P. Levine
3. The Psychoanalytic Winnicott We Need Now: On the Way to a Real Ecological Thought
Melissa A. Orlie
The Subject Faced with Deprivation and Disaster
4. Playing ‘Riot’: Identity in Refuge—Absent Child Narratives in the 2013 Hindu–Muslim Riots in Muzaffarnagar, India
Zehra Mehdi
5. Safety in Danger and Privacy in Privation: Ambivalent Fantasies of Natural States Invoked in Reaction to Loss
Matthew H. Bowker
6. “Out Like a Lion”: Melancholia with Euripides and Winnicott
Bonnie Honig
7. Forgiveness and Transitional Experience
C. Fred Alford
Revitalizing the Subject of Political Theory
8. In Transition, But to Where?: Winnicott, Integration, and Democratic Associations
David W. McIvor
9. Vanquishing the False Self: Winnicott, Critical Theory, and the Restoration of the Spontaneous Gesture
Amy Buzby
10. Adults in the Playground: Winnicott and Arendt on Politics and Playfulness
John LeJeune
Intersubjectivity, Justice, and Equality
11. D.W. Winnicott, Ethics, and Race: Psychoanalytic Thought and Racial Equality in the United States
Alex Zamalin
12. Winnicott at Work: Potential Space and the Facilitating Organization
Michael A. Diamond
13. Winnicott and the History of Welfare State Thought in Britain
Gal Gerson
14. Vulnerability, Dependence, Sovereignty, and Ego-Distortion Theory: Psychoanalyzing Political Behaviors in the Developing World
Robert C. Chalwell
About the Author(s)
Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D., is clinical assistant professor in the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Program at SUNY, University at Buffalo. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Maryland, College Park, he is the author of more than fifteen books and several dozen scholarly essays. He coedits Routledge’s book series, Psychoanalytic Political Theory and is editor (N. America) for the Journal of Psycho-Social Studies (USA). Bowker’s primary research interests are critical psychopolitical theory, literary criticism, and political philosophy. His latest books are The Angels Won’t Help You (Punctum Books), The Destroyed World and the Guilty Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Culture and Politics (with D. Levine, Phoenix), and Oblation: Essays, Parables, and Paradoxes (Punctum Books).
More titles by Matthew H. Bowker
Amy Buzby has a Ph.D. in political science from Rutgers University—New Brunswick, and is an associate professor of political science at Arkansas State University. Her publications include Subterranean Politics and Freud’s Legacy and D. W. Winnicott and Political Theory: Recentering the Subject (with Dr. Matthew Bowker). She is currently working on a monograph about D. W. Winnicott and the political implications of his praxis.
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