Overview
Assignment: Paper #1--minimum of 5 pages of content plus title page and works cited page; 12pt font, double spaced, MLA, Chicago, or APA format. Support your argument from assigned (Lakoff, Nietzsche, Freud, Conrad, Chandler) and recommended (Brown, Schmitt, Coates, Zimbardo) readings.
Here are two passages from Civilization and its Discontents:
"Civilization behaves toward sexuality as a people or stratum of its population does which has subjected another one to its exploitation. Fear of revolt by the suppressed element drives it to stricter precautionary measures (34)."
"It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness (42)."
According to Freud, civilization is a process: the social organization and internalization of societal demands regarding libidinal and aggressive drives. Consequently, the process of the civilization of the group parallels--or is an extension of--the process of moral development that takes place within the mind of the individual. Additionally, Freud appears open to the idea that there could actually be "neurotic" civilizations--or, at least the likelihood that our internalized demands of civilization (the Super Ego) could be corrupt or abusive. Freud also refers to these processes as "peculiar"--meaning they have a unique spatial relationship to authority. What Freud does not discuss in depth is the fact that both processes seem to involve (a) the outward projection of internal conflicts (see "A Child is Being Beaten," p.191), and (b) an outward separation, marking-off, or "demarcation" (Civilization and its Discontents, p. 4) of the ego from objects. Further examination of these facts could go a considerable way in understanding the dynamics--distinguishing subject from object, the inner world from the outside world, the insider from outsider--by which dominant groups objectify and dominate subordinate groups. How, for example, does one who is a member of a subordinate group achieve a healthy ego on the inside, or become fully civilized, if civilization and its Super Ego have already placed their own existence on the outside or margins?Option #2: According to Freud, the most challenging psycho-sexual problem of civilization is encapsulated in the Biblical phrase "Love thy neighbor as thyself."
(a) Explain what Nietzsche means by "moral masturbation," then discuss the potential social dangers inherent in a literal reading of the biblical phrase in Freudian terms. Don't forget that the phrase is not simply "love thy neighbor," but "love thy neighbor as thyself," and don't neglect the delineations made between subject and object in the phases of the masturbatory punishment fantasy of "A Child is Being Beaten." Extra points given for bringing-in Lakoff to make important political connections here.
(b) For Freud, what upsets the moral applecart here is not the "love" or libidinal drives, but the existence of aggressiveness. After explaining the problems of eros and thanatos in the first part of your paper, explicate the problem of the "neighbor," or what Freud calls the "narcissism of small differences" in the second part. What is the relationship of homes and neighbors to civilization in Heart of Darkness? Do the Belgian colonists make good neighbors to the Congolese? Does the idealistic mission of civilizing the Congolese make up for neighborly deficiencies such as racism? And if, as Freud claims, we fear our neighbor for his aggressiveness, why do the skulls surrounding Kurtz's home face inward rather than outward?