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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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"[r]eactivation of polymorphous and narcissistic sexuality ceases to be a threat to culture and can itself lead to culture-building if the organism exists not as an instrument of alienated labor, but as a subject of self realization." Eros & Civilization, ppg. 191-192

I've never encountered this passage before (my first-hand knowledge of his work doesn't extend much past The Aesthetic Dimension and some isolated fragments), but it did occur to me while writing my post that he probably thought or said something like this at some point - that there's sexuality under capitalism, and there's sexuality in a future post-alienated state, and they're distinct phenomena that require distinct treatments. But I didn't want to bloat the post by going into those distinctions, so I just tried to provide a gloss on the passage I quoted, particularly these sentences:

By its innermost force, Eros becomes "demonstration against the herd instinct," "rejection of the group's influence." In the technological desublimation today, the all but opposite tendency seems to prevail. [...] to the degree to which sexuality is sanctioned and even encouraged by society (not "officially," of course, but by the mores and behavior considered as "regular"), it loses the quality which, according to Freud, is its essentially erotic quality, that of freedom from social control.

Since this passage is specifically about the nature and function of sexuality under capitalism, rather than a non-alienated sexuality, I think the summary I gave was basically correct, albeit simplified.