Oh, Freud (Encore)

Living in London has made me, in a “natural” way, come back to those three names: Shakespeare, Marx and Freud. The experience of advanced capitalism at its fiercest (represented by Oxford and Regent’s streets) made me go back to Marx and Engels (and also, as always, Walter Benjamin). I had avoided re-reading Freud for personal reasons (pshychoanalytic theory always depresses me, go figure), but one day Civilization and its Discontents found its way to my hands again. Recently, over a couple of pints, Andrea pointed out with acute clarity soemthing I had been thinking about London life: “uno se la pasa tan mal aquí que lo tiene que compensar con otras cosas”. By “otras cosas” she meant drinking, eating and shopping. What first surprises the first-time visitor in London is the amount of people drinking at almost all times (even if the early drinking licenses also surprise many an unsuspecting toursit). Indeed, in my humble foreigner’s opinion, two things are done in excess in this city: drinking and shopping. In a country like Mexico we have no idea whatsoever of what shopping means. Not even the wealthiest have the buying power of the average office worker here. “Seasons” really mean something and whole wardrobes are bought with every new climate change. There is rarely a shop without a queue: sometimes even before the shop opens to the public (the day that Kate Moss launched her collection for Top Shop, for instance, or the day that Nintendo offered their new console). One cannot but link these two excessive behaviours with the well-known repressive “English character”, its tendency towards personal privacy and individualism, the emphasis on social manners, the preoccupation with social class and the ever-conflictive relationship with the French. The weather imposes a great deal of pressure/repression on Londoners, it defines social relationships, fashion trends and consuming habits (this happens everywhere, but here there is a radical particularity about it: the Island is as moody as it’s multicultural character and as strict as the power of its currency). With Spring and inminent Summer people start smiling more, but in general there can be seen a great deal of misery in people’s faces. This is fought with alcoholic excitement and materialistic consolation. Oh Freud, indeed. If you think about it, there is not much to do besides drinking and shopping, (”and then dance/and drink/and screw/because there’s nothing else to do”, sang Jarvis) and even the highest cultural expressions are unavoidably surrounded by these (the museum’s shops, restaurants, cafés and bars). The repression imposed to make of this city a “civilized” one (if you don’t touch in your Oyster -transport- card, you can be fined A THOUSAND pounds; it will be impossible to smoke even outside buildings, there are more CCTV cameras in this city than taxis in Mexico City) is almost taken for granted by the average citizen, while any critique of it is perceived as either naïve or romantic (the stuff of sci-fi, comics and other Orwell descendants). Advanced capitalism, as exemplified by life in this city, seems to have guaranteed general unhappiness (disatisfaction) so the endless logic of desire is put in motion. Thus, the human being is doomed to a sense of perpetual unhappiness that is only aliviated through mindless consumerism and excessive alcohol (and drugs) intake. Such is life in these tropics.

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built up on renunciation, how much it presupposes the non-satisfaction of powerful drives- by suppression, repression or some other means. Such “cultural frustration” dominates the large sphere of interpersonal relations; as we already know, it is the cause of the hostility that all civilizations have to contend with. [...] It is not easy to understand how it is possible to deprive a drive of satisfaction. It cannot be done without risk; if there is no economic compensation, one can expect serious disturbances.

-Herr Doktor S.F.

Freud frist published Civilization in 1930, and he would not arrive in London until 1938. One can only wonder how life in the capital made him rethink his ideas. The more I read this little book, the more I am convinced that what he was discribing was not only “civilization” or “culture” (as the term is translated into other languages, including Spanish), but capitalism itself. The equation of “civilization” and “culture” with capitalism is a problematic one in itself (probably not from a eurocentric position, though), but what is even more problematic for me is that it seems clear that his whole concept of “libidinal economy” (after Jung) was a capitalist notion. This is what explains all the Freud tee shirts and Zizek sold-out talks of the world: pyschoanalytic theory attempts a critique of everyday life without questioning its foundations (this was somehow discussed by Derrida in his book on the “States of Psychonalysis”, questioning if psychoanalytic theory could ever analyze itself).

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