Contesting the Far Right: A Psychoanalytic and Feminist Critical Theory Approach

Claudia Leeb

Published by Columbia University Press 2024

Contesting the Far Right

A Psychoanalytic and Feminist Critical Theory Approach

Claudia Leeb

Volume 88 in the series New Directions in Critical Theory

https://doi.org/10.7312/leeb21306

Overview
Contents

About this book

Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift.

Author / Editor information

Claudia Leeb is associate professor of political theory at Washington State University. Her recent books include The Politics of Repressed Guilt: The Tragedy of Austrian Silence (2018) and Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject (2017).

Reviews

Nancy Luxon, University of Minnesota:
How does precarity capitalism redefine identity? How are ideals of success our collective undoing? Drawing on the Frankfurt School, Claudia Leeb forcefully analyzes the psychological investments that hold the structures of precarity capitalism in place. With a sober assessment of the United States and Austria, Leeb explores the curious desire for wholeness that attracts many to right-wing politics.

Joan Braune, author of Understanding and Countering Fascist Movements: From Void to Hope:
Contesting the Far Right offers an essential framework for understanding and resisting the resurgence of fascist movements today. Leeb offers a combined approach that involves both psychoanalytic theory and structural analysis of capitalism, racism, and masculinity. This book should be discussed and read by all scholars and researchers seeking to understand the fascist threat today.

Wendy Brown, Institute for Advanced Study:
Claudia Leeb masterfully recuperates early critical theory's fecund use of Freud to illuminate a hard-right social turn. Drawing as well on feminist and anticolonial insights, she analyzes the white male psyche forged in the crucible of neoliberal precarity. This work is an important inquiry into the psychological drive toward fascism today.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I Castration Anxiety and Capitalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
II Psychoanalytic Concepts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
III Sleeping and Dreaming While Awake: Adorno Revisited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
IV From Melancholia to Mania: The Rise of Trump Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
V The Culture Industry of Jokes: The Recruitment Tactics of the Alt- Right Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
VI Austria’s Far Right: A Failed Working- Through of the Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
VII Gratifications of Terror: The Austrian Identitarian Movement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
Concluding Remarks: Suggestions for Undermining the Far Right Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	253
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: April 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780231559706