Dear Colleague,
Reality may be socially constructed. But constructed based on what? In Developmental Time, Cultural Space, Howard F. Stein presents the concept of psychogeography, how we “fashion the world out of the substance of the psyche from the experience of our bodies.”
Much of international conflict, Stein says, is based on the leap from the mind to society—the fantasy of “society-as-body.” We write and speak about the nation as a “body politic.” What is the meaning of this metaphor? Could it be we conceive of nations based on the experience and image of our own bodies?
I’ve extended Stein’s concept of psychogeography in my own research on Hitler, Nazism and Nationalism (see my online publications, “Hitler’s Body and the Body Politic” and “Genocide as Immunology: The Psychosomatic Source of Culture”).
College instructors: You may receive a free copy of this extraordinary book for use in your own teaching and research: simply respond to this email or write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com saying that you will ask your library to order Developmental Time, Cultural Space (provide your name and the name of your college or university when you respond). We then will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book that is identical to the hard copy, including the front and back covers.
“Howard Stein has one of the finest minds engaged in the study of culture in our time. He has the capacity to see straight through to the meaning of things—a quality people used to refer to as genius. This wide ranging book is a feast.” —Howard S. Schwartz, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Oakland University, author of Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay. |
In his speech of January 27, 1934, Hitler declared: “My movement encompasses every aspect of the entire Volk. It conceives of Germany as a corporate body, as a single organism.” Nazism grew out of this fantasy of the nation as an organism, with each human being constituting a cell. The nation was imagined as if a single body with the body of each German citizen fused to this body.
We have yet to interrogate the concept of “the nation.” We identify so deeply. We barely distinguish ourselves from our countries. We bind our bodies and being to nation-states.
“Territory,” Stein tells us, “is symbolic.” We feel it is natural and normal to identify with a vast geographic space:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
Post-modernism has deconstructed nearly everything. However, “nations” or “countries” reign supreme: shaping and structuring our perception of reality. We think of nations as real things. Yet they are mental representations. We feel so close to countries. We don’t wish to abandon them.
The work of analysis begins when we conceive of nations as ideas or symbolic structures separate from our selves. Why do we hesitate? Because our grandiosity or narcissism is bound to our identification with these entities—and their sacred histories. We want to be part of sacred history. We fear being human-all-too-human.
How do we awaken from the nightmare of history? By interrogating the meaning of these entities in the name of which hundreds of millions of human beings have died. We begin our journey with Howard Stein’s psychogeography. Library is Social Science is offering a free copy of this important book to college instructors who simply ask their libraries to order a copy.
We believe that Developmental Time, Cultural Space is crucial for your teaching and research. Respond directly to this email or write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com saying you will recommend that your library order a copy. We’ll send you a free copy of the electronic version that is identical to the hard copy.
We hope you will read this exciting, important book. Please respond now.
With best regards,
Richard Koenigsberg
P. S. Excerpts from Stein’s book appear below.
College instructors: You may receive a free copy of this extraordinary book for use in your own teaching and research: simply respond to this email or write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com saying that you will ask your library to order Developmental Time, Cultural Space (provide your name and the name of your college or university when you respond). We then will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book that is identical to the hard copy, including the front and back covers.
“Truly remarkable—an enduring contribution.” —Prof. John Connor, Dept. of Anthropology, California State University, Sacramento. |
Excerpts from Developmental Time, Cultural Space:
Studies in Psychogeography
The Symbolic Meaning of Territory
Territory is symbolic. In ethnonationalist sentiment, ideology and political action, land, or geography are central in symbolism. What, though, do they symbolize? The answer seems to be: boundaries. Such elements as language, land, historic sites, music are conscripted to delineate more secure boundaries, to differentiate distinctly between us and them, inside and outside, good and evil. The boundaries must be closed, and anything that might threaten the perfection and greatness within must be excluded, e.g., through linguistic, cultural, demographic purging of that which might contaminate the purity.
One fights for the symbol as if it were the thing symbolized. The identity of every human group is bound up with how it imagines, symbolizes, constructs, and maintains its boundaries. For cultural content does not exist apart from, and without constant reference to, the shape, size, extent, and security of its boundaries.
The Image of the Enemy
The "image of the enemy" is one of every group's most treasured possessions. Not the comforting teddy bear to be kept close, but the uncomfortable inner monsters that must be expelled and kept outside oneself. The universal notion of group boundaries—that separate in psychogeographic space the identity of every "us" from every "them"—rests on a misperception that is at once paradoxical, and dangerous. For, alas, those groups from which we most passionately distinguish ourselves are those with which we are most inseparably bound.
The enemy, whom we are certain is a despicable "other," is in fact endowed and littered with parts cast out from the self. The "enemy" is an inner representation become flesh. The "boundary" is thus a sacred illusion and delusion, defended to the death to keep the "good" inside and "bad" outside. Each partner in this deadly dance needs the other to complete itself. We cultivate our enemies. We tend our externalized demons as diligently as we do our revered deities.
Fantasy of Society as Body
Much of intergroup, including international, conflict is heir to the leap from the mind to society based on the fantasy of society-as-body (organism). Members of cultures experience and speak of their society as a virtual personified "body" (the body politic) from which they feel inseparable. |
College instructors: You may receive a free copy of this extraordinary book for use in your own teaching and research: simply respond to this email or write to oanderson@libraryofsocialscience.com saying that you will ask your library to order Developmental Time, Cultural Space (provide your name and the name of your college or university when you respond). We then will send you a free electronic copy of the entire book that is identical to the hard copy, including the front and back covers.
“Howard Stein is one of the world’s most original thinkers in the human sciences.” —Robert Endleman, Ph.D., author of Psyche and Society |
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Author: Howard. F. Stein
Publication Date: May, 2013
Pages: 261
Trim Size: 5.5 X 8.5
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-915042-05-0
List Price: $39.99
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-915042-06-7
List Price: $49.95 |
About the Author
Howard F. Stein is Professor at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. He is the author of 26 books and over 250 published papers and chapters. |
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