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For the first time since the inauguration, our series metabolizing the ongoing chaos of American politics returns. That’s right: Gerontophallocracy is back! The topic is a certain grandiose deadbeat manchild patriarch who has succeeded in making himself even more of a ubiquitous object of speculation than Donald Trump: Elon Musk. But instead of focusing on Elon’s erratic behavior and personal symptoms, Abby, Patrick, and Dan tackle the question of Musk’s existence and prominence as a symptom of underlying political economic and libidinal economic conditions. It’s a tale of the Return of the (Barely) Repressed extending from religious myths to secular fictions and from the dawn of patriarchy and emergence of private property to the dream of a future where the scions of billionaires can plant their flags and dynasties on Mars. It’s a lot. 

Texts include:

Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/)

Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

Karl Marx, “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation,” in Capital Vol I (available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm)

Robert Paul, "Yes, the Primal Crime Did Take Place," in Our Two-Track Minds: Rehabilitating Freud on Culture

Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract

Have you noticed that Freud is back? Got questions about psychoanalysis? Or maybe you’ve traversed the fantasy and lived to tell the tale? Leave us a voicemail! (646) 450-0847
 
 A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Follow us on social media:
 
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Theme song:
Formal Chicken - Gnossienne No. 1
https://open.spotify.com/album/2MIIYnbyLqriV3vrpUTxxO
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