COMMENT : Eros and capitalism — I — Dr Saulat Nagi
In the subcontinent, where apparently the beast has overtaken man, and the "devil goes about like a roaring lion", even infants are not spared
"The history of man is the history of repression by civilisation. If absence from repression is the archetype of freedom, then civilisation is the struggle against this freedom" — Sigmund Freud.
We live in a chaotic world of commodities where nothing matters save the wealth expropriated through the exchange of these inanimate objects. Borrowing the expression of Dickens, it is "the worst of times" when we are 'happy' to live with the rationality of technology and progress, which, by its very nature, is extremely repressive. This pathological happiness is made possible by a sweeping redefinition of thought through manipulation and indoctrination. Probably it is the perfect reflection of what Adam Smith had ever dreamt about. While defining human society, he went on to state: "A human society is to be regulated as a trading company and each one of its members as a merchant." The economist might have quoted this in a different sense but, incidentally, this has become a revealing description of contemporary industrial society.
Capital has dissolved all previous relations that had aligned human beings. All previous ties have fallen apart. Taboos and totems have succumbed to the new realities. In Shakespearean syntax, "Men have lost their [primitive] reason." This tempest of change is affecting everything and indeed the human psyche is no exception. While the continuous recession of the global economy has given birth to mass movements, the turbulence does not remain shy of jolting the sexual behaviour of humankind as well. Women, being the most vulnerable, are the primary victims of such assaults. In the subcontinent, where apparently the beast has overtaken man, and the "devil goes about like a roaring lion", even infants are not spared. Generally in those parts of the world where pre-capitalist relations are still dominating (and hence the culture is yet to attain a certain level of sublimation) the sexual tension is aggravating. The resentment of dispossession is subterranean but the modes of venting anger find several expressions. Some of them are shockingly weird ones. Simultaneously, another phenomenon contrary to this is taking place in Japan — a culturally refined country that has long been through the quagmire of feudal or pre-capitalistic modes of production, but a nation upon which the ruling class has so far successfully managed to maintain its hegemony through general consent.
In a piece recently published in The Guardian, it was reported that, on the whole, young people in Japan are apparently refusing to yield to the survival instinct, the Eros or the temptation of sexual indulgence. The country is going through what is called a 'celibacy syndrome', a national catastrophe. Japan has the lowest population growth rate in the world. It is likely to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Hence, there will be 42 million less people around then as compared to the present numbers (around 126 million). Intriguingly, "Japan's family planning association has found that 45 percent of women aged 16 to 24 were not interested in or despised sexual contact. More than a quarter of men felt the same way." What has made the younger generation give up the 'pleasure principle' or 'original sin' voluntarily? There were indeed a few reasons propounded by the source. For example, Japan's long, unabated recession that refuses to budge. "For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers." One woman narrated the plight of her gender in these words: "A woman's chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. The bosses assume you will get pregnant. Once a woman does have a child...the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. You have to resign." Furthermore, "Married working women are sometimes demonised as 'devil women'". Indeed, those who have accepted the dominance of technological rationality — by yielding to the consumerism of waste — as a natural arrangement may not be in dearth. For instance, one woman stated, "I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends...to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence."
But to some, limiting oneself to this extent may sound like giving in to the absolute domination of the system, which offers a faithless faith. For others, her words, rather than revealing the reality, may appear to be concealing it. In the authentic language, the word, says Maurice Blanchot, "is not the expression of a thing but rather the absence of this thing — the word makes the thing disappear and imposes upon us the feeling of a universal want and even of its own want." The plight of men may be different but the outcome in either case appears to be the same. "Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men...feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success."
Under these trying circumstances, intellectuals have drawn fascinating though mindboggling conclusions. Japanese-American author Roland Kelts says, "It is inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven." Perhaps his anxiety is based on the apprehension of technology's immutable overtaking of human relations. According to his statement, it seems as if human emotions will be replaced by the virtual world and smart phones. It sounds surreal if not altogether grotesque. If things have deteriorated to this extent, the premise advanced by Herbert Marcuse cannot be refuted easily. That is, "The technological process leads to the rule of dead matter over the human world."
For the acceleration of these trends, the demographer Nicholas Eberstadt blames a couple of factors, which, according to him, are playing the decisive role in this process of self-abnegation: "The lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country's precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children." Thinking, says Hegel, "is the negation of what is immediately presented to us". That is why he preferred speculative thinking over common sense. For Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born academic in anthropology at Montana State University, "Being single by choice is becoming a new reality." Remaining 'single' neither expresses 'asexuality' nor represents seclusion. In western civilisation, being single is nothing strange as long as the sexual drive is being satisfied — mostly with and occasionally without relations. Human beings, as we know, are social animals, and hence it is presumably expressed here in the sense of living asexually. If this is the 'new reality', no one expects the real to be always rational.
(To be continued)
The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com
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