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THE FIVE FINGERS OF SOCIAL DESIRE
out of the bland, static world of ‘being’ emerges the oppositional, dynamic
world of ‘becoming’. In order for a thing to become something else, it must
overcome that which preceded it.
Similarly, Marx regarded the development of society as a series of
necessary negations. For Marx, whereas earlier ‘primitive’ societies must be
overcome by increasingly rational and civilized societies,
social history
represents an inevitable linear trajectory. Beginning with so-called primitive
societies that become increasingly technological, hierarchical, and competitive,
history finally gives way to a free and socialist society. In this way, Marx
ascribed to a liberal notion of ‘progress’, asserting the necessity of hierarchical
systems such as capitalism as a stepping stone toward a higher expression of
civilization. Moreover, in the same way, Freud follows in this tradition,
regarding child development as a series of self-negations or repressions.
Whereas ‘maturity’ is marked by a negation of earlier impulses and desires,
Freud’s ‘rational adult’ marks the pinnacle of white male self-repression.
However, the ‘history of society5, is not a singular or monolithic event.
Society and culture develop in different locations, fashions, and times. Each
society must be understood integrally as the summation of its own historical
development. Furthermore, the process of social development is uneven;
within a given society, there may be particular cultural or political practices that
are more complex and developed than others. For instance, while one culture
may develop a particularly sophisticated system of agricultural or industrial
technology,
that
same
culture
might
be
marked
by
a
particularly
‘maldeveloped’ form of governance incorporating violence, dominance, and
rigid social stratification.13 Similarly, while one society may practice particularly
laborious systems of agriculture, that same society may have developed
intricate systems of self-government, nuanced in their degree of non-hierarchy,
complementarity, and cooperation.
In contrast, new ‘organic’ dialectical (hunkers such as social ecologist
Murray Bookchin and psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin propose an alternative
view of development. Indebted to Hegel, both thinkers regard development as
cumulative, depicting later phases of development as incorporating earlier ones
and bringing them to a level of more complex differentiation. However, for
Bookchin and Benjamin, this crucial ‘negative moment’, inherent within all
processes of development, is mediated by the idea that development may be
cumulative, cooperative, potential, and open-ended rather than determined
and hierarchical. Bookchin and Benjamin elaborate upon what is best within
Flegelian ‘negativism’ by drawing out a more organic and non-hierarchical
view of development.
For Hegel, when a self recognizes itself as separate from another self, it
will strive to annihilate die otiier. For Hegel, social relationships are inherently