{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","uuid":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","normalized_title":"crowdsandparty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","isbns":["9781781686942","9781781686720","9781781687666"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Crowds%20and%20Party","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/search"},"page":{"printed_page":34,"pdf_page":33,"physical_index":33,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f1043e185ed913ecaae57ffb14c7677708a2150ff350b30bf2d08e626d91c201"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"Likewise countering Sennett’s happy rendering of the repudiation of dependence, Carrie M. Lane’s research on white-collar technology workers in Dallas situates the emphasis on individual responsibility in the context of wide-scale layoffs and unemployment.<sup>22</sup> Insecurity is a primary feature of the lives of these tech workers. Most alternate through contract positions of varying duration, unemployment, and selfemployment.<sup>23</sup> Lane notes how the technology workers she interviewed embrace a “career management” ideology that casts “insecurity as an empowering alternative to dependence on a single employer.”<sup>24</sup> They construe loyalty as a thing of the past: since everyone is a victim of economic forces beyond their control, neither companies nor employees owe each other anything. Owners and workers both want to make money however they can. No one should expect a company to provide employment security or opportunities for professional development. Such an expectation indicates a childish attitude of dependence. According to one executive, “To give my employees job security would be to disempower them and relieve them of the responsibility that they need to feel for their own success.”<sup>25</sup> Laid-off and job-seeking tech workers adopt the corresponding individualist mindset: success comes from doing “whatever it takes” to get by, get through, get that next job.\n\nThe survivor is a compelling identity under conditions of extreme competition and inequality. It validates surviving by any means necessary. Survival is its own reward. Setbacks and lapses are new challenges, ultimately greater proof of one’s survival skills. Popular culture provides a wide array of survivors to emulate (as well as examples of those who have been unable to get themselves together): from Katniss in The Hunger Games, to the winners of uncountable reality television competitions, to games like Day Z and Fallout, to victims of illness or crime. Emotions of anger, suspicion, and defensiveness are justified—one can rely only on oneself—and potentially useful as the psychic weapons that can help maintain an impossible individuality.\n\nThe survivor is a figure not for a culture of narcissism but for a psychotic culture. If narcissistic culture is characterized by the dislodging of symbolic authority, psychotic culture is characterized by its foreclosure.<sup>26</sup> In brief, Lacan defines psychosis in terms of the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father or master signifier. That the master signifier is foreclosed means that it does not stabilize meaning; the signifying chain lacks an anchor that can hold it together. The generalized loss of symbolic power impacts the subject such that he feels this now-missing authority to be all the closer, more powerful, and intrusive. In a psychotic culture, then, mistrust is pervasive, all-consuming. Each confronts power directly and alone.\n\nTo compensate for the missing symbolic authority, the psychotic turns to the imaginary. He positions himself in relation to a “captivating image,” perhaps of one whom he hates, admires, or fears.<sup>27</sup> This imaginary other would then be a rival to defeat or destroy. The psychotic may try to mimic those around him, particularly as he grapples with intense fear and aggression. And he may also become captivated by an image of himself. Here the psychotic imagines himself not as anyone or anything in particular: I am my own worst enemy. What matters is persistence, survival, for its own sake.\n\n34","previous_page":33,"next_page":35}