This book considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Principle of Pleasure. There Freud suggests that he will investigate a psychic tendency that is not subject to the pleasure principle, but in fact for Freud the latter remains sovereign. Following Jacques Derrida, Martínez argues that when the pleasure principle comes into contact with the death drive (a tendency toward aggression or cruelty), the psyche can take detours that, without exceeding the limit of the pleasure principle, can nevertheless defer it. Eros: Beyond the Death Drive reflects on these deviations of ... More

This book considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Principle of Pleasure. There Freud suggests that he will investigate a psychic tendency that is not subject to the pleasure principle, but in fact for Freud the latter remains sovereign. Following Jacques Derrida, Martínez argues that when the pleasure principle comes into contact with the death drive (a tendency toward aggression or cruelty), the psyche can take detours that, without exceeding the limit of the pleasure principle, can nevertheless defer it. Eros: Beyond the Death Drive reflects on these deviations of the pleasure principle, which Martínez finds both in the political sphere and in intimate relations. Following these erotic paths, Martínez argues that the forces of the death drive can only be resisted if resistance is understood as an ongoing process in which erotic action and the construction of pathways for sublimation are interminable tasks. We know that the final accomplishment of these tasks is impossible, but, like Freud’s “impossible professions,” they remain imperative. Though always incomplete, they remain undeniably urgent, and psychoanalysis and deconstruction remind us of their urgency. In complementary ways, both Freud and Derrida teach us that the death drive is insurmountable, but that through political action we can delay, defer, and postpone it. Martínez shows us that this effort of resistance must be uninterrupted. Calling for the creation and maintenance of a “community of mourning duelists,” this book builds toward the affirmation of the kind of “erotic battalion” that must always be mobilized.