Klaus Mladek

Klaus Mladek is Associate Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College.

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Quotes

The melancholic errs by turning against his own ego all the critical energies that ought to be directed outward against the powers of the status quo. ... Encouraged to draw all of his aggressions inward, away from the true source of discontent, the compliant melancholic sets up a superegoic agency harboring the ego’s own former rage against the object. ... Introjection becomes a form of deflected critique. Meanwhile, the berated and debased ego, busy with its own internal insufficiencies and thoroughly discouraged from political activism, is not only fully censured but also is fashioned into a willing, productive—if ultimately impotent—participant in society. ... The ideal subject under capitalism is melancholic.
- “A Politics of Melancholia,” in Leftist Ontology (2009), edited by Carsten Strathausen, p. 209, co-written with George Edmondson.