Note on Theopolitical Excess
Thinking Contemporary Impasses in the context of Counter-Culture as Challenge
In many ways we are still living in the imaginative political wake of the 1960s counter-cultural revolution in the sense that most of contemporary leftist politics operates under the assumption of liberating sexuality from its social constraints, which would in turn liberate the social of pathological authoritarian tendencies. As Alenka Zupančič notes in one of her recent articles “Is Sex Passé”, Lacan referred to this movement as the “Sexo-Left”, and Foucault critically related to this movement as operating under the “repressive hypothesis.1 Here we get the foundation of the “libidinal counter” to “the culture” which in this context can be framed broadly as “traditional Christianity”. In other words, “traditional Christianity” was perceived to be regulating the sexual towards pathological authoritarian tendencies, and the “Sexo-Left” of the “counter-culture” was attempting to free the multiplicity of bodies from this repression in the aims of some emancipatory possibilities.
Of course, this political approach did not really work. However, in living in its wake, Zupančič also notes a weird reversal has taken place, that of the (perhaps unconscious) demand of the political “descendants” of the Sexo-Left for more regulation on the sexual through political correct cultural normativity.2 Here she notes that the political correct demands are a response to the unbearably oppressive weight and pressure of the libidinal itself, freed of traditional Christian constraints.
In other words, the weird reversal at work in the history of the counter-culture is a rejection of traditional Christian normative regulation in an affirmation of the libidinal excess itself, towards a new constellation of politically correct normative regulation as a response to the impossibility of unregulated libidinal excess. Indeed, it makes sense in this context that many reactionary Christian revival movements today are themselves responses to politically correct normative regulations, because they are its direct cultural competitor. The only place where we might find a unity between these two cultures is in places like progressive politically correct evangelical churches, but in general, most Christian revival movements frame themselves as opposed to the politically correct or “woke” sensitivities.
It is in this context that the rest of the month at The Portal will be focused on thinking through these weird problems of what we might want to call “theopolitical excess”. Owen Cox of
, who has been exploring what to do with “excess desire” in relation to Aleister Crowley’s “Thelemic” principles, will be leading an “Edge event” on the “Politics of the Counter-Culture”.3 Cox has done a fantastic job, inspired by his own life history, of theorising how many reactionary aspects of our contemporary culture — from P.C. woke to Orthobros — are basically “12-step programs” qua “regulative structures” capable of helping subjectivity work with its own “libidinal excess”. However, Cox has noted that, in simply regulating this libidinal excess, without really working with the core motivations that lead to pathological addictions and cravings (or the “oppressive weight” of the “libidinal in-itself”), one never really gets to the core problem and tension that has been revealed to us by the counter-culture. At best, one can live out a normativity this way that keeps one from self-destruction; but at worst, one merely delays a confrontation with a potential relapse into the return of the repressed.In short, via regulation we find ourselves back into the traditional Christian dualism that separates “sin-temptation-lucifer” as negative from “the good life” as positive, rather than seeing good-evil, positive-negative, as in a necessary unity “beyond the dualism” that needs to be actively and reflexively worked with for an actual new way of living the good life. Hegel actually claims this was one of the major blind spots of traditional religious metaphysics:4
“The question as to the origin of evil may be put better thus: How does the negative enter the positive? If God in the creation of the world is supposed to be absolutely positive, then, let man turn where he will, he cannot in the positive find the negative. The view that God permitted evil to exist, involving a passive relation of God to evil, offers no satisfactory solution to the problem. In the religious myth the origin of evil is not rationally conceived; the negative is not recognised to be in the positive.”
Consequently, what we hope to open philosophical speculation for at this week’s Edge event is a capacity to think this unity of good-evil — in the context of culture “as good”, and libidinal counter-culture “as evil” — as opposed to avoiding the problem in too quickly trying to regulate what has now been revealed to us. We should see the imaginative political wake of the 1960s counter-culture as an enormous challenge, and one that has been betrayed, not only by woke political correct sensibilities and traditional Christian reactionaries; but also by the laziness and fear of general liberal society content with living a life of simple pleasures, as opposed to deriving from our historical moment a new and real ontological commitment.
This month in The Portal we will be focused on the psychoanalytic concept of “Excess” as the opposite and at the same time unity with “Lack”. We will be hosting guests Owen Cox of Dark Renaissance Radio for an Edge event on the “Politics of the Counter-Culture”, Thomas Hamelryck for a Thought Lab on “Christianity and Eroticism”, as well as a Real Talk with Paris Jayer on “Tantric Life”.
You can get involved as a monthly member, or also purchase individual tickets for The Edge and Thought Lab here: The Portal.
Zupančič, A. 2023. Is Sex Passe? In: Underground Theory. Theory Underground Publishing. p. 220.
Ibid.
For more, see: Cox, O. 2024. Psychoanalysis and Thelema: Will, Law, Ethics, Desire and Love. Writing for (a) First Cause. (conference page)
Hegel, G.W.F. 2001. Philosophy of Right. Batoche Books. p. 119.