You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Taking the period 2015-20 as its main area of examination, the context of Danse Macabre: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Global Dynamics is both germane to, and at times eerily prescient of, the period of turbulence, violence and flux that we are currently in. Completed as the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold, it uses the axes of Eros/Thanatos, and of power/vulnerability to offer thoughts and associations on forces and dynamics that are at play in the world today. Although the title is of global dynamics, it is nonetheless acknowledged as being located in a post WWII European and primarily British-English perspective, though there is some reference to a broader sphere than Western Europe (particularly Eastern Europe and the Middle East). It manages to note and connect a myriad of different social movements, political activity, and national shifts over the last few years, and continually reminds the reader of the breadth and complexity of currents in the socio-political stage. It does not purport to offer answers or solutions, but sets out the often cyclical capacity for repeating mistakes and is perhaps best read as a free flowing river of ideas, that at times takes in the details of a particular landscape or the minutiae of a specific tributary.
As such, it is both an opportunity and a responsibility to be reviewing it at this moment in time. As noted, it was concluded during the pandemic and is impressive in threading the significance of this global challenge through the book - describing the impact that the spread of the virus had on social, economic and health structures. It was published not long before Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and draws attention to some of the precursors to this event, offering this somewhat chilling quote from Putin:
there are things that I believe, which should not in my position, at least, be shared with the public at large for everybody's consumption because that would look like self-advertising or a political striptease (qu