FIST Number 6

About the Book

Psychopathologies of Power delivers Punk Philosophy with a ribald sneer aimed at the genteel Ponzi schemes proffered within academia; as the real scene is a descent into transgressive literature. By delving into the mire, the insights delivered by De Sade, Kafka, Mishima, Nietzsche, Stirner and Celine are distilled to dissolve the staid ‘natural standpoint’. Philosophy exists in a disconnected bubble severed from lived experience; instead promoting a rarified fantastical illusion. Ideas exist in a land fill; replete with gossamer tropes swopped within an intellectual cattle market; overseen by the Eloi. The real surge of power exudes in exposing a desire for emotional compensation for childhood humiliation; revealed within the lives of Mishima, Celine and De Sade. It also exists within the bureaucratic maze administered by men and women elevated to process the poor; as exposed by Kafka. Finally, transcendence camouflages numerous potential pitfalls within the work of Stirner and Nietzsche. Each are mined to reveal a collective hallucination composed of imaginary communities providing a mythic cult of solidarity, gluing together a world that lacks ultimate meaning; behold the 21st Century hoax.

About the Author

Dean Whittington began FIST in 1987 focusing upon industrial music, sex and art; initially undertaking five issues before building a drugs detox agency in Deptford SE London and then running it for 16 years. Eventually it became riddled with spy-cops wanting to capture the data of those who attended treatment in order to fit them up; similar to the micro practices depicted in “The Wire”. All of this provided an insight into the psychopathologies of power; as he worked with the men and women involved in organised crime from the black, Vietnamese, Somali and Turkish communities. The experiences of working with armed robbers were later used to write “Beaten into Violence” providing an insight into what lies behind the performance of the masculine front, drawing on psychotherapy and the social sciences. The book was one of the first qualitative Doctorates undertaken at the LSE with Tim Newburn and Paul Willis; a book way ahead of its time; skewering how criminology, sociology, clinical psychology and gender studies are normally understood. The return back to FIST is about capturing those experiences in order to present what has been socially denied; working with Frederico Penteado and Stephen Craigie.