Divest: An Essay on Political Masochism

Could a psychoanalytic theory of masochism help us to understand the politics of protest? A socially engaged psychoanalysis of 2024’s widespread student uprisings in support of Palestine, Divest posits that masochism, as theorized by Freud in his later years, is a fundamental structure at the heart of anticapitalist and anticolonial resistance. Conceptualizing masochism as a radical form of divestment, Steven Swarbrick theorizes the affective economies of solidarity, self-sacrifice, and collective struggle. Through vivid film readings and sharp critique of state and university violence, Swarbrick explores the emancipatory potential of masochism in the protest movement and the sadistic machinery of capitalist governance it has laid bare.

Divest is both a politically urgent manifesto and a theoretical companion to the global movement for Palestinian liberation. Asserting that the politics of left-wing solidarity must reckon with the libidinal investments that sustain both power and resistance, this bold volume argues that divestment from global capitalism may begin with a revolution in our psychic attachments.

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