Frantz’s atrocities are simultaneously explainable by psychological and socioeconomic models

Evidence

It is in The Condemned of Altona that this pyschoanalytic structure is enlarged and developed to the point where it displays all the problems around which Search for a Method will be organized. For here the choice between possible alternative motivations stands revealed as a coexistence between two different explanatory systems, two wholly different behavioral models. The atrocities committed by Frantz during the war can be understood either way: psychologically, as the son of a powerful father who has robbed him of any chance to become himself, they are his attempt to assert himself through absolutely irremediable action, through acts that cannot simply be hushed up by the father’s wealth and influence. But on the socio-economic plane, Frantz can be seen as the crown prince of an industrial empire, who arrives at the age of reason only to confront a managerial structure that no longer needs a chief. His violence therefore both expresses the imperialistic tendencies inherent in the economic empire itself and aims at the latter’s destruction as well. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 434

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the plan for Search for a Method and echoes the mediation between psychoanalytic and Marxist explanation central to Jameson’s dialectical criticism. — connects to: Conflicting theories of violence both fit the data because events have multiple causes — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4312
• DEFINE: Illustrates what ‘two codes alternately translating behavior’ means in Sartre’s method.

Broader Connections

• Conflicting theories of violence both fit the data because events have multiple causes #corroborates (0.88) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4312