The scientist myth in mass culture reflects fantasies about nonalienated work, not science itself

Evidence

For beneath the surface diversion of these entertainments, beneath the surface preoccupation of our minds as we watch them, introspection reveals a secondary motivation quite different from the one described above. For one thing, these works, particularly during the period of their heyday after the war and in the 1950’s, rather openly express the mystique of the scientist: and by that I refer not so much to external prestige or social function as rather to a kind of collective folk-dream about the life-style of the scientist himself: he doesn’t do real work (yet power is his and social status as well), his remuneration is not monetary or at the very least money seems no object, there is something fascinating about his laboratory (the home workshop magnified to institutional dimensions, a combination of factory and clinic), about the way he works nights (he isn’t bound by routine or the eight-hour day), his very intellectual operations themselves are caricatures of what the non-intellectual imagines brainwork and book-knowledge to be. … What I want to convey is that ultimately none of this has anything to do with science itself, but is rather a distorted reflection of our own feelings and dreams about work alienated and nonalienated: it is a wish-fulfillment that takes as its object a vision of ideal or what Marcuse would call “libidinally gratifying” work. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 772

Categorization

• XREF: Direct Jameson/Marcuse lineage — ‘libidinally gratifying’ work ties to Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization; the guild-master/apprentice structure evokes Lukács’s account of pre-capitalist work and also Weber’s disenchantment. Core Frankfurt-School material for the stated reading purpose.