Drive repression and modern apocalyptic cosmology: A meeting ground between psychoanalysis and anthropology

This study analyzes and compares three strands of critical inquiry into the autonarrative of modern Western civilization: Freud's theory of civilization, its reworkings by Marcuse and Brown, and Latour’s assessment of the crisis of cosmology. According to Freud, civilization is based on drive repression and evolves through an increasing sense of guilt. Brown and Marcuse emphasize how this Freudian mechanism constitutes the psychic premise of continued functioning of domination. Latour, from an anthropological perspective, highlights modernity’s epistemological rigidity—its inability to confront current crises due to a cosmology devoid of mediation between nature and culture. The study argues that, despite following different approaches, Latour's conception of modern man perceiving himself as living in a desacralized apocalypse can be aligned with that of Brown and Marcuse, who trace the psychological conditions of domination in the historical metamorphosis of the sense of guilt.