Muselmannen Here we touch on the topic of Heidegger and psychiatric clinics: what about that withdrawal from engagement which is not death but the psychotic breakdown of a living human being? What about the possibility of “living in death” of vegetating with no care, like the Muselmannen in the Nazi camps? note 40 529
Category: dubash
Verwerfung Verneinung Verleugnung Verdrängung
Hegelian “negation of negation” is far from being the simple sublation of negativity in a new positive order, while the Freudian death drive is not a push towards total disappearance or self-annihilation, but an “undead” persistence attached to a contingent particularity.
The Freudian series of Vers
Verdrängung―repression
Verwerfung―foreclosure
Verleugnung―disavowal
Verneinung―denial
which supplements the Hegelian-dialectical No is thus not just a complication of that No, it points towards a more radical No, the core of negativity which escaped Hegel and which leaves its traces in different post-Hegelian versions of pure repetition. 490
johnston adrian dehiscence
Dehiscence: de·his·cence/ (de-his´ins) a splitting open; the separation of a surgical incision or rupture of a wound closure; a rupture or splitting open, as of a surgical wound, or of an organ or structure to discharge its contents; the spontaneous opening at maturity of a plant structure, such as a fruit, anther, or sporangium, to release its contents; to discharge contents by so splitting <seedpods dehiscing at maturity> Etymology: Latin. dehiscere, to gape
“idealist obscurantism” (that is, a reaction against mechanical materialism that insists upon the existence of a sharp dehiscence between the physical and the metaphysical) is repeatedly presented in diverse forms of packaging (5 review of Parallax Diacritics)
In the course of elaborating the foundational thesis of Žižekian dialectical material-ism stating that the materiality of a Not-all one gives rise to a series of conflicting, irreconcilable twos (as more-than-material dimensions and dynamics), The Parallax View runs through a dizzying array of distinctions, all of which are treated as parallax pairs (that is, as seemingly insurmountable oppositions between mutually exclusive poles/positions):
- being and thought,
- positivity and negativity,
- the temporal and the eternal,
- immanence and transcendence,
- particularity and universality,
- substance and subject,
- is and ought,
- ontological and the evental,
- essence and appearance,
- neuronal and the mental,
- finite and the infinite,
- Pre-Symbolic and the Symbolic.
with each of these pairs of terms, the question recurrently posed by Žižek is: How does the latter term emerge out of the former term? and the basic general model being constructed here stipulates that once a second plane is produced by a first plane — this amounts to the genesis of a transontological dualistic Two out of an ontological monistic One — the resulting split between these planes becomes an ineradicable gap, an ineliminable dehiscence permanently resistant to any and every gesture aimed at its dissolution (7 review of Parallax Diacritics).
“In man… this relationship to nature is altered by a certain dehiscence at the very heart of the organism, a primordial Discord betrayed by the signs of malaise and motor uncoordination of the neonatal months.” (Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” pg. 78)
The dehiscence internal to drive involves two axes—an “axis of iteration” and an “axis of alteration.” The axis of iteration consists of the drive-source (the regularly repeated demand for satisfaction issued by the drive) and the drive-pressure (the displeasure or anxiety accompanying an unmet demand of the drive-source, namely, the negative affective avatar of the drive-source). By contrast, the axis of alteration consists of the drive-aim (the achievement of the satisfaction demanded by the drive source, or, put differently, the reduction of the tensions experienced as a result of the drive-pressure) and the drive-object (the “ideational repre-sentative” of the drive, the mnemic traces of privileged object-choices in-fluencing the various vicissitudes of the drive). Freud portrays the meet-ing place of these four constituents of Triebas a realm between soma and psyche. However, what does time/temporality have to do with all of this? At the broadest of levels, psychoanalysis contains within itself an un-resolved tension. (xxxii, Time driven: metapsychology and the splitting of the drive 2000)
The Hegelian twist lies in claiming that the dehiscence between quasi-somatic repetition and representational, ideational becoming isn’t a contradiction indicative of the inadequacy of psychoanalytic thought with respect to its external object of investigation. Rather, this conflict between temporal orders is nothing other than the reality of Trieb. xxxiii
The timeless “I” is always–already the lost “I,” paradoxically making determinate acts of consciousness possible while nonetheless remaining forever out of the reflective reach of this same activity. And, as Deleuze notes, this dehiscence between noumenal and phenomenal subjectivity is irreparable, it “never runs its course.” (86)
Despite the dehiscence of subjectivity resulting from the interference of temporal mediation in self-consciousness, all cognition (whether as reflection or apprehension) belongs to a single, “simple,” selfsame “I” (what will later become the transcendental unity of apperception). (89)
What is responsible for generating the unsurpassable gap, incapable of convenient erasure by phenomenology, within the very heart of subjectivity? Time itself is the “cause” of this dehiscence (this being the sole means of recuperating the Heideggerian emphasis on temporality in the interpretation of Kant). Because self-consciousness is forced to vainly at-tempt an apprehension of itself through the mediation of temporal inner sense, and because reason can only exceed intuition in a regulative and not a constitutive fashion, the noumenal “I” remains intrinsically out of reach. (106)
As both Kant and Žižek point out, the dehiscence at the heart of self-consciousness thwarts any potential substantification of the subject — any attempt to say what the subject, abstracted from its determinate predicates, “is” in and of itself. But, what constitutes this rift? Temporality — as the irreducible tension between timelessness (the atemporal subjectivity of unconscious enunciation) and time (the phenomenal subjectivity of diachronic utterances)—is the gap constitutive of the Kantian–Lacanian subject. (112)
Like Kantian self-consciousness, the drives, thus divided along lines similar to the noumenal–phenomenal dehiscence, are structurally condemned to failure. (150)
Furthermore, Lacan speaks of an exact parallel between the split subject ($) and objet a. The dehiscence between Lacan’s subject of enunciation (synchronic) and subject of the utterance (diachronic) represents a structuralist translation of the Kantian antagonism between the transcendental and phenomenal/empirical dimensions of subjectivity. Thus, temporality proves to be the wedge forcing a division in subjective structure. (187)
This bivalence of Trieb demands a theory that takes into account an internal split, a dehiscence between Real and Symbolic (369).
My dislike of this person knows no bounds. So now that he is been lampooned in art, I will say Darcy RIP.
lendl
Andy Murray was one of only two men in the professional era, which began in 1968, to have lost his first four Grand Slam finals — against Djokovic in the 2011 Australian Open, and against Federer three times. The other guy who began 0-4? Ivan Lendl, who just so happens to be Murray’s coach nowadays. Murray’s added aggressiveness is one of the improvements he’s made under the tutelage of Lendl, who sat still for much of the match, eyeglasses perched atop his white baseball hat and crossed arms resting on his red sweater — in sum, betraying about as much emotion as he ever did during his playing days.
“All you can do is keep putting yourself in the position, and keep giving it all you have. If somebody’s that much better than you, that’s too bad, and you go again and try again,” said Lendl, who wound up with eight major titles. “You sit back, try to figure out where you can improve, what you have to improve to beat certain players, and then you go and work on it.”
metonymy
A figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else closely associated with it, e.g.
- the bottle for alcoholic drink,
- the press for journalism,
- skirt for woman,
- Mozart for Mozart’s music,
- the Oval Office for the US presidency.
A well‐known metonymic saying is the pen is mightier than the sword (i.e. writing is more powerful than warfare).
A word used in such metonymic expressions is sometimes called a metonym. … An important kind of metonymy is synecdoche , in which the name of a part is substituted for that of a whole (e.g. hand for worker), or vice versa. Modern literary theory has often used ‘metonymy’ in a wider sense, to designate the process of association by which metonymies are produced and understood: this involves establishing relationships of contiguity between two things, whereas metaphor establishes relationships of similarity between them.
marcuse repressive desublimation
A means of insidious domination was what Marcuse called “repressive desublimation,” again an amalgamation of Freud and Marx. Sublimation, recall, is where instinctual energy gets deflected from its natural expression and appears, instead, in some other form of expression or satisfaction. “Desublimation,” then, is a system that permits some degree of natural expression or satisfaction of instinctual energy. Desublimation is obviously so powerful that even a small dose can succeed in capturing us. We will return repetitively to satisfy ourselves even in small ways. As an example, something like Playboy magazine could be allowed to feed men a measure of unusual — that is, formerly tabooed — sexual satisfaction, but this would happen only by becoming a regular buying customer. When one turned to look at American society of the 60s, it was clear that sexuality was being desublimated in a variety of ways so long as people were ready to consume the right things. Thus, people were actually being repressed anew to the specific advantages of capitalist producers. Looking at American society, today, little has changed, I would say. We have become progressively more narrow (repressed) in our satisfaction of even recreation! Being convinced that we can buy it in the form of ever-more-expensive mountain clothing or recreational vehicles. Meanwhile, most people who buy mountain clothing and four-wheel-drive vehicles never go to the mountains. We have become implicitly convinced (and victimized), believing that recreation is achieved in the purchase and ownership itself. This after all is what capitalism requires — a never ending will to consume products.
Sittlichkeit
Sittlichkeit pronunciation
Sittlichkeit is intimate and cozy, but unconscious and uncritical. It is a simple, almost instinctive obedience to established law and custom. In this sort of moral community people live unreflectively by tradition and not by their own lights. But here always comes a time when the tradition s are questioned; this is an age of enlightenment or Aufklärung, as a result of which Sittlichkeit gives way to Moralität. The latter is an individualistic morality that has its source in individual conscience. In Hege’s veiw, Socrates … is responsible for having opened the Athenians up to the dangers f subjective or reflective morality.
In the Hegelian view, the Greek world was animated by a collective “we” that personified a spontaneous harmony of ideas and feelings. Those who were part of this collectivity were at home in the world because their personal feelings and inclinations were in complete concord with the social order. They did not suffer from the alienation, isolation, and estrangement so characteristic of men in modern society. The Greeks created a world in which order and liberty existed side by side in perfect harmony. Hegel envied them this harmony, but by the same token, he thought that they were morally infantile. Their freedom and harmony was the product of thoughtless conformity to conventional morality. It was Socrates who broke the spell of this happy coincidence of freedom and order. Socrates represented a new sensibility that was richer, deeper ..
Drury, Shadia. Alexandre Kojève: the roots of postmodern politics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.
Edith Piaf
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens,
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche,
Voila le portrait sans retouche
De l’homme auquel j’appartiens
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.
C’est lui pour moi. Moi pour lui
Dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a juré pour la vie.
Et des que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
Des nuits d’amour à plus finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des ennuis des chagrins s’effacent
Heureux, heureux à en mourir.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas,
Je vois la vie en rose.
Il me dit des mots d’amour,
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ça me fait quelque chose.
Il est entré dans mon coeur
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause.
C’est toi pour moi. Moi pour toi
Dans la vie,
Il me l’a dit, l’a juré pour la vie.
Et des que je l’aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon coeur qui bat
rhizomes deleuze
rhizomes are plants that tend to grow horizontally rather than vertically. Rather than sending their roots dep into the ground, and rather than being clearly unified and distinct entities, rhizomes spread out, climbing up and all over things that are in their way, getting tangled up with other rhizomes. Think of grass, or of ivy climbing up and over what ever it comes acrss. If philosophers approach things as rhizomes (instead of trees), they will come up with a very different picture of how things are.
Até
Até. In Greek, ate means either “destructive, delusional madness” or the “ruin” that follows from delusion. The concept has a close association with tragic action, where characters are often deluded by the gods or by their own arrogance into bringing about their own downfall.
Lacan takes ate and develops within it the idea of destruction as a boundary between life and death. Thus Lacan connects Antigone with the limit of the symbolic order (see below), a limit beyond which lie divine laws (the dictates of the gods) propelling Antigone’s defiance of Creon and her destruction as well. Ate is, therefore, “the limit of human existence that can be crossed only briefly within life” (Butler, Antigone 47).
lloyd interpellation subjection assujettisement
Psychic subjectivity is formed in dependence
subjection (assujetissement) in order to continue as a subject, individuals have to submit to the very power that subordinates them. Their evident willingness to do so suggests … a ‘passionate attachment’ to their subjection.
The policeman in the street calls out, “Hey you there!” and the individual recognizing that it is being spoken to, turns towards the policeman’s voice. At that moment the individual is transformed into a subject, or in Althusserian terms, a subject of ideology.
The turn to the voice of the law is the action that constitutes the individual’s subjection by power. Subjection, as Butler summarizes it, is best thought of, through the rhetorical idea of the trope, or turn (Psychic 3, Lloyd 98).
This turn is figurative since it cannot be made by an actual subject —the subject only comes into existence through the turn. In Althusser’s case, prior to the turn there is only the individual; after the turn there is a subject. What intrigues Butler however, is why the individual turns in the first place; why, that is, does it respond to the voice of the law? Althusser, according to Butler, offers no explanation for this. So she provides one.
The individual responds to the voice of the law because it assumes that it is guilty of some infraction —otherwise why would the policeman be calling out to it? It responds, that is, because its conscience tell it to. But if the individual has a conscience prior to its subjection by the law, then … The individual has already been subjected to a prior psychic operation of power, in which it has become both self-conscious and self subjugating (Psychic 106-131 Lloyd 98-99)
On its own, therefore, the theory of interpellation cannot explain subjection. What is needed here is a theory of the formation of the psyche.