Before moving on, I wanted to deposit some examples of what goes on between the covers of Catherine Belsey's Posstructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (2002). Here are some excerpts and added notes.
On Mythologies (Roland Barthes, 1957, 1972): “Our own values are so anti-intellectual that, by the repeated rejection of new ideas, especially new political ideas, in the name of common sense, ‘laziness is promoted to the rank of rigour.’” p. 26
On Michel Foucault (text): “There is by definition no power without the possibility of resistance.” p. 54.
This reminds me of decades ago reading a Foucault line that loosely translates as: “Power has no essence; it is merely situational.” Example: suppose you are under the thumb of a horrible manager at this moment; this circumstance/situation can change or be changed. Tomorrow or next year, he or she may be gone, or you may be gone, and the brutal thumbing will vanish. Or, you can thumb your nose at this person right now! You can quit and move on here and now (the take this job and shove it response). On the other hand, if you are in a concentration camp, debilitated in some way or under torture, your options may be dramatically more limited and primal.
On Jacques Lacan (text): “Lacan calls what is lost the real. The real is not reality, which is what culture tells us about. On the contrary, the real is that organic being outside signification, which we can’t know, because it has no signifiers in the world of names . . . The real, repressed because it has no way of making itself recognized in our consciousness, returns to disturb and disrupt . . . [T]he lost real makes its effects felt in dreams, slips of the tongue, puns, jokes, or symptoms marked on the body, illnesses or disabilities that seem to have no physiological cause.” p. 58.
On Strangers to Ourselves (Julia Kristeva, 1991): “Why do we [i.e. so many people] fear foreigners, people from other cultures, asylum seekers? Well, for one thing, they demonstrate that there are alternate ways to be, that our own ways are not inevitable, and therefore not necessarily ‘natural.’ Disparaging the others seems to make some people feel better. Besides, the encounter with foreigners calls into question the ‘we’ that is so easily taken for granted.” (p. 63)
Paraphrasing Jean-François Lyotard: “What we need if things are to get better . . . is not consensus, but dissension. The commitment to consensus promotes a bland centrism, appoints the compromise candidate no one really wants, satisfies nobody, and leaves things much as they are. Conversely, intellectual difference, inventiveness, lateral thinking, heterogeneity all promote modifications of the existing rules and conventions. Dissension challenges the status quo.” (p. 96)
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.
3 comments:
“Although desire is unconscious, most of us find a succession of love-objects, and fasten our desire onto them, as if they could make us whole again, heal the rift between the subject and the lost real. In the end, they can’t – though, of course, it’s possible to have a good time in the process of finding that out.” P. 59
RE Foucault the older line. If you have balls enough you can take that manager down. That is the most satisfying, non Zen thing to do and I liked it. very much. I am much mellower now though.
Where had I been in my reading? On the moon?
There are certainly new ideas around.
The Jean-François Lyotard guy:
"The real, repressed because it has no way of making itself recognized in our consciousness, returns to disturb and disrupt . . . [T]he lost real makes its effects felt in dreams, slips of the tongue, puns, jokes, or symptoms marked on the body, illnesses or disabilities that seem to have no physiological cause.” p. 58."
Hell, for years I had been stuck with Captain Queeg:
"It was the strawberries...That's where I knew I had them...With geometric logic, I...."
...Still, a striking realization by the leg-warmer man.
Post a Comment