I am not a pomo samaritan! I am an ultra-modernist secular pervert with unfortunate hints of badly-digested puritanical proto-capitalism!—Jacques Lacan

Truth has no other form than the symptom says Lacan…and I read symptoms in Art, literature and the culture orbits..its good to be a good doctor …Buddha too had said that he was a doctor!!

मुक्तिबोध ज्यादा स्पष्ट कहते हैं –

इसलिये मै हर गली में
और हर सडक पर
झाँक झाँक देखता हूँ हर एक चेहरा,..
प्रत्येक गतिविधि
प्रत्येक चरित्र
व हर एक आत्मा का इतिहास
..प्रत्येक मानवीय स्वानूभूत आदर्श
विवेक प्रक्रिया, क्रियागत परिणति!!

“It is at the level of the subject, in so far as the subject is purified, that science takes its point of departure. At the level of the Other, there’s nothing but prophecy. On the other hand, it is at the level of the Other that science becomes totalised, and thus, for the subject, becomes alienating. What matters now is to know whether there might still be for the subject something of the order of prophecy.”14

The seminar resumed in November 1968, and the first session offered no hint of changes brought about by the previous Spring—Lacan pursued the elaboration of new mathemes and formulas. The only topical allusion was to Althusser and his disciples, whose structuralist reading of Marx (in Reading Capital) Lacan had decided to emulate; Marx paves the way to a new understanding of the object a caught up in the economy of jouissance. This was a revamping of the concept of Mehrlust defined as homologous or parallel to Mehrwert. Lacan expanded this notion at the second meeting, offering a framework in which capitalism plays a fundamental role: the May “events” can be understood as a symptom of capitalism, a clash between knowledge and truth, or better said, between the capitalistic accumulation of knowledge and the irruption of a truth linked with a surplus jouissance.
I have been looking for the root of what has been ridiculously called the events. There hasn’t been any event in this business but I’ll explain this to you later. // The process by which science gets unified (…) reduces all knowledge to a single market. (…) What is it, then, that represents the discontent in civilization, as one says? It is a surplus jouissance (plus-de-jouir) brought about by a renunciation of jouissance, while the principle of the value of knowledge has been respected.15

The way in which everyone suffers in his or her rapport to jouissance, in so far as we only connect to it by the function of surplus-jouissance, this is the symptom—it appears from this, that there is only an average, abstract social truth.
This results from the fact that a knowledge is always paid at its price but below the use-value that truth generates, and always for others than those who are in truth. It is thus marked by surplus-enjoyment. And this Mehrlust laughs at us since we don’t know where it’s hidden.
This is where things are at, my dear children. That’s why in May, all hell got loose.16

After articulating his “truth” with a Marxist analysis….On the 9May 1967, Lacan signed a manifesto in support of protesting students, incited by his daughter and son in law, both involved in Maoist group activities…since then he moved on .he wrote:” the capitalistic accumulation of knowledge and the irruption of a truth linked with a surplus jouissance.” …He could say without fear that “I am not a cheater” ..
lolz! surplus capital for the surplus jouissance….so war is certainly valid..any war

In response to my post on Nature and Its Discontents, Joseph C. Goodson posts a terrific comment on what he sees as the significance of OOO/SR. Joseph writes:

Precisely. As Gould puts it, the history of our evolution is a history of catastrophes, one after the other. I wonder, thinking along these lines, that in the wake of the death of God, this transcendentalizing of our fissures, breaks, discontents, etc, was done in such a way that the effect was one of making the human (so to speak) another exception (even if this exception is fundamentally “negative”). “Man” was still allowed this exceptional place even though the theological backdrop was lost. Part of what is exciting about SR and OOO in particular, and why the continuing backlash against it is so interesting, is that it takes these fundamental antagonisms of Marx, Freud, Lacan, et al, completely seriously — if anything, *its* wager seems to be that we have not taken them far enough, and that the death of God must imply, at one and the same time, the death of a theological concept of nature (this self-consistent sphere which would allow the -1 of humanity to appear).

Another very productive thing I have noticed about OOO is that, even in order for this ontology to begin, in its positivity, it also critiques much of these unsaid philosophical prejudices which, even in some of the most critical philosophies, still operate. This often subtle culture/nature hierarchy is one such prejudice that is very nicely displaced in a flat ontology.

Joseph here gets at one of the key aims or ambitions of the flat ontology I’ve tried to formulate in my version of OOO. I restrict this flat ontology to onticology because Graham, in the past, has expressed reservations about just how flat my ontology is. This difference, for example, comes out in our respective differences with respect to fictional entities. Graham draws a distinction between sensual objects (roughly intentional objects) and real objects. The latter are, if I’ve understood Graham correctly, dependent on minds to exist. In my case, however, symbolic entities are real actants or objects no less than rocks or stars. In my view there are collective entities like symbolic entities, pure mental relations, and nonhuman objects or actors like technologies, stars, quarks, cells, etc. I do not think that symbolic entities can be properly thought by reducing them to a mind-intention sort of relation. This, I suppose, is part of my debt to structuralism and semiotics. If I’m interested in fictions and the ontological status of fictions then this is not out of any sort of perverse wish to say that fictions are real, but rather because fictions provide a sort of exemplary case of a purely symbolic entity that is not a representation of something else. As a consequence, fictions shed light on what symbolic entities are in general. Hopefully Harman and I will work through some of these issues together at the Object-Oriented Ontology event at Georgia Tech in April (please come if you’re able! You’ll get to see me, Shaviro, Harman, and Bogost go at it!).

read on!

Setting all this aside, one of the striking things I’ve noticed in Lacanian secondary literature is precisely what Joseph alludes to in this post. Now my primary sources for Lacanian thought tend to be books written by clinicians or practicing analysts, not so much Zizek, Zupancic, Dolar and the rest of the crew. My view has been that to properly understand Lacan and psychoanalysis you should consult the analysts to see how the theory works. Within this secondary literature one of the striking themes I’ve noticed is a deep hostility to biology, neurology, and evolutionary theorists. Van Haute, of course, writes his book Against Adaptation, presenting a rather ridiculous picture of what evolutionary theory claims with respect to natural selection. He is to be excused, I think, because among the so-called ego psychologists you find a rather absurd picture of therapy as “adapting us” to the world. Then again, Johnston will tell you in private conversation that “ego psychology” as portrayed by Lacan and Lacanians is a myth and that the theories Lacan often makes the target of his critiques are far more sophisticated and nuanced than the Lacanian literature suggests.

Yet in addition to van Haute you will often find celebrations of “anti-evolutionary thought” with some Lacanians going so far as to champion “creationism”. Of course, the creationism that is here defended is a creationism of the signifier or the power of the signifier to bring non-being into being (and here they’re right in a sense), rather than Young Earth creationism. Nonetheless, there is a persistent strain in the secondary literature of wishing to treat man as an exception and as the condition of everything else (through the power of the symbolic and the subject). Here I think Joseph is right on the mark in suggesting that there is a residual theology at work in those that choose the culture side of the nature/culture debate and a tendency to wish to treat man in Ptolemaic terms as being at the center of being. OOO, of course, recognizes that there are differences between objects and therefore differences between humans, rocks, avocados, and other animals. However, differing from and requiring system specific analysis and serving as a condition for all other things are two entirely different claims. If Nick and company will still allow me to contribute to the Inhumanities Event sponsored by Speculative Heresy and The Inhumanities, I hope to say more on this in the next couple weeks. Unfortunately I am currently swamped with other obligations so I can’t get to it immediately.

I should also add that this blog began by trying to think through the implications of the death of God or the possibility of a metaphysic beyond ontotheology (here and here). Soon a formalized version of these arguments in terms of Lacan’s graphs of sexuation (which I believe to be more about ontology than sex or sexual identity) will be published through Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory.

Both Ben and Austin have posts up responding to some claims Zizek makes about nature. Ben writes:

For Zizek nature must be non-all or barred, but this nature never goes beyond the range of the earth. Zizek those go on to argue that the appearence of the whole in nature, that the very possibility of nature-in-itself is merely a result of subjective experience, an argument he ties to the experience of the sublime. Zizek then argues for ecology without nature thereby following Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature. I have unfortunately not yet read his text of the same name. From what I have read it seems that what he attacks as the concept of nature is a dominant mode of nature – one stemming from the rationalist tradition where is an immense but separate entity. Zizek writes: “what we need is ecology without nature: the ultimate obstacle to protecting nature is the very notion of nature we rely on.”

Here my largest issue (which seems to come up with many commentators on nature and ecology) is that the ecology of concepts of nature is severally narrowed for the sake of argument. Zizek seems to make a reversal when discussing the films of Tarkovsky and in particular Stalker but then shifts back to focus on transcendental subjectivity.

The ontological priviledge of the subject remains a serious stumbling block for any approach to nature that is not too shallow or too obfuscated. The finitude of the subject has become increasingly transcendentalized at the expense of nature, nature becomes merely an elaborate background. Nature goes right through the subject.

Following up on Ben’s criticism, it seems to me that there is a fundamental ambiguity in how Zizek refers to “nature”. When Zizek critiques nature is he referring to nature as such or the discursive concept of nature as it functions in a particular ideological discourse? If the former, it is completely appropriate for Zizek to critique this concept of nature and how it functions ideologically. Within this discursive framework, nature is treated as a whole that is harmonious and independent of culture. That is, culture is treated as something other than nature and outside of nature.

read on!

This is precisely the move that flat ontology cannot brook. As Latour demonstrates so nicely in texts like We Have Never Been Modern and Politics of Nature there is no “outside” that is other than culture and, more importantly, no inside that is other than nature. There is just the world or being on a single flat plane. Note, when Latour advances this argument he is neither culturalizing nature nor naturalizing culture. Latour’s deconstruction of the nature/society divide is not undertaking in the name of showing that all that we refer to as nature is really culture, nor is it undertaken in the name of showing that all we refer to as culture is really natural. To choose either of these options would be to fall straight back into the binary opposition between nature and culture where we choose one or the other. Rather, for Latour what we get is a flat plane of actants interacting with one another in a variety of ways that are perpetually non-all.

Within Latour’s framework, Zizek would go wrong in his thesis that nature is based on the transcendental subject. And this for two reasons. First, all actants are independent of one another such that no actant can be the condition of all other actants. Second, any collectivizations that do take place among actants are the result of many actants interacting with one another, not one particular actant unifying the rest. An actant can, of course, try to effect such a unification but all the other actants to be unified have their own input in these matters as well. Here, I suspect, part of Zizek’s problem lies in a rather outmoded metaphysics premised on concepts of sovereignity where unification issues from some master-agent that imposes form or order on the rest (Negri & Hardt have a nice critique of this model in Commonwealth).

Riffing on Ben’s observations, Austin writes:

There is a clear connection between this piece and Freud’s “Unbehagen in der Kultur” (“Civilization and its Discontents”, uneasiness in culture). It is not the case that fro Freud most of us socialize normally but some people “don’t quite make it” and so must be normalized. It is rather that culture as such, in order to appear normal, ordered, etc., involves a whole series of distortions, manipulations, and pathologies. We are then “uneasy” in culture as such. One of the goals of Zizek’s work on ecology is to show this as true for nature as well, that we are uneasy, homesick, in nature itself.

This is the alienation of subjectivity, which is essential to Lacanianism. The subject only exists as alienated, through alienation. But is it the case that the human being is fundamentally alienated from nature-as-such? Part of Zizek’s structuralist narrative that he inherits from Lacan, Levi-Strauss, Rousseau, etc., is the dichotomy of nature and culture, that there was some sort of transcendental rupture in reality when human beings developed the capacity for language and suddenly we went from being apes to human beings. In this process we began instantly to supplant nature with culture, imposing ourselves on the chaos of nature, ordering it. Is this the case? Isn’t it rather that the human being, and human culture, developed slowly out of nature? Zizek wants us to believe that either there is a radical break with culture or we are New Age obscurantists who want to naively go “back to nature.” There is surely a middle ground to this ridiculous dichotomy, one that will say that culture is thoroughly “natural,” while still being (clearly) different, in the same way that both animals and minerals are natural but different.

Right on. One of the narratives we find in Lacanian psychoanalysis is this idea that man is a fundamental rupture within nature that is perpetually alienated from, and out of step with, nature. This thesis is only plausible on the assumption that 1) nature independent of man is a harmonious whole, and 2) that other organisms, unlike the human, possess a harmonious relationship with nature. Working on this premise we get books like van Haute’s Against Adaptation that argue against evolutionary theory on the grounds that humans are fundamentally out of step with nature such that adaptation to nature is impossible for us.

The problem here is not with the thesis that humans are out of step with their environment (or, in Latour’s terms, the network of actants among which we dwell). The problem here is with the implied interpretation of evolutionary biology suggesting that any organism is in step or phase with their environment or the network of actants within which it dwells. What this cereal box understanding of evolutionary theory misses is that “adaptation” as understood in evolutionary theory does not mean “well-fitted”, but rather refers to a wager or gamble on the part of an organism. An adaptation is a gamble that certain features of the environment will remain stable and consistent. In this respect there is nothing unique about humans in their lack of perfect phase relations between innenwelt and umwelt. Insofar as any environment is always more complex than the manner in which the organism “represents” the environment, every organism is more or less out of phase with its environment. This lack of fit between environment and organism has all sorts of consequences for the life of each and every organism as it navigates its world. Psychoanalysis is right to critique the ideological conception of nature as a harmonious, self-regulating whole. However, it goes astray in believing that somehow the fissures and antagonisms of “nature” are unique to humans.

Je préfère te prévenir tout de suite, ce post est sûrement le plus trash que tu liras de la série. Donc je te recommande vivement de le lire après le repas si tu as l’estomac moyennement stable. C’est l’occasion aujourd’hui de te parler d’une des affaires les plus célèbres de la psychocriminologie française, elle a inspiré bien des auteurs de théâtre et de cinéma mais elle a surtout permis de faire évoluer les procédures de diagnostic psychopathologiques en matière criminelle.

Ce billet va être long, mais il y a beaucoup de choses à raconter et à expliquer pour éviter de dire des bêtises et des faire des raccourcis.

Nous sommes en 1933 dans la petite ville du Mans. Christine et Léa Papin sont deux soeurs qui travaillent comme employées de maison pour la famille Lancelin depuis maintenant 6 ans.

Elles sont issues de deux parents assez instables, une mère absente et infidèle qui ne leur démontre aucune affection et un père alcoolique qui viole leur soeur aînée depuis longtemps. Leur mère va profiter de la découverte de cet inceste pour quitter son mari et ses filles. Christine et Léa n’ont jamais grandi ensemble, elles ont écumé les familles d’accueil chacune de leur côté. À 22 ans, Christine est placée chez les Lancelin et obtient que sa soeur vienne l’aider au foyer. Les deux soeurs sont considérées comme des employées modèles par la famille et les amis du couple, même si Christine ne vit pas très bien l’expression de l’autorité de la patronne, qui exige une règle stricte: elle ne communique les ordres qu’à Christine, qui les communique ensuite à Léa.

Cinq ans auparavant, Léa avait échappé un morceaux de papier sur le sol, ce qui lui avait valu une correction particulière. Madame Lancelin l’avait attrapée par l’épaule, pincée si fort qu’elle avait été obligée de poser un genoux à terre, sommée de ramasser. À la suite de cet épisode, Léa était tellement choquée qu’elle avait promis à sa soeur que “la prochaine fois, elle se défendrait“. Les deux soeurs ne supportent pas les remarques personnelles, elles estiment faire leur travail correctement. Cet épisode a été vécu par Léa comme particulièrement traumatisant, la punition lui signifiait que sa patronne avait mainmise sur son corps, qu’elle décidait de la  vie de son employée. Nous sommes le 2 février 1933. Léa vient de faire tomber une corbeille de pain sur le sol. Une deuxième fois.

La patronne et sa fille aînée se sont absentées de la maison pour l’après-midi. Pendant ce temps là, les deux soeurs s’adonnent aux tâches ménagères, comme à leurs habitudes. Christine fait du repassage pendant que sa soeur s’occupe des meubles et du sol. Pendant l’absence des deux patronnes, le fer à repasser tombe en panne et provoque un court-circuit, qui plonge toute la maison dans le noir. Aux deux femmes qui rentrent à la maison dans l’obscurité, Christine explique que le fer a rompu le circuit électrique. La patronne s’énerve, ainsi que sa fille et une violente dispute éclate entre les 3 femmes. Cette dispute fait effet d’une bombe, d’un déclencheur fulgurant chez Christine qui s’engouffre dans un accès de violence que l’on peut qualifier de barbare.

Christine ordonne alors à Léa d’arracher un des yeux de la patronne (la mère). Léa s’exécute, Christine en fait de même sur la fille. Elles leurs arrachent les yeux avec les doigts et les jettent dans l’escalier. Le massacre peut alors commencer. Les deux victimes hurlent de toutes leurs voix pendant que les deux soeurs s’acharnent à coups de poings et de pieds sur elles. Christine s’adresse alors à sa soeur de la façon suivante: “Je vais les tuer avec un marteau et un couteau.” Christine saisit sa patronne, lui lève la robe et commence à lui entailler les fesses avec une violence devenue mécanique. Le couteau ne coupe pas assez, elle demande à Léa de descendre en chercher un autre. La soeur s’exécute. Christine continue de torturer ses victimes pendant que Léa leur taillade les jambes sur toute la largeur “comme quand on prépare un lapin à la cuisson”. Les victimes décèdent de leurs blessures.

Les deux soeurs vont alors se laver, enfiler une robe de chambre et s’allonger ensemble dans un des lits de la maison, imaginant dire à la police qu’elles se sont défendues d’une énième attaque de leur patronne.

Il a fallu un certain recul temporel pour permettre notamment à Jacques Lacan de diagnostiquer les deux soeurs comme victimes d’une crise psychotique paranoïde au moment du double meurtre. Il y a certains aspects du crime qui sont spécifiques aux criminels psychotiques:

• Ce sont des individus violents, capables de commettre des actes d’une violence extrême, très désorganisés et particulièrement inexplicables. Les crimes psychotiques n’ont pas de sens (pas de mobile en tant que tel).
• Le crime est commis au milieu de nulle part, pour des raisons généralement hallucinantes (ésotériques notamment…).
• Les criminels psychotiques sont très maladroits, ils utilisent ce qui leur tombe sous la main pour tuer et ainsi éviter une perte de rythme.
• Ces crimes n’ont aucune finalité compréhensible pour qui que ce soit (incohérence totale entre le mobile et les faits).

Avec les soeurs Papin, on est vraiment dans l’optique psychotique que définit Lacan. Pendant leur procès, elles ont immédiatement reconnu les faits et répété plusieurs fois qu’elle n’avaient aucunes raisons d’en vouloir à leur patronne (qui avait auparavant réclamé de pouvoir les payer directement, plutôt que de devoir verser leurs salaires à la mère des deux soeurs, qui percevait alors une grande majorité des revenus de ses filles). Elles se disaient bien nourries, bien logées, blanchies, à leur aise au sein de cette maison.

Bien après le procès (qui a fait couler énormément d’encre à l’époque), certains experts ont relaté deux événements qui sont susceptibles d’avoir favorisé l’épisode psychotique qui a mené les soeurs à commettre le crime.

• Les deux soeurs percevaient enfin leur propre salaire, les rendant complètement indépendantes d’une mère biologique qu’elle haïssaient à cause “des remarques plutôt désobligeantes” qu’elle formulait à leur égard (démontrant une fois de plus la sensibilité des Papin aux remarques et aux corrections qu’on pouvait leur faire). À partir de cet épisode, elles avaient commencé à appeler leur patronne “Maman”. Comme si elle avait remplacé une mère devenue empoisonnante.
• En 1931, les soeurs avaient déjà fait forte impression à la mairie de la ville. Elles avaient été se plaindre auprès du maire de soit-disants mauvais traitement qu’elles subissaient, d’une manière des plus incohérentes possible. Suffisamment incohérente et aberrante pour que le maire dise d’elle qu’elles était “folles à lier”.

L’affaire des soeurs Papin a fait jurisprudence en quelque sorte, dans le sens où elle a révolutionné le rôle que pouvaient avoir les experts psychiatriques à la cour. Leur procès ayant été une mascarade on s’est rendu compte après que les psychiatres devaient avoir accès aux suspects, pouvoir les questionner sur une longue durée (de plusieurs mois au moins), pour dresser des conclusions qui soient des plus solides. De plus, à l’époque, les expertises psychologiques n’était légalement pas contradictoires. C’est à dire que l’expertise des psychiatres n’était simplement pas reconnue auprès des tribunaux et leurs avis n’étaient pas retenus dans les décisions pénales finales.

Je pense qu’il est important que je vous indique les documents sur lesquels j’ai travaillé pour cet article, histoire que vous n’ayez pas l’impression qu’on soit dans l’hasardeux et l’approximatif (même si au niveau psychologique, il m’aurait fallu au moins un billet de plus pour faire état de toutes les interprétations déjà faites de ce crime). Je me suis donc servi de:

• Wikipédia.
• La géniale émission que Jacques Pradel leur a consacrée sur Europe 1 le 23 juillet 2009 – elle écoutable dans son intégralité ici. Je te la recommande vraiment si tu te sens intéressé par le sujet, c’est vraiment d’une super qualité en terme de narration et d’analyse.
• L’ouvrage du psychiatre Serge Tribolet : Freud, Lacan, Dolto enfin expliqués!.

]]> http://naughtthought.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-uneasiness-in-nature/ Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:58:52 +0000 Ben Woodard http://naughtthought.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/the-uneasiness-in-nature/

Zizek’s Unbehagen In Der Nature addresses current discussions surrounding ecology and nature. Right off the bat however Zizek’s conceptualization of nature is limited – seeming to be nature as it appears to us, nature as we can manipulate it. The anxieity or uneasiness that Zizek discusses seems more to be more about the loss of a certain concept of nature or the natural and not the loss of nature itself.

Zizek writes:

“It is this horror at the unforeseen results of our own acts that causes shock and awe, not the power of nature over which we have no control; it is this horror that religion tries to domesticate. What is new today is the short-circuit between these two senses of ‘second nature’: ‘second nature’, in the sense of objective Fate, of the autonomized social process, generates ‘second nature’ in the sense of artificially created nature, of natural monsters.”

The disasters that Zizek warns about are all human-caused natural disasters and not the destructive capacity of nature itself. Furthermore while Zizek denounces an ecology of fear he also connects a view of nature in which are finitude is asserted to viewing nature as sacred and so forth. I find this connection troubling since nature as sacred allows for a separation and comfortable return to nature (in a pre-Oedipal sense) and the dominant ideological use of  nature (if it is negative) is not about nature over us but nature as a problem for our future – we must save the environment for our children etc.

Zizek continues with the following:

“‘terror’ means accepting the fact of the utter groundlessness of our existence: there is no firm foundation, a place of retreat, on which one can safely count. It means fully accepting that ‘nature’ does not exist. It means fully consummating the gap that separates the life-world notion of nature and the scientific notion of natural reality: ‘nature’ qua the domain of balanced reproduction, of organic deployment into which humanity intervenes with its hubris, brutally throwing off the rails its circular motion is man’s fantasy; nature is already in itself ‘second nature’. Its balance is always secondary, an attempt to negotiate a ‘habit’ that would restore some order after catastrophic interruptions.”

For Zizek nature must be non-all or barred, but this nature never goes beyond the range of the earth. Zizek those go on to argue that the appearence of the whole in nature, that the very possibility of nature-in-itself is merely a result of subjective experience, an argument he ties to the experience of the sublime. Zizek then argues for ecology without nature thereby following Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature.  I have unfortunately not yet read his text of the same name. From what I have read it seems that what he attacks as the concept of nature is a dominant mode of nature – one stemming from the rationalist tradition where is an immense but separate entity. Zizek writes: “what we need is ecology without nature: the ultimate obstacle to protecting nature is the very notion of nature we rely on.”

Here my largest issue (which seems to come up with many commentators on nature and ecology) is that the ecology of concepts of nature is severally narrowed for the sake of argument. Zizek seems to make a reversal when discussing the films of Tarkovsky and in particular Stalker but then shifts back to focus on transcendental subjectivity.

The ontological priviledge of the subject remains a serious stumbling block for any approach to nature that is not too shallow or too obfuscated. The finitude of the subject has become increasingly transcendentalized at the expense of nature, nature becomes merely an elaborate background. Nature goes right through the subject.

Livros de Jean Allouch: http://www.submarino.com.br/portal/Artista/1114/+jean+allouch/?franq=262638

NO HAY PRODUCCIÓN DE SUJETOS FUERA DE LA PRODUCCIÓN GRUPAL

El programa de este Seminario está estructurado en tres ciclos.

Al abordar los temas de cada ciclo nos encontramos de frente con una cuestión fundamental para la producción de un grupo: La diferencia radical entre actividad y tarea, tan radical como en psicoanálisis es la diferencia entre consciente e inconsciente.

Para que cada uno sea atravesado por el tiempo grupal, tiempo lógico más que cronológico, se hace necesario, estructuralmente, la producción del grupo, un grupo que nos determine como sujetos y que como sujetos seamos su soporte.

Así como sabemos que no hay estructura sin sujeto, ni sujeto sin estructura del lenguaje, es decir, que los significantes determinan al sujeto y el sujeto es el soporte de los significantes. El grupo no es un conjunto de sujetos sino que produce sujetos que a su vez son su soporte material.

Sigue leyendo en Extensión Universitaria Nº 109

Editor’s Note: This is part III in a series  of posts on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby.  For part I of the series, scroll down or click here.  For part II, scroll down or click here.  As mentioned before the first post: I reveal many plot points from these films, so please watch them before reading.

In my previous posts on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I touched upon some of the ways in which these films exploit the uncanny feelings we experience in relation to our own bodies, as well as how these films may have a comment on the ways in which contemporary power structures terrorize and appropriate the female body.   In this continuation of the larger discussion on Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, I am interested in investigating how these films might also be mining some horror from the inherently uncomfortable disconnect we all have between our minds and our bodies.

In support of this notion, I will posit that the eeriest things in life are not often the things prowling around outside your home at night, nor are they the things coming down from outer space to apprehend unsuspecting sleepers, and certainly they are not pitchfork-wielding goblins reveling in a fiery orgy of sin below the earth.  On the contrary, the eeriest things in life often originate within the confines of our own skulls.  Throughout our history, we humans have made a habit of projecting the weird things going on in our own psyches outwardly, thereby attributing anomalous or unsavory behavior or phenomena to demons, witches and the like.  For instance, Mary Beth Norton makes a compelling argument in her 2002 book In the Devil’s Snare, that the Salem Witch Trials toward the end of the 17^th Century can be largely attributed to the anxieties and other psychological ramifications of frontier life, and specifically the fear of Native American attacks on European settlements.  The dark-skinned men lurking in the unfamiliar forests, along with the constant bloodshed that was inherent to that time and place, created a fear that was coupled with an already-present collective belief in witches, demons and unknown evils lurking in the shadows.  While these settlers did have actual danger prowling outside their homes, they were not aware that the reach of Native American influence reached through the walls of their homes into their minds, leading to irrational behavior and decision-making.  Those weren’t demons in the woods, those were people tired of being slaughtered and otherwise molested by strangely-dressed white people.

The point is that our own minds are the source of our greatest terrors.  And historically, as with the Salem Witch Trials example above, it has been  much easier to explain away the most uncomfortable or undesirable aspects of our lives with a little bit of supernatural belief and magical thinking.  The most powerful of these supernatural belief systems are the monotheistic religions which, although they are very much thriving to this day, are much more difficult to accept absolutely than they were, say, 500 years ago.  Magical thinking was a pat way to explain away events and circumstances that otherwise were baffling or anxiety-provoking.  With scientific knowledge skyrocketing in the latter half of the 19^th Century and through the 20^th Century, it became much more difficult to blame everything on witches, angels, demons and god(s).  In this vein, both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist share a subtheme of religious faith and the loss thereof.  Father Karras, the central priest character in The Exorcist (although not the “Exorcist” referred to in the title), is wrestling with his own loss of faith.  Father Karras resides in a slummy area of Washington DC, with poverty and squalor constituting his day-to-day world and, along with this, he shares his small apartment with this ailing mother, who eventually is forced to move into a mental institution brimming with the psychologically anomalous.  Karras finds it difficult to rectify these realities with his Catholic beliefs and the demon possessing Regan exploits this fact.  In Rosemary’s Baby, one scene has the camera conspicuously linger on the April 8^th, 1966 cover of Time magazine.  The cover simply features the question “Is God Dead?” in bold red letters over a black background.  This was an actual cover of Time that was attached to an article that stated that the age of religion was essentially out the door.  Rosemary herself, when asked by Roman if she is religious, states, “I was brought up Catholic, but now I don’t know”.

Both films take as their setting a 20^th Century backdrop that is turning more toward medical, scientific and psychological knowledge to assist with problems of the body and mind instead of relying upon supernatural paradigms.  Until recent modern history, many of us have told ourselves stories about the ethereal soul and its dominion over the base, corrupted body.  The soul is said to be made of otherworldly material that is unfortunately tainted by the fleshy, gooey spaceship that it must possess in order to traverse through our inherently dirty world.  If one begins to accept the idea that we – every part of us – are of this world and then supplants the soul idea with this way of thinking, then the means by which one thinks of oneself and the world becomes dramatically altered.  This paradigmatic shift would be seismically uncomfortable, and it is my contention that Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist place themselves firmly in the fault line created from just such a shift.

In his wonderfully entertaining 2007 film The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema, Slavoj Zizek shares some of his thoughts on modern cinema from a philosophical perspective that is rooted in the ideas of famed French psychoanalytic thinker Jacques Lacan.  In his film, Zizek pontificates on Ridley Scott’s Alien and claims that this film derives its power, particularly regarding the iconic scene in which an alien baby hatches from the stomach of its human host, from the idea that humans are essentially alien intelligences with a human body as a host.  We humans are uncomfortable in our own skins because of a fundamental disconnect; we tolerate our bodies, but we must also misrecognize our bodies as something different from ourselves in order to get by.  This disconnect is much easier to handle when one has, for instance, the Christian notion of the soul which advises comfortingly that there is no need to worry, that it’s right to fear your body, and that it’s really okay that you will die someday, for everything will be taken care of because your personality is actually not of this world to begin with.  For psychoanalysis as well as for Christianity, we are essentially ghosts inside a machine, or aliens inside of spaceships.  Christianity tells us that our alien souls will someday rejoin the Mothership (Fathership?)  in the sky, whereas psychoanalysis offers no such happy ending.  For psychoanalysis, life is weird and then you die.

Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist generate some wonderful creepiness by interjecting antiquated notions of Soul/Body and Good/Evil into a modern, scientifically-advanced setting.  One can have every priest and psychologist on call, but life will never cease to be strange.  It’s unfortunate that this basic concept is lost on many contemporary horror filmmakers.  These filmmakers spend too much time on computer graphics and convoluted story lines and not enough time looking into the mirror and contemplating the stranger staring back.

Note: I’m thinking there’s one more post on these two films on the way.  I’m thinking the next post will be about domestic spaces and antagonistic furniture in Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist.

Estupefacta ante la respuesta de Ocho, aunque sin dudarlo, le respondí que sí. Que era él, o mejor dicho lo que había encontrado de él, la tercer pata de este asunto.

Repasemos: la enésima discusión con Crítico, el brote psicótico de mi madre, reclamándome aquello que ni a tontas ni a locas yo podía darle, y la vida actual de Comodoro de la cual habíame puesto al día mediante un blog al que había llegado rodando como, en honor a la verdad, Sherlock Holmes. Una trilogía que solo confluía en mí, como común denominador.

Comodoro apareció desde un sitio en internet, de esos de compatibilidades de pareja, un lugar donde yo me había presentado como “de humor ácido y ferviente admiradora de Los Simpsons”, cosa que creo, espantaba a unos cuantos, y otros tantos se hacían los entendidos para poder establecer contacto. Creo que buscaba un ser imposible, porque con esa breve descripción, si bien filtraba bastantes cosas, otras tantas se me escapaban (y cómo!), y pasaban a la lista de las citas y relaciones fallidas (de las cuáles escribiré en algún momento).

Hasta que encontré algo que me pareció sumamente interesante, gracioso, y casi sectario. Recuerdo poco de su descripción, solo que decía algo así como “Si lo único que leíste es Paulo Coelho, olvídalo”. La acidez hecha verbo. La alusión crítica que sentí compartir.

Y ahí di el OK.

Comodoro estaba lejos por trabajo, pero en algún momento volvería, lo que hizo de la espera algo más que vertiginoso.

Primero fueron mails extensos y jugosos.

Luego el teléfono.

Los mensajes de texto.

Más tarde la vuelta y la promesa de vernos.

Una promesa incumplida.

Lo entendí.

Un nuevo viaje de trabajo.

Más mails.

Un regreso y otra cita a cumplirse.

Un nuevo quedarme con las ganas.

Otro viaje, ahora con vuelta incierta.

Mi olvido.

Sus mails nuevamente y una invitación a una terraza casi perfecta.

La vuelta Buenos Aires y un mail que urgía a vernos.

Mi corta negativa ante el miedo de quedar papando moscas.

Mi sí.

Su desaparición.

Y cuatro meses más tarde, hace también cuatro meses, un mail que decía que se había quedado con las ganas de conocerme. Pero que ahora “estaba de novio”.

Y mis ganas, mis expectativas, mi no sé que hacia él (ni ebria repito las palabras de Ocho). Y más superficialmente, mis horas en la la peluquería sufriendo torturas chinas de depilación, tirones de pelo, limadura de uñas, shopping de ropa nueva, algunos atuendos escandalosos (si, a veces soy así). Todo invertido para nada, para tirarme desganada a comer mandarinas y mirar reality shows (esa es mi expresión más cercana a la decandencia).

Y seguí hablando con Ocho. Ahora yo culpaba a mi “sí” tardío ante el último ofrecimiento de cita. A mi alineación de planetas erróneos. A mi eterna culpa.

Sonó el celular, un mensaje. Miré, leí y lloré más aún.

- ¿Qué pasó?, dijo Ocho.

- Pude con Lacan, fue mi respuesta.

- ¿Y entonces? ¿No es para reír?

- Ya no puedo más Ocho. Necesito que me ayuden. (Y seguí llorando)

- Ce, ¿te das cuenta que esto es una urgencia?, me preguntó casi preocupado.

Asentí.

-Quizás tengas que tomar licencia laboral.

Negué con la cabeza rotundamente.

-No voy a ponerme en evidencia, exclamé.

Quedamos en que debía llamar a Eutimia cuanto antes, y ver que podíamos hacer para salvar el naufragio que se veía venir.

Esta vez no era el lado A, ni el lado B lo que me aquejaba. Era un lado nuevo, horrible, angustiante, desalmado e insistente. Y ya no quería estar así.

- Bajé seis kilos, le dije.

- Mirá que bien, dijo Ocho.

Fue el comentario más estúpido con el que pude cerrar la sesión.

The critique of the critique of critique, like the old man in the sphynx’s riddle, is left, in the end, with only one leg on which to stand. Still kritizierbar is this alone — the myth of a heroic beginnings, of grand gestures, of new vistas, new worlds of thought, that might appear (ah… Baltimore… 1966) in a conference paper, written in a mere 10 days.   Master thinkers, and their disciples. A playfulness that was serious.  Now our seriousness is stillborn in its seriousness.

Against the sweet insouciance of Friends, there is something terrifying about this sitcom, which is marketed in Korea under the title: “I love Friends.” As if Friends, and the friend, had already become the object of a pathetic longing. As if, even in this, we must resign ourselves to an Ersatz-friends. With a macabre instinct, someone recognized that the great joke of Seinfeld, the fake cast, had suddenly been recast as a real sitcom.  As if there were a third repetition in history, beyond tragedy and farce.

But this third brings us back to the first: the husband, an architect like Mr. Brady, tells his children how he met their mother.  The purest form of the tyranny of mythopoesis.  As if the children could, or should care.  As if the very idea that they should care, that the mystery of their birth could be reduced to an endless sequence of tawdry vignettes, were not the most terrible offence against childhood. As if the novelty of birth could be seamlessly folded into the life of the parents.

What did Oedipus and Antigone talk about during their long years of wandering?

All myth, every beginning, is perverse.  This silliest of sitcoms brings us to the brink of tragic, Dionysian knowledge. The parents who entertain their child with the story of their prehistoric misadventures demand that the child replicate their own desire for life — without having lived.  They seek nothing less than the confirmation of their own desire for life in the lifeless desire of their children.  This is the prosaic, everyday form of mythic incest. And the tyranny of desire is always this: the desire for obsolete forms of desire.

We who watch are like the children who listen.  We do not live, but we desire to live.  And we late-born theorists (we theorists after theory…) are, in this, not so different than the couch potato. (Hence the critique of television is not the least bit irrelevant for proto philosophia) We do not think, but we desire to think.  We desire the form that thinking once took in its still fresh, but wholly mythic past.  We cannot imagine happiness but in a form that is no longer possible for us. True happiness for us is whatever happiness we cannot have.

The genius of Tristram Shandy suddenly dawns on me:  the sobriety of prose begins with the parody of the myth of our own drunken birth.

I was born then, in 1966, and before this: in Weimar, in Vienna, in Berlin, in Prague, in Jena, in Paris, in Florence, in Rome, and Athens. And also in places far from the cities.  Why do I then feel so melancholy as I read this book by François Cusset:  am I nothing simply because I was not there to watch my birth. Is there greatness only in beginnings?   But hasn’t philosophy, which has created so much from a single matter, always been the next best thing.

No último dia 14, aconteceu o II SIMPÓSIO DE PSICANÁLISE DE NITERÓI – RJ Sexualidade: sexuação e escolha de objeto. Trabalhos muito bem elaborados foram apresentados pelos palestrantes. A discussões foram bastante produtivas e os participantes deram sugestões muito bem-vindas de temas para discutirmos nos próximos. Gostaria de agradecer mais uma vez a AMF – Associação Médica Fluminense, aos palestrantes, e aos participantes que, mesmo em um dia de sol escaldante marcaram presença.

Lembrando que, em breve, os trabalhos apresentados serão publicados em livro.

O III Simpósio de Psicanálise de Niterói – RJ está previsto para setembro/outubro.

veja mais sobre o simpósio no site da psicanalista Fernanda Pimentel http://www.viafreud.blogspot.com/

Dopo il seno e il testo, il sesso. Tra desiderio e sesso c’è rapporto. Anzi, potremmo dire che il desiderio è il sesso. Perché divide e unisce, separa e ricolma, lascia sempre i due amanti nella individualità dei loro corpi per sé presi: ogni corpo resta straniero agli altri corpi, anche quelli desiderati. Fuori dall’estasi dell’amplesso, i corpi restano separati, è il desiderio che tende a fondere momentaneamente ciò che è e permane diviso – dice Nancy. Tanto che il rapporto sessuale – come sostiene Lacan – in senso stretto “non c’è”. Ma come – avverte Nancy – si enuncia che non c’è quel che accade tutti i giorni! Bisogna spiegare: l’enunciato significa che quell’«essere» del «c’è» non è niente di essente, non è qualche cosa di essente. Dunque, il «c’è» stesso del rapporto non è niente di essente. Nel rapporto si dà movimento, scambio: come se non fosse possibile fermare quell’attimo, fotografarlo. La parola “rapporto” rimanda ad un’azione, non ad una sostanza[1]. Per cui, continua Nancy, siamo nel giusto quando nella vita non parliamo di avere rapporti sessuali, ma di fare l’amore, andare a letto, scopare [in francese baiser, che ha una gamma di significati assai più estesa dell’italiano baciare], cioè tutti termini che designano un’azione. Per cui, infine, «il rapporto [sessuale] designa allora specificatamente quel che non è cosa: quel che non è nessuna cosa (nessuna sostanza, nessuna entelecheia), ma quel che (se si può ancora dire “quel che”: “quello”, qui, ha un altro valore che nel caso della cosa) accade tra le cose, da una cosa all’altra»[2].
Pensato così, il rapporto si riapparente con il registro logico-filosofico della relazione in generale. E difatti diciamo che tra due persone c’è (nel senso precisato) una relazione, intrattengono una relazione, mettendo così in evidenza la dinamica, le possibilità attive e narrative del rapporto.
Il rapporto (sessuale) non può essere una terza cosa tra i due – o più di due. Occorre che apra il tra come tale – dice Nancy. Ma quel tra non è niente, è il vuoto. Ed ecco la sua paradossalità: c’è rapporto nella misura in cui non c’è rapporto, in quanto cosa che non è tra le cose. Possiamo quindi intendere il rapporto sessuale come ciò che c’è in quanto non c’è.
Nancy dice: “anche il ‘mio’ corpo è straniero”[3]. Partes extra partes, spiega. Nel senso che ogni corpo è impenetrabile nella propria singolare pluralità. Quindi, «un corpo ‘dentro’ un corpo, ‘ego’ in ‘ego’, non apre nulla: è a contatto con l’aperto che il corpo è già, infinitamente, più che originariamente; è, a contatto con quello, che ha luogo questo attraversare che non penetra, questa mischia senza mescolanza. L’amore è il tocco dell’aperto»[4].

[2] Ivi, pag. 22.

[3] Jean-Luc Nancy (2008), Indizi sul corpo, Ananke, Torino 2009, pag.111.

[4] Jean-Luc Nancy (1992), Corpus, Cronopio, Napoli 2007, pag. 26.

Nella prospettiva letteraria, la ricostruzione narrativa delle storie individuali, il racconto dei destini intrecciati e tuttavia sempre singolari, consente di dire la verità nell’inganno: in quell’inganno che è la scrittura stessa se intesa come pulsione truffata [1]. Non c’è un’altra verità, esiste solo quella scritta: «Il quoziente di dolore di un individuo non è già abbastanza terribile senza amplificazioni romanzesche, senza dare alle cose un’intensità che nella vita è effimera e certe volte  addirittura invisibile? Non per tutti. Per poche, pochissime persone quest’amplificazione, uscendo e sviluppandosi in modo incerto dal nulla, costituisce la loro unica sicurezza, e il non vissuto, la supposizione, impressa per esteso sulla carta, è la vita il cui significato arriva a contare di più»[2].
Se a ciò aggiungiamo il fatto che spesso i personaggi alter ego di Roth sono anch’essi letterati o scrittori, si ha un effetto di rafforzamento, una verità alla seconda: per esempio, nel caso di Exit Ghost, Roth ricostruisce quanto anche Nathan Zuckerman sta ricostruendo per suo conto, ricapitolando la propria vita e tenendo il capo del suo Desiderio nella consapevolezza, già sua, di personaggio, che quel che affida alla scrittura è più vero di quel che vive. Al punto che le conversazioni che egli stesso, Nathan, immagina e trascrive con il soggetto del suo desiderio (una bella e soprattutto giovane ragazza, molto più giovane del protagonista), sono più vere di quelle reali: “le conversazioni che io e lei non abbiamo sono ancora più toccanti delle conversazioni che abbiamo, e la Lei immaginaria è vividamente al centro del suo personaggio come la vera Lei non sarà mai”[3].

Dattiloscritto originale di Patrimonio, Library of Congress

Desiderio sempre detto, mai realmente pensato? Davvero è il desiderio “ciò che rimane impensato al cuore stesso del pensiero”, come sostiene Foucault?[4] Quasi si desse una sorta di inavvicinabile “ombelico del desiderio”, così come si dà secondo Freud un “ombelico del sogno”, il punto in cui il sogno affonda nell’ignoto, nel non interpretabile oltre. Forse, proprio in questa radice ulteriore del desiderio, al di là della mancanza e dell’eccesso, consiste la sua estrema irriducibilità[5].
Per quanto vi sia chi vede una radicale incompatibilità tra il desiderio e la parola, Philip Roth, in ogni caso, presidia con la sua intera opera il versante della traducibilità del desiderio in arte detta, in asse con l’impostazione del desiderio inteso non tanto come mancanza, ma come esperienza del suo opposto, dell’eccesso. Il desiderio considerato dunque come drive – conatus per dirla con Leibniz e Spinoza – come vettore che strappa dall’incompiutezza verso nuovi compimenti, sempre però parziali e sempre insoddisfacenti. Il desiderio tende infatti a riproporsi, a riprodursi, a differenza del bisogno. Motivo per cui anche Lévinas distingue nettamente bisogno e desiderio, essendo il primo una figura della totalità ed il secondo invece una figura dell’infinito, proprio perché non si non acquieta in alcun appagamento.
La filosofia ha da sempre riconosciuto al desiderio questa rivoluzionarietà, la capacità di sfuggire da qualsivoglia gabbia il soddisfacimento abbia potuto costruirgli intorno. E perciò “preso in sospetto da tutti i filosofi per la sua carica di alterità, per il suo non essere identico a se stesso, per la sua capacità di produrre turbamento (o movimento). Per il suo essere potenzialmente infinito, per la sua natura dissipativa che riproduce il medesimo paradosso della vita, quello di un valore che non si può accumulare ma solo spendere. E perciò condannato prima che compreso”[6].
In questa considerazione del desiderio come eccesso, siamo vicini alla lettura che di Kojève dà Bataille, lettore forse distratto di Hegel ma non del suo esegeta franco-russo di cui seguì le incantate lezioni parigine anteguerra. L’oggetto del desiderio sensuale è essenzialmente un altro desiderio – questo punto aveva colto il marito della moglie di Lacan. Desiderio che aspira per sé alla perdita più grande, unico approccio possibile all’esperienza della propria potenza ed infinita profusione. Philip Roth condivide questo dinamismo dell’eccesso bataillano, per cui il desiderio per quanto pieno tende a non aver mai oggetto, e mai soddisfazione finale. Ciò è vero non soltanto per i primi romanzi (come Il lamento di Portnoy), nei quali è addirittura evidente il tema del desiderio senza fine. Vedremo che questo desiderio ha un nome: è il desiderio di desiderare, quello che trae nutrimento dal proprio continuo riproporsi, che si ripropone nella propria inesaustività al di là del “suo” oggetto, l’unica “cattiva finalità” riscattabile anche in un’ottica dialettica. Per questo abbiamo già detto che tale desiderio ha una natura perversa, e precisamente masochistica: perché si nutre del proprio riproporsi, desidera desiderare, desidera che la catena dei suoi fantasmi non s’interrompa, non se ne esauriscano gli anelli. L’individuo nel quale tale dinamica desiderante s’incrina o addirittura si spezza, fa esperienza della depressione, connotabile forse proprio anche in questi termini come la malattia (grave) del desiderare. Nei romanzi di Roth, anche nel più recente, The humbling, ciò che resiste è il desiderio – nell’espressione di Lacan. Il mantenimento della dimensione desiderante è ciò che preserva la divisione nel soggetto, permettendogli di restare sano. È il desiderio che ci consente di restare soggetti divisi, sfuggendo così alla pazzia[7].

Non è particolarmente appassionante e sa di antico anche la questione se si sia autorizzati o meno a identificare tout court lo scrittore con i suoi personaggi. In ogni caso, possiamo leggere tutta la produzione di Roth secondo il criterio della referenzialità: come dice David Kepesh ai suoi studenti in un punto nodale de Il professore di desiderio, “scoprirete (e non tutti lo approveranno) che non concordo con alcuni miei colleghi secondo cui la letteratura, nei suoi momenti più validi e interessanti, è ‘fondamentalmente non referenziale’”[8]. Per quanto sia appunto l’opinione di un suo personaggio, la referenzialità è addirittura rivendicata da Roth in quanto autore, al punto che si può sostenere che “il rapporto sempre oscuro tra lo scrivere ed il vivere è l’enigma che si è posto il compito di scrutare nei suoi romanzi”[9]. Come dimostra l’ultimo suo romanzo, The Humbling [10], e come lo stesso Roth ha confidato in un colloquio con Martin Krasnik, «è un’ esistenza orribile quella dello scrittore che stenta a scrivere. A me non manca niente in particolare, ma mi manca la vita. Non ho capito tutto ciò nei primi venti anni, perché stavo sempre a combattere, ero a fare a pugni con la letteratura. Quello scontro era vita, ma poi ho scoperto di essere sul ring da solo». Si alza in piedi. «Sono stati gli interessi che ho avuto nella vita e il tentativo di mettere per iscritto la vita sulle pagine ad avermi reso un scrittore. Poi però ho scoperto che da molti punti di vista sono fuori dalla vita»[11].

The Humbling, 2009

Cosa eccede, nella vita? Cosa fa continuamente scandalo alla scrittura, incapace di renderne la natura e l’essenza? Proprio il desiderio. Prima della crisi della scrittura e della morte dello scrittore, al centro dell’attenzione va posto l’animale desiderante, e morente. Animale è la nostra radice ed il nostro destino. Di lì veniamo, lì – nell’animalità – permaniamo nel mentre del nostro processo d’identificazione personale e sociale. Lì, infine, torniamo, agiti da questa forza naturalmente umana, propriamente speciale, che ci spinge oltre noi stessi anche quando, appunto, i grandi giochi sono fatti. Cosa continua a desiderarci?
In sostanza, rispondono Dante Hegel Kojève, siamo desiderati dallo sguardo dell’altro. È l’Altro che ci sostanzia – come per il cavaliere il servo e viceversa. È la parte servile di noi stessi che ci sostanzia e desidera la parte signorile del nostro Sé, una promessa d’integrazione certo, non una certezza. E la parte signorile deve imparare a convivere e a riconoscere la propria dipendenza dalla natura e dal lavoro della parte servile, pena il delirio d’onnipotenza e la spirale pseudo-narcisistica. Nel volto dell’altro cerchiamo indefinitamente il nostro, ma non ci cogliamo mai e l’Altro ci rappresenta tutta l’abissalità tremenda del suo desiderio, lui sì immortale: «Sa, la passione con l’età non cambia, eppure si cambia, si invecchia. La voglia di donne si fa più acuta. E c’è una potenza nel pathos del sesso che prima non c’era. Il pathos per il corpo femminile diventa più persistente. La passione sessuale è sempre profonda, ma lo diventa ancor più»[12].
Non si tratta quindi di processi astratti. Le storie di Philip Roth mostrano in azione questa dinamica, incarnandola – è proprio il caso di dirlo – nelle storie individuali dell’uomo post-storico. Seguiremo l’intrecciarsi delle vicende di alcuni degli uomini qualunque rothiani, in particolare di due dei suoi eteronimi per eccellenza, David Kepesh e Nathan Zuckermann, esempi chiarissimi di intertestualità e meta-narrazione post-moderna.
Uomini qualunque, e non eroi, perché di eroi non vi è traccia nei romanzi di Roth.Uomini qualunque, ma non la ordinary people nel senso banale di uomo della strada, bensì nel significato che lo stesso Roth attribuisce a quest’espressione nel romanzo dallo stesso titolo[13], Everyman, ancora nell’intervista concessa a Martin Krasnik nel 2005, che racconta: «Roth se ne va, torna reggendo una piccola copertina nera. È la copertina del suo nuovo libro. È completamente nera, con una sottile linea rossa che incornicia il titolo, Everyman. «Che cosa ne pensa? è stata approvata proprio oggi» dichiara. Sembra quasi che abbia a che fare con la morte, rispondo. «Sì, se desidera la morte, spende proprio bene i suoi soldi. Everyman è il nome di una serie di commedie inglesi del XV secolo, commedie allegoriche, opere morali. Avevano luogo nei cimiteri e il tema di ognuna di esse è la salvezza. Quella classica si intitola Everyman e risale al 1485, opera di un anonimo. Proprio a metà tra la morte di Chaucer e la nascita di Shakespeare. La morale è sempre la stessa: “Lavora sodo e andrai in paradiso”. Oppure: “Sii un buon cristiano o andrai all’ inferno”. “Everyman” è il protagonista e riceve una visita dalla Morte. Pensa che sia una specie di messaggero, ma la Morte gli dice: “Io sono la morte” e la risposta di Everyman è il primo grande verso del teatro inglese: “Oh, Death, thou comest when I had thee least in mind”. “Oh, Morte, arrivi quando meno ti avevo in mente” – il mio nuovo libro è sulla morte e sul fatto che si deve morire. Beh, che cosa ne pensa?». «È nero», dico, e gli chiedo se il suo editore non teme che la gente non lo acquisti proprio a causa del suo colore. «Non mi interessa», ribatte, «io voglio che sia così».
Ma quest’uomo qualunque tra il desiderio e la morte va considerato un personaggio, oppure è una maschera dello stesso Philip Roth in quanto autore? Proprio l’intertestualità ci soccorre: consideriamo uno spazio testuale tridimensionale, le cui kristeviane tre coordinate di dialogo siano chi scrive (l’autore), il lettore ideale ed i testi esterni al lavoro in questione ma implicati, richiamati da questo. Lo spazio testuale è compreso dai piani intersecantisi creati da assi orizzontali e verticali. L’interstestualità aiuta insomma a tener conto della relazione tra un testo ed ogni sapere di altro testo che chi scrive o chi legge apporta alla narrazione. È insomma la rete di funzioni che costituisce e regola il rapporto tra testo ed intertesto. Questa interconnessione forma, nei romanzi rothiani, una solida trama narrativa. Un esempio evidente di intertestualità è la presenza nel corpus rothiano di personaggi ed avvenimenti citati poi in opere successive. Oltre agli eteronimi classici – Nathan Zuckerman, David Kepesh e Philip Roth in quanto personaggio – troverete così una Amy Bellette giovane e seducente ne Lo scrittore fantasma, per poi reincontrarla anziana e sconfitta in un piccolo appartamento newyorkese in Il fantasma esce di scena, decenni dopo.
Per quanto attiene il piano metanarrativo, il rapporto tra la scrittura e la realtà altra, va considerato anch’esso costantemente, favoriti da una scrittura che richiama peraltro di continuo l’attenzione del lettore sul suo status di artefatto proprio per interrogarlo sulla sua relazione con la realtà extra-narrativa. Come dice un suo personaggio in Inganno (una giovane signora, amante di un letterato più agé, che si chiama Philip Roth peraltro): “Quando uno scrittore degno di questo nome è arrivato a trentasei anni, non traduce più l’esperienza in una favola: impone le sue favole all’esperienza”[14].

[2] Philip Roth (2007), Il fantasma esce di scena, Einaudi, Torino 2008, pag. 119.

[3] Ibidem.

[4] Michel Foucault (1966), Le parole e le cose, Rizzoli, Milano, pag. 386.

[5] «Vi è sempre il non-senso in ogni opera dotata di senso, una quantità di follia nel pensiero creativo. Questo è il motivo per cui i pensieri creativi traggono origine da questo ombelico, dal territorio in cui senso e non-senso non si sono ancora definitivamente separati», Lucio Russo, Le illusioni del pensiero, Borla, Roma 2006, pag. 14.

[6] Ugo Volli, Figure del desiderio. Corpo, testo, mancanza, Raffaello Cortina Editore, Milano 2002, pag. 17.

[7] «Lo schema enumera e ordina proprio le forme necessarie al mantenimento del desiderio, grazie alle quali il soggetto resta un soggetto diviso, cosa che è nella natura stessa del soggetto umano. Se non è più un soggetto diviso, è pazzo. Resta un soggetto diviso perché c’è un desiderio, il cui campo non deve essere nemmeno tanto comodo da mantenere, dal momento che una nevrosi è costruita com’è costruita per mantenere qualcosa di articolato che si chiama desiderio». Jacques Lacan (1988), Il seminario. Libro V. Le formazioni dell’inconscio (1957-1958), a cura di Antonio Di Ciaccia, Einaudi, Torino 2004, pag. 441.

[8] Philip Roth (1977), Il professore di desiderio, Einaudi, Torino 2009, pag. 164.

[9] André Bleikasten, Philip Roth, Belin, Parigi 2001, pag. 17.

[10] Il romanzo inizia con queste frasi: “He’d lost his magic. The impulse was spent… His talent was dead”. Insomma, uno scrittore che ha perso l’ispirazione, che ritiene che l’impulso a scrivere sia spento.

[11] Intervista a Martin Krasnik,  “La Repubblica”, 21 dicembre 2005.

[12] Intervista a Martin Krasnik, cit.

[13] Philip Roth (2006), Everyman, traduzione italiana di Vincenzo Mantovani, Einaudi, Torino 2007.

[14] Philip Roth (1990), Inganno, Einaudi, Torino 2006, pag. 87.

Philip Roth

Del desiderio la filosofia si è occupata, sia pure a singhiozzi, da quando è nata. Più direttamente, è stato un soggetto preferenziale per la psicologia del profondo fin dalla sua fondazione e poi fino a Lacan ed a Žižek. Seguiremo d’ora in poi le sue tracce attraverso un’altra scrittura, di un autore contemporaneo di lingua inglese, Philip Roth.
È un americano-tipo, Roth? Non trovo appassionante la disputa se ritenerlo il più americano tra i grandi scrittori ebrei o il più ebreo tra i grandi scrittori americani. Come ha detto di sé a Mary McCarthy, Roth si sente di gran lunga più uno scrittore che un ebreo. Un suo romanzo, The human Stain, la macchia umana, esplicita meglio di una tesi teorica quanto la macchia appunto sia trans-etnica e transculturale, e quanto sia piuttosto decisivo il riconoscerla, percorrendo quei cunicoli bui di cui parlava Nietzsche nella Gaja scienza. Quei cunicoli divengono le strade del New Jersey e del New England percorse dai personaggi di Roth.

Un largo paesaggio sentimentale abita le pagine di questo tipico narratore della e alla fine della Storia. Philip Roth, nato a Newark il 19 marzo del 1933, premio Pulitzer nel 1997, è l’unico scrittore americano contemporaneo di cui la Library of America stia pubblicando l’opera in vita, giunta al trentesimo libro. Lui ed i suoi principali alter-ego – i vari David Kepesh, Nathan Zuckerman e lo stesso Philip Roth in quanto personaggio – vivono a cavallo tra secondo e terzo millennio. Hanno sulle spalle la Shoà, loro Ebrei americani, la Newark del proibizionismo e del nuovo sogno americano, le tentazioni autoritarie dei Lindberg e dei Nixon, la tradizione ed i padri che l’hanno innervata prima e poi resa esausta. Hanno vissuto la rivoluzione sessuale, la vita nei campus universitari della costa orientale e la Guerra del Viet-Nam e le due Tempeste nel deserto. Hanno negli occhi il lampo dei Boeing contro le Torri ed il bruciore delle macerie dell’11 settembre.
Ormai passati i settantacinque, Philip Roth sarà anche un superbo anatomista della senilità – come lo ha definito Emanuele Trevi – ma ha compreso oltre, e narrato, che la vita stessa è divenire vecchi, anche a venti o trent’anni, e che l’età e le stagioni della vita stanno in un rapporto complesso con il desiderio. Lo ha compreso, ha colto cioè i riflessi del tempo che trascorre nelle passioni umane, nella rinuncia graduale ed appassionata alla sola analitica dei concetti, a vantaggio di una analitica esistenziale fatta di incontri, di desiderio di desiderare essendo desiderati, e di desiderio di non desiderare, maturando una solida sfiducia nelle pretese della sola ragione. Ha compreso che quella “radicale sconvenienza che fa della lussuria la lussuria” [1], non si acquieta con l’età, neppure dopo le malattie e l’ingiuria del cancro. Come sbotta una delle amanti di un protagonista rothiano, Mickey Sabbath, “hai il corpo di un vecchio, la vita di un vecchio, il passato di un vecchio e la forza istintiva di un bambino di due anni” (Il teatro di Sabbath).

Ma in Mickey Sabbath non è solo il desiderio a far sentire i suoi morsi, quanto le pulsioni. Come interrompere la cattiva infinità che può essere innescata dal loro continuo riproporsi? Una soluzione classica è la scrittura, una forma della sublimazione artistica. La scrittura come antidoto al morso della pulsione e che tuttavia non può prescinderne, nutrendosi di quelle, essendone la trasposizione sublimata[2]. “Il problema non è che tutto dev’essere un libro”, scrive Roth in La lezione d’anatomia, “è che ogni cosa può essere un libro. E non conta, come vita, finché non lo è”[3]. Ancora una volta, il cogito cartesiano, il sapere d’essere del soggetto si oggettiva nel nostro essere una macchina per scrivere: cogito, dum scribo [4].
Ci si può illudere così di marciare verso la saggezza. Salvo accorgersi al dunque che “tutti in marcia verso la salvezza, tranne me”; tanto vale ammettere allora che tu, scrittore, “ricavi le tue storie dai tuoi vizi, inventi sosia per i tuoi demoni […]. Davanti all’integrità tu rappresenti desideri indifendibili con spuri mezzi pseudoletterari, commettendo il delitto culturale della desublimazione. Ecco la ragione del contrasto, che non potrebbe essere più banale: non dovresti utilizzare la vita genitale per ricavarne una commedia ebraica. Lascia le erezioni e gli schizzi ai goyim come Genet. Sublima, ragazzo mio, sublima, come i fisici che ci hanno dato la bomba atomica”[5].
La questione è posta in questi termini proprio nel romanzo forse più manniano di Roth, a quel Thomas Mann al quale dobbiamo la posizione più chiara del problema e della sua soluzione letterariamente sostenibile.
Ma se la sublimazione sfrutta la plasticità della pulsione, piegando la sua tendenza alla fissazione del godimento nella ripetizione [6], il desiderio ne resta il faro. Forse potrebbe dirsi che se la creazione artistica nasce dalla plasticità delle pulsioni strappate alla fissazione ossessiva, il desiderio ne costituisce l’ispirazione diretta.
Se la pulsione funge da forza propellente della creazione, il desiderio la indirizza e la guida soggettivizzandola, cioè individualizzando quello che comunque Freud aveva colto anche come un destino della libido. In altri termini, per Freud la sublimazione funge da difesa contro gli eccessi pulsionali, ma resta un destino della pulsione stessa, attraverso uno spostamento dei suoi fini sessuali in grado di orientarli verso forme non sessuate.
Tuttavia, dalla sublimazione avanza un resto: le pulsioni non possono essere sublimate nella loro integrità. Come nota Lacan, “qualcosa non può essere sublimato”, qualcosa cerca soddisfazione diretta senza passare atraverso il lavoro della sublimazione. Questo resto, questa dose di soddisfazione diretta è evocata in quasi tutte le pagine di Philip Roth.

[2] Freud si occupa di Sublimierung a partire dai Tre saggi sulla teoria sessuale (1905). In estrema sintesi, «la pulsione sessuale mette a disposizione del lavoro culturale delle quantità di energia estremamente grandi; e ciò è dovuto alla peculiarità particolarmente accentuata in essa di poter spostare la sua meta senza ridurre sensibilmente la propria intensità. Questa capacità di scambiare la meta sessuale originaria con un’altra meta che non è più sessuale, ma è psichicamente imparentata con la prima, viene chiamata capacità di sublimazione».

[3] Philip Roth (1983), La lezione di anatomia, traduzione di Vincenzo Mantovani, Einaudi, Torino 2006, pag. 231.

[4] Scrive Nicola Bonimelli: “Nelle Regole per la guida dell’ingegno, più precisamente la dodicesima, la scrittura di tali regole, dunque l’intellezione stessa, è innanzitutto una scrittura di sé, poiché, sostiene Nancy, è un e-scrivere sé tra quelle righe nel cui spazio aperto il sé scrivente si comprende, si comprende (e-)scrivendo(-si). Il farsi di una scienza universale è il farsi del sé che si comprende, la fondazione del Soggetto, dunque è il sapere di sé in grazia del suo (e-)scriversi: il sé viene a galla mentre (e)scrive la scienza”.

[5] Ivi, pag. 131.

[6] Sulla plasticità freudiana della pulsione, vedi Massimo Recalcati, Il miracolo della forma. Per un’estetica psicoanalitica,  Bruno Mondadori Editore, Milano 2007, pag. 14 e segg.

I think that Assignment #4 is the last one that deals with Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the Jar,” so I’d like to share some of the ideas I came up with for interpreting this poem.  Most of them are a bit weird, but I came up with them late Monday night so I had something to work with in class.  They’re also dealing with chains of association for psychoanalysis, so they are based off of wordplay, metonymy and metaphor.  Some of these ideas were brought up in class by other people, so sorry if there is overlap.  Most of them I didn’t think through all the way, so they’re rather unfinished. 

1. The food idea.  I thought the jar could be metonymy for a kitchen, or some other place where you get food (such as a pantry or a grocery store).  The wilderness could then be like the ingredients, being assembled into a coherent whole.  I guess the jar could also be a recipe in this interpretation.  The hill could be a table or a mixing bowl.  The one problem I identified with this interpretation was: “The jar was gray and bare” (10).  This line does not fit with a recipe, or with the ingredients being assembled (unless the recipe is a burnt failure).

2. Jar as car.  This idea was based off of very obvious wordplay.  Cars pollute, so this explains lines 10 and 11 of the poem.  I tried to take this idea a bit further, looking at the jar as a ship.  Ships can also pollute, especially when they have smokestacks (and this helps to explain line 8 – “And tall and of a port in air”).  With the jar as a ship, the wilderness could then be the water the ship is sailing on.  Of course, this runs into problems when you get to line 9 (“It took dominion everywhere”); how does a ship take dominion over all the water?  I guess it could sail everywhere, and so take dominion that way.  Nonetheless, this was a bit weak. 

The jar could also be an actual port between water and an island (which I guess would be the hill).  Again, not that strong, but I thought it accounted for the latter part of line 8 nicely.

3. Of course, there are the original ideas I had for the first two assignments that dealt with this poem: the jar as culture/urbanization/pollution, and the wilderness as nature/the natural world.  I didn’t bother thinking this through for this assignment because it felt like I would be restating what I argued in the other ones.  But basically, the jar is taking over the natural world, functioning as a city, dividing the wilderness and taming it.  The wilderness was whole, but became divided into three: the jar world, the tamed wilderness directly surrounding the hill (the suburbs of the jar world) and the still wild wilderness. 

4. Assignment #4 calls for a Lacanian interpretation, so I thought of the wilderness as the ideal self of the jar.  The jar tries to be like the wilderness, but it can’t, as per lines 10 and 11 (“The jar was gray and bare./It did not give of bird or bush”).  This is one of the ideas that I expanded on for my assignment, so I am not going to go into more detail here.

5. I thought the jar and the wilderness could be people.  The jar could be a man.  The jar lacks eggs, which are symbolic of fertility.  The wilderness, as a producer, is linked with fertility, and so it is a woman.  The jar is “gray and bare” without the wilderness.  You need both to successfully produce, but the jar has tamed the wilderness too much and so the world around them has become stagnant.  I thought this idea could be expanded on to critique patriarchy, but this was as far as I went with it.

6. I again went back to Lacan for my final idea.  This time, I looked at the wilderness as a child in the realm of the Real.  The jar is introduced, becoming the ideal self of the child wilderness (and also bringing the child into the realm of the Imaginary).  And when the wilderness is tamed at the end of the poem, it has successfully entered the adult realm of the Symbolic.  This ended up my main focus for my paper, but I also incorporated idea #4 as a play element that destabilizes the whole system.

So those were the 6 ideas I came up with Monday night for my psychoanalytic reading of “Anecdote of the Jar.”  It was fun letting my mind make all kinds of wild connections (my favourite was the food idea).  With that, I now bid Stevens’ poem adieu.  It was a lot of fun to work with, especially because it was so ambiguous.  But I found it a bit hard to keep switching frameworks for the same poem with only a couple of weeks between assignments.  I’m excited to be looking at new things for the remaining papers.

di Simona Maggiorelli

In the mood for love di Wong Kar Wai

L’ Atlante delle emozioni,  con cui Giuliana Bruno ha vinto nel 2004 il premio internazionale Kraszna-Krausz come migliore libro sulle immagini in movimento, è davvero uno dei saggi più sorprendenti degli ultimi anni per chi si occupa di arte contemporanea e di estetica. Non solo per l’affascinante cartografia di percorsi e di nessi che tesse viaggiando fra architettura, arti visive e cinema. Ma anche per il linguaggio con cui  queste cinquecento pagine sono scritte.  Fondendo discorso accademico e racconto, teoresi e linguaggio rapsodico, «con il piacere – annota l’autrice stessa – di selezionare e organizzare il discorso in forma di travelogue visivo».
Laureata all’Orientale di Napoli e dal 1990 professore di Visual and enviromental studies a Harvard con il suo monumentale Atlante delle emozioni e con libri come Pubbliche intimità, anch’esso uscito in Italia per Bruno Mondadori, Giuliana Bruno ha “imposto” una voce radicalmente diversa nel rigido panorama internazionale della critica dominato da scelte razionaliste, gelidamente concettuali, astratte.

Ci è riuscita “partendo da sé,” dal proprio sentire, rifiutando uno sguardo oggettivante e recuperando alla scrittura immagini e affetti. «E’ vero – ammette la studiosa che in questi giorni è a Roma per la due giorni di studi che ha inaugurato il MAXXI  ( e che ha visto la presenza di Aaron Betsky- e della stessa Hadid) ho cercato un modo di guardare differente, uno sguardo nuovo, per così dire “tattile”. La maniera classica di guardare ci ha insegnato una fredda distanza fra noi e le persone che guardiamo.

A me sembra, invece, che ci sia un modo un po’ più carezzevole di avvicinarsi e di essere toccati dalle immagini. In modo che l’occhio non sia di un voyeur ma di un voyager, per me declinato al femminile, come voyageuse. Insomma mi interessava una modalità più fluida di entrare e di guardare attraverso le cose e di rapportarsi agli ambienti che attraversiamo, a quei luoghi che raccolgono le nostre emozioni, le nostre memorie. Niente è neutro, tanto meno gli spazi della rappresentazione.
Possiamo leggerlo come un recupero delle emozioni ostracizzate dai filosofi?
Le emozioni non hanno nulla a che fare con il sentimentalismo. Sono una forma di conoscenza. E l’immagine ha un contenuto, un sostrato. Al di là di quello che mostra di per sé. Le immagini emotive si muovono nel tempo e non solo nello spazio.
Mentre lei scriveva il suo Atlante delle emozioni, il filosofo Remo Bodei sceglieva per il proprio lavoro  un titolo spinoziano come Geometria delle passioni, due diverse modalità?
Ho incontrato più volte Remo Bodei, è una persona straordinaria, sensibile. Però sul piano intellettuale, innegabilmente, esprime una forma di geometria, mentre, per dirla con Deleuze, il mio pensiero ha molte pieghe.
A proposito di cultura francese, lei prende le distanze dal discorso che Julia Kristeva ha fatto sull’«apparato cinematico». Perché?
Semiologia e  psicoanalisi si sono occupate dello sguardo filmico e lo hanno trattato non solo come testo ma come apparato di una forma di visione. Ho letto molto ma mi sembrava che mancasse qualcosa di fondamentale in quegli scritti. Ovvero che il modello applicato a questo apparato filmico fosse una sorta di trappola lacaniana da cui non si riusciva a uscire. La soggettività veniva rinchiusa in una forma di rappresentazione duplice e spaccata di fronte allo specchio. A mio modo di vedere lo schermo cinematografico è più di uno specchio o di una finestra.  E non mi corrispondeva lo sguardo trascendentale e incorporeo,  questo io-ego come grande occhio, che emergeva da questa lettura lacaniana del cinema che è stata a lungo dominante nella cultura francese.
Così si è rivolta al filosofo Hugo Münsterberg, collaboratore di William James. Un curioso personaggio che riconosceva forza psichica alla rappresentazione cinematografica. Come l’ha scoperto?
Mentre cercavo di mettere a punto un mio diverso approccio al cinema scrivendo l’Atlante delle emozioni mi sono ricordata di avere un libriccino di questo filosofo ebreo tedesco che avevo letto molti anni prima. Münsterberg faceva ricerca agli inizi del XX secolo, in un periodo molto fertile, quando nasceva la psicologia sperimentale. E aveva dato vita a suo laboratorio filosofico sulle immagini.  Nel 1916, dunque molto presto, Münsterberg scoprì il cinema e scrisse  un libro assai interessante. All’epoca nessun filosofo si occupava  di cinema. Né tanto meno si pensava che fosse un’arte. Avendo lavorato molto sulla psiche, invece, Münsterberg riconosceva al cinema non solo la possibilità di rappresentare delle cose ma anche di rappresentare come pensiamo. Parlare di forza psichica del cinema per lui significava riconoscerne la forza emotiva, ma anche cognitiva. Naturalmente lui non andava oltre. Si trattava, invece, di leggere le forme di immaginazione e di rappresentazione cinematografica. Ma il suo pensiero mi è parso comunque importante. Tanto da dedicargli una monografia che sta per uscire negli Usa.
«L’indubbio progenitore del cinema è l’architettura», scriveva Ejzenštejn. è stato per lei una fonte?
Sono tornata a Ejzenštejn proprio per il rapporto che vedeva fra montaggio e architettura. Di  lui, ovviamente, si è scritto molto, ma  un suo saggio degli anni Trenta mi ha spinta a continuare una ricerca trasversale  che associa il cinema alla produzione di spazio in tutti i sensi, non solo  fisico. Come l’architettura anche il cinema è una maniera di “spaziare” in molti sensi. Il primo film, diceva Ejzenštejn,  è l’Acropoli di Atene. Non la caverna di Platone. Proponendo così un modello metaforico molto diverso. Il  cinema  richiama l’attraversamento di luoghi  in una città con una serie di visioni, di immagini in movimento. Lo spettatore non è più intrappolato nella caverna platonica. Ma l’accostamento fra l’architettura e il cinema funziona anche se si pensa al  solo fatto che l’architettura non si contempla. Si recepisce con il corpo, con la sensazioni.
Nel suo lavoro il cinema di Antonioni occupa un posto importante. Come regista capace di creare «uno spazio mentale» e di raccontare per immagini il mondo interiore dei  personaggi. Ci sono registi oggi ai quali riconosce una ricerca analoga?
Sì amo molto Antonioni, con il suo modo di filmare quasi minimalista riesce a tracciare personaggi a tutto tondo, non meri caratteri. Antonioni non parlava del personaggio attraverso l’azione, ma con l’introspezione che traspare dalle sue inquadrature. Talvolta anche di bellissime architetture vuote. Basta questo per restituirci il mondo interiore di un personaggio, il modo in cui sente e vive. Una cosa che ritrovo per esempio in Wong Kar Wai, regista di In the mood for love. Anche se  con un’estetica diversa, ritrovo nel suo cinema un certo modo di guardare il rapporto fra uomo e donna, lo spazio psichico, lo spazio della memoria, lo spazio dell’immaginazione, il tempo. Si ha la sensazione che questo spazio contenga una durata che non riguarda la  “velocità”. Questo sguardo differente torna anche in molte installazioni di arte. Lo trovo non di rado espresso nelle immagini in movimento che oggi si vedono nelle gallerie d’arte.
La videoarte, integrando più linguaggi d’arte, apre nuove possibilità espressive?
In Pubbliche intimità ho insistito molto su questo cambiamento che a me pare molto interessante. Non è la morte del cinema ma un’estensione dello sguardo filmico che entra nelle gallerie e nei musei proponendo un modo diverso di relazionarsi con le immagini. Non è più la contemplazione della pittura come immagine fissa, ma comprende il movimento dell’immagine, il movimento dello spettatore e il movimento di un tempo che direi interiore. Nella concitazione della vita metropolitana alcune opere di videoarte e installazioni offrono un modo di riappropriarsi del tempo,  dell’interiorità.  In un certo senso queste nuove forme di arte ci invitano a guardare le immagini guardandoci dentro e a guardarsi dentro per vedere meglio fuori e, spero, per cambiare.
Nel tempo breve, ellittico, di un’opera di videoarte le immagini talora ,possono arrivare ad avere un “calore” speciale, una deformazione quasi onirica, poetica.
E’ una dimensione che riguarda il “tenore” delle immagini ma non solo. Penso, per esempio, a certe opere sonore di Janet Cardiff: seguendo la sua voce si entra in uno spazio. Altre volte c’è una piccola videocamera che ti permette di percepire la forma di relazione che l’artista ha con il mondo. è come se ti facesse entrare nella sua mente, nella sua maniera di sentire. In una sua installazione realizzata dopo l’11 settembre, ricordo, aveva collocato delle casse in un luogo molto grande. Gli spettatori potevano muoversi e ascoltare dagli amplificatori oppure mettersi dove  volevano. L’atmosfera che si veniva a creare era molto particolare, intensa, partecipata. Ognuno in silenzio seguiva il filo delle proprie immagini interiori, ma al tempo stesso era vicino agli altri. In un momento molto duro per New York, in un museo, stranamente si aveva la sensazione di poter attraversare questo trauma in maniera anche pubblica, sociale. è un aspetto del cinema che mi ha sempre molto affascinato e che qui trovavo allo zenit. L’installazione di Cardiff permetteva di essere al contempo molto dentro di sé e insieme di condividere con altre persone  emozioni, sensazioni, pensieri, forme di discorso. Di nuovo a Berlino qualche mese fa ho incontrato una sua installazione. Ho notato che i più giovani avevano spento tutto, telefonini, iPhone e quant’altro e ascoltavano a occhi chiusi. La dimensione in cui si era trasportati non aveva nulla di nostalgico, niente di religioso. Era come se l’artista ci invitasse a fermarci un momento. Per non essere sempre spezzati tra le cose, per trovare un modo, anche solo per un istante, di connettersi con gli altri e con il nostro mondo interiore.

da left avvenimenti del 13 febbraio 2009-

Started reading his book on ‘Violence’ at the start of the week and its a total recommend! He has a way of positing crazy challenging concepts and illuminating them with solid examples of cultural/social/political phemonena that makes his work infinitely readable and understandable. He also gives no quarter to anyone; liberals, communists, anarchists, capitalists, politicians, reformists, globalisationistas, anti globalisation types all get rigourously beaten with his savage combo of Hegel and Lacan. More to follow.

x

A central aim of Bhaskar’s A Realist Theory of Science is to diagnose what he refers to as the “epistemic fallacy”. In a nutshell, the epistemic fallacy consists in the thesis, often implicit, that ontological questions can be reduced to epistemological questions. The idea here is that ontology can be entirely resolved or evaporated into an inquiry into our access to beings, such that there are no independent questions of ontology. As an example of such a maneuver, take Humean empiricism. As good Humean empiricists, we “bracket” all questions of the world independent of our mind and simply attend to our atomistic impressions (what we would today call “sensations”), and how the mind links or associates these punctiform impression in the course of its experience to generate lawlike statements about cause and effect relations.

Note the nature of Hume’s gesture: Here we restrict ourselves entirely to our atomistic sensations and what can be derived from our sensations. Questions about whether or not our sensations are produced by entities independent of our mind are entirely abandoned as “dogmatic” because we do not have access to the entities that might cause or produce these sensations, but only the sensations themselves. Consequently, the order of knowledge must be restricted to what is given in sensation. Hume’s epistemology is thus based on a thesis about immanence or immediacy. Insofar as our minds possess and immediate relation to our sensations, we are epistemically warranted in appealing to sensations as grounds for our claims to knowledge. We are not however, warranted in appealing to objects, powers, selves, or causes because we do not have sensations of these things. Consequently, all of these ontological claims must be reformulated in epistemological terms premised on our access to being. If we wish to talk of objects, then we must show how the mind “builds up” objects out of atomistic impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of powers, then we must show how the mind builds up powers out of atomistic impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of causality we must show how the mind builds up an idea of cause and effect relations through impressions and associations. If we wish to speak of selves and other minds we have to show how mind builds up our sense of self and other minds out of impressions and cause and effect associations.

At the level of the form of the argument, not the content, nearly every philosophical orientation since the 18th century has made the Humean move. While the content of these positions differ, the form of the argument remains roughly the same. That is, we perpetually see a strategy of attempting to dissolve ontological questions through epistemological questions. This move always proceeds in two steps: First, one aspect of our experience is claimed to be immanent or immediate. Second, the furniture of our ontology is then dissolved through an analysis of those entities with reference to this plane of immanence or immediacy. The immediate can be impressions as in the case of Hume, the transcendental structure of mind as in the case of Kant, the intentions of pure consciousness as in the case of Husserl, or language as in the case of late Wittgenstein or the thought of Derrida. Other examples could be evoked. In each case, the gesture consists in showing how the being of beings can be thoroughly accounted for in terms of our access through this immanence or immediacy. The point is that we no longer treat the entities in our ontology as existing independently of this field of immanence or immediacy, but now see them as products of these modes of access. Whether the world is really like this independent of our chosen regime of construction is a question that is abandoned as dogmatic.

read on!

If Bhaskar refers to this form of argument as the “epistemic fallacy”, then this is because, in his view, it renders our actual engagement with the world incoherent. In other words, for Bhaskar we are unable to make sense of our actual praxis in seeking knowledge if we dissolve questions of ontology into questions of epistemology. I’ll get to how this might be so in a moment, but the first point to note is that Bhaskar’s point is not that epistemology as such is a fallacy. In short, Bhaskar is not claiming that we should abandon epistemological questions or questions of how we know. Indeed, Bhaskar pitches A Realist Theory of Science as an epistemological inquiry. As he writes in the first chapter,

Any adequate philosophy of science must find a way of grappling with this central paradox of science: that men in their social activity produce knowledge which is a social product much like any other, which is no more independent of its production and the men who produce it than motor cars, armchairs or books, which has its own craftsmen, technicians, publicists, standards and skills and which is no less subject to change than any other commodity. This is one side of ‘knowledge’. The other is that knowledge is ‘of‘ things which are not produced by men at all: the specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis, the mechanism of light propogation. None of these ‘objects of knowledge’ depend on human activity. If men ceased to exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies fall to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi there would be no-one to know it. Let us call these, in an unavoidable technical neologism, the intransitive objects of knowledge. The transitive objects of knowledge are Aristotlean material causes. (21)

The central nut that Bhaskar’s theory of knowledge seeks to crack is how knowledge can be socially produced (the transitive dimension), while nonetheless delivering us to intransitive or human independent objects that exist in their own right. It is the second of these claims, of course, that is controversial within the framework of contemporary philosophy. While the reigning anti-realisms are more than happy to argue that our knowledge is socially or mentally constructed, the thesis that the objects, things, or entities that our social or mental constructions deliver to us are real or intransitive to that knowledge, that they are independent of the social and the mental, is understood to be the height of dogmatism. Here it is important to note that anti-realisms are not being accused of Berkeleyian idealism or the thesis that mind creates reality without remainder. Most anti-realists are more than happy to hold, as did Kant, that there is a mind-independent reality. Rather, the anti-realist thesis tends to be more nuanced. The point is not that this mind-independent reality doesn’t exist, but that we can never have any access to that reality. Rather, we must be content with treating ontological claims in terms of what being is for-us, remaining agnostic as to whether reality itself is “like this” independent of us or our social practices.

Bhaskar’s thesis is that when epistemology makes this move our practice becomes incoherent. If the epistemic fallacy is, according to Bhaskar, a fallacy, then this is because 1) questions of ontology cannot be reduced to questions of access or epistemology, and 2) we cannot dispense with a realist ontology if our theory of knowledge is to be coherent. The fallacy then consists in the thesis, often implicit or assumed, that ontology can be dissolved in epistemology. Not only will Bhaskar argue that daily practice and science become incoherent under this model, but he will also argue that this thesis undermines the possibility of emancipatory politics.

The reference to our actual practice should clue us in to the point that Bhaskar’s argument for ontological realism is transcendental. It will be recalled that, roughly and crudely, a transcendental argument proceeds by asking “under what conditions is such and such a particular practice or form of cognition possible?” Thus, for example, Habermas’ theory of communicative action asks “what does communication presuppose in order to be possible?” and proceeds to deduce the norms governing communication between two or more people. Similarly Kant, accepting Hume’s arguments that we cannot ground causality based on sensation and association, notes that we nonetheless do make causal judgments, and therefore proceeds to inquire as to the conditions under which these judgments are possible. If these judgments can’t be grounded in sensation, yet we nonetheless make them, then it follows, according to Kant, that we must have an a priori category in the mind that the mind imposes on the flux of sensation, contributing the judgment of necessity. Generally transcendental arguments take the form of tracing conditions of possibility back to mind or society. The Kantian revolution consisted in analyzing our cognition of objects, rather than objects themselves. The price he paid was that we must now reject knowledge of things-in-themselves as we have duly restricted ourselves to our cognition of objects. In other words, we can never know whether things-in-themselves possess these causal relations.

Now what makes Bhaskar’s transcendental argument so delicious is that he inverts the nature of transcendental arguments. Where transcendental arguments tend to trace the transcendental conditions of possibility back to mind or some variant of the social and proceed based on the question “what must our cognition be like for this sort of experience to be possible?” or “what must language be like for this form of experience to be possible?” or “what must society be like for this form of experience to be possible?”, Bhaskar instead asks “what must the world be like for science and our daily practice to be possible?”

If we cannot imagine a science without transitive objects, can we imagine a science without intransitive ones? If the answer to this question is ‘no’, then a philosophical study of the intransitive objects of science becomes possible. The answer to the transcendental question ‘what must the world be like for science to be possible?’ deserves the name ontology. And in showing that the objects of science are intransitive (in this sense) and of a certain kind, viz. structures not events, it is my intention to furnish the new philosophy of science with an ontology. The parallel question ‘what must science be like to give us knowledge of parallel question ‘what must science be like to give us knowledge of intransitive objects (of this kind)?’ is not a petitio principii of the ontological question, because the intelligibility of the scientific activities of perception and experimentation already entails the intransivity of the objects to which, in the course of these activities, access is obtained. That is to say, the philosophical position developed in this study does not depend upon an arbitrary definition of science, but rather upon the intelligibility of certain universally recognized, if inadequately analysed, scientific activities. In this respect I am taking it to be the function of philosophy to analyse concepts which are ‘already given’ but ‘as confused’. (23 – 24)

We will recall that “intransitive objects” are objects that are mind-independent and that would continue to do what they do regardless of whether or not humans existed. By contrast, the transitive consists of those changing theories, social conditions, language, categories, and so on. That is, all the elements that belong to the domain of how knowledge is produced. Here it is important to note that ontology does not tell us what particular objects exist and what their powers are. This is a question for actual inquiry that requires hard and laborious work. In other words, we can’t know before we know and we have to engage in the process of inquiry to reach these intransitive objects. Moreover, we can be mistaken about the nature of these objects. Ontology, then, simply outlines the most general features the world and objects must possess for our practices to be intelligible.

But why must we presuppose the mere existence of these mind and society-independent intransitive objects to render our practices intelligible. As chance would have it, a discussion with a good friend and colleague (a rhetorician) today provided me with a wonderful example of just why the epistemic fallacy is a fallacy. In a discussion about the differences between realist ontology, realist epistemology (which I don’t advocate), and anti-realist epistemology and ontology, my friend made the offhand remark that, “I just figure that perception is the best we have so we’re constrained to work within this framework.” In articulating this thesis my friend had articulated a very basic anti-realist claim. If we don’t like the term “perception” (content), we can nonetheless preserve the form of the argument, plugging language, society, social forces, power, mind, sensations, intentionality, etc., into the place of “perception”. The point is that my friend, in making this offhand statement, was making the claim that we can only work with what is given, immediate, immanent, or what we have access to. For him this was perception. In a manner analogous to Hume, my friend was proposing that all claims about beings are really claims about perception (not the things themselves).

Now, it has been my experience that for whatever reason us Continentalists tend to get squirrely or really nervous whenever there is talk about science. Somehow all our critical acumen is directed at showing how science is dogmatic, yet we don’t interrogate our own key concepts. In this connection, it occurred to me that perhaps Bhaskar’s argument would get more traction with my friend if, rather than talking about things like the atomic properties of hydrogen, I instead discussed something closer to home in the world of the humanities and social sciences: psychoanalysis. Wouldn’t it be delicious, I thought, if it could be shown that Lacanian psychoanalytic practice could be shown to presuppose a realist ontology? So where, and how, can Lacanian psychoanalytic practice be shown to presuppose a realist ontology?

To answer this question we must look at what actually goes on not in the theory, but in the clinic. Here my focus will be on neurosis as this is what is most commonly treated in the clinic. To understand the realist underpinnings of Lacanian psychoanalysis we must, in a thumbnail way, have a sense of 1) the Lacanian theory of subjectivity, and 2) the position of the analyst and how the analyst comports himself in the clinic. Within the framework of Lacanian theory, the subject is essentially relational. This is one of the reasons that Lacan was so interested in topology, and, in particular, topological figures like the moebius strip, the torus, the cross cap, the Klein bottle, and so on. Where our standard notion of mind tends to conceive it on the model of a sphere with a clearly defined inside and outside, topological structures like the moebius strip, the Klein bottle, the cross-cap, and the torus do not have a clearly defined inside and outside. They appear to distinguish inside and outside, yet what we find when we investigate these structures is that the surface is continuous.

These topological meditations on the structure of the subject are not idle musings, but have real clinical consequences in terms of how treatment is conducted. If the subject is, for example, like a moebius strip, this is because the relationship between the “I” and the “Other” (and no, I’m not here confusing the “I” and the subject) is a continuous surface, not a relationship between what is “inside” a sphere and what is “outside” a sphere. Just as when we draw a line along the surface of a moebius strip (make one for yourself!) we find that, much to our surprise, the line appears on both sides of the surface, the relationship between the subject and the Other is not one of two separate spheres, but is rather a continuous surface. The manner in which the subject relates to the Other is itself a dimension of the subject, not something Other than the subject. Put otherwise, we can say that the subject constructs its Other as a sort of formal schema of how it relates to all others so as to constitute itself as a subject. However, here’s the kicker: Just as when we initially view a moebius strip we think it has two sides (not one), when we relate to others we genuinely think they are others and don’t recognize the manner in which we construct our others or our “formal schema of the Other”. This construction of the Other is what Lacan calls “fundamental fantasy”.

Here I am simplifying tremendously, but it is this strange topology that is the focus of the Lacanian clinic. It could be said that the Lacanian clinic practices the difference between the Other and the Other. What do I mean by this? The Lacanian hypothesis is that the symptom of the patient, the reason the patient suffers, is because of the Other that she constructs. As Lacan will put it in the middle work, the neurotic subject converts the desire of the Other into a specific demand or request. Whenever we hear the term “desire” we should think “opacity” or “enigma”. In Seminar 10, L’angoisse, Lacan gives the disturbing image of standing before a praying mantis without knowing whether or not you’re wearing the mask of a male praying mantis or a female praying mantis. The female praying mantis, of course, devours her mate. This state of non-knowledge is– and here I simplify again –for Lacan, desire. It is the anxiety of being before an Other without knowing that characterizes desire. As Lacan will say, neurosis is characterized by perpetual doubt. What is it that that Other wants. We construct our own desire around this question.

The neurotic strategy for dealing with this anxiety provoking state with respect to the Other’s desire is to maneuver herself so as to convert that enigma and opacity into a specific demand. A demand has content, whereas desire is perpetually withdrawn or enigmatic. This gives us a sense of just what the Lacanian subject is. The Lacanian subject is a sort of strategy for evoking demands. The obsessional neurotic, for example, might be extremely attentive to all the wants of his partner. He listens to what sort of housework she wants, how she wants it in bed, what sorts of gifts she wants, how she wants to be talked to, what his bosses want, how forms are to be filled out, etc., etc., etc.. In relation to these demands he tries to perfectly fulfill each and every demand, completely satisfying them and always being attentive in every way. Indeed, this satisfaction of demand can go so far that it becomes mockery. For example, the partner says, one time, in the bedroom “no, do it this way!” with some particular touch or kiss, and suddenly that is all the obsessional does in bed.

Two things are going on here. First, by satisfying each and every demand and doing so before they are even requested, the obsessional strives to negate or dissolve the desire (enigma, opacity) of the Other. The idea is that you can get rid of the trauma producing enigma of the Other if you only satisfy all their demands. Second, by over-satisfying the demands of the Other, the obsessional insures that he will not be an object of the Other’s jouissance or enjoyment. This sounds counter-intuitive. Why wouldn’t someone want to be the object of an-other’s enjoyment? To understand this, we should think in terms of “being enjoyed by an-other at our own expense” as in cases where we feel a boss is just using us as their tool with no regard for who we are or when someone else mocks us. What terrifies the neurotic is being this type of object of enjoyment. And when the neurotic is enjoyed by an-other this “at my expense” is how they experience this jouissance of the Other. They experience themselves as fading or disappearing as a subject. In this respect, the obsessional’s behavior can be interpreted as a way of negating of defending against the Other’s jouissance because, in that jouissance, they disappear as a subject.

The case is similar with hysteria. Where the obsessional strives to satisfy all the demands of the Other and to convert desire (enigma, opacity) into demand, the hysteric strives to evoke the Other’s demand (“do this!”) so as to frustrate it. In frustrating the Other’s demand the hysteric strives to evoke the Other’s desire. In other words, where the obsessional strives to negate the Other altogether by reducing them to a specific set of demands that he can then parodically fulfill, the hysteric’s strategy for negating the Other’s desire is to turn himself into an enigma for the Other or an object of desire that perpetually evokes the Other’s demand, seeming to want that demand, while frustrating that demand leaving the Other wondering “what is it he wants?” He might turn forms in late at the office, for example. He might adopt an enigmatic and elliptical style of writing. He might give all the signs that he sexually desires the Other only to swerve and feign indifference when the Other shows interest. In this way, the hysteric manages the desire of the Other by himself becoming an opaque enigma.

The key point is that the neurotic himself does not know that he is the one orchestrating this drama. Just as we first think the moebius strip has two sides, the subject thinks that it is the Other that is making all these demands, that it is the Other who mysteriously always ends up desiring him, and so on. He doesn’t recognize his role in orchestrating these intersubjective dramas.

Enter the analyst. By now descriptions of the Lacanian analyst are famous. She doesn’t speak much. She often simply repeats what the patient says or says “hmmm” in a high pitched voice. When she does speak she does so in riddles worthy of the Oracle at Delphi or Jesus. The analyst is opaque and enigmatic. “Why don’t you just give me the answer!” the patient cries out? “Why won’t you even talk to me about how your day was or your latest article?” In the initial sessions of analysis the posture of the analyst can be extremely anxiety provoking. It’s like being thrust into a world without coordinates. And the coordinates absent here are the coordinates of the Other or our standard others.

This posture can seem extremely cruel. “I want a therapist that will talk to me, that will comfort me, that will give me advice, tell me what my problem is, or lay down the law!” However, there is a point to this “cruelty”. What the analyst practices through his practice is the difference between the Other and the Other. Here we are finally in a position understand just what it might mean to practice the difference between the Other and the Other. On the one hand we have the Other as the construction of the subject or that moebius strip that organizes the patient’s self-other relations. On the other hand, we have the Other as that enigma that perpetually withdraws from our ability to capture them in the net of demands, the Other as opacity and enigma, the Other as irreducible to any specific demand the Other might make. In occupying the position of enigma and opacity– and this is what is above all important in the position of the analyst –the analyst gradually draws the attention of the analysand or patient to the differend between the Other that he constructs and the Other as independent of that construction. In the dawning awareness of this differend, in the experience of the fact that he perpetually attributes all sorts of thoughts and dispositions to his analyst without the analyst behaving in any way that could merit or support the attribution of these attitudes towards him, the analysand gradually becomes aware of how he has constructed the Other. Put otherwise, the analysand comes to see how the desire he was attributing to the Other was his own desire all along. No longer does he see himself as the innocent victim of the Other’s demands and desires, but he now sees himself as the origin of these desires, such that he is now in a position to choose those desires or adopt other desires. For example, where before he saw the demand to be a doctor as issuing from his parents, he now sees that as his own reflection in a mirror that he encountered without recognizing that image as him or the result of his construction. This is a central part of what it means to traverse the fantasy.

So, we might ask, where is the ontological realism in all of this? Why, we might ask, is this practice only intelligible on the grounds of an ontological realism? If, as my good friend suggested, we only went on perception, the practice of analysis would be completely incoherent? Why? Because the practice of drawing the differend between the Other and the Other is dependent the premise of something that we do not have access to through perception. Rather the Other would be that construction. This, for Lacan, is the position of the psychotic, where the Other does not exist for the “subject”. For in the case of the psychotic, the “intersubjective” relation is defined not by the perpetual doubt that characterizes neurosis, but in certainty. The psychotic holds that the Other is nothing but the Other that they know and that he has immediate access to that Other. By contrast, the Other upon which the position of the analyst is premised is an ontological Other, or an Other that is independent of any of our constructions or fantasies. It is an Other that is not exhausted by our access to this Other, but rather an Other that can only be thought in ontological terms as what is in excess of any perception, talk, or idea we might have of this Other. Here we have a case of an entity or entities that must be presupposed in order to render a practice intelligible or coherent in transcendental terms. The question is not strictly one of access, but of what the world must be like– what intersubjective relations must be like –in order to be rendered intelligible. This discovery is not isolated to Lacan. It was discovered with respect to Husserl in the case of both objects and others, again in the case of Levinas with respect to the Other, and yet again in Jean-Luc Marion with respect to existence. In each case, epistemology passes over into ontology, discovering a limit where the question “how do we cognize objects” encounters an internal limit where the question can no longer be exhausted by epistemology, but where we must pass over into genuine ontology.

Assisti esse documentário sobre o Cartier-Bresson ontem, depois de ver a exposição de suas fotos no SESC Pinheiros. Quando cheguei na sala de exibição do vídeo, este já estava começado. Não peguei a parte em que ele diz que “a prova de contatos é como o divã do psicanalista” mas a relação entre o ofício desse fotógrafo e o ofício do psicanalista se apresentou de maneira muito evidente na parte que vi do documentário. As imagens são de provas de contato: acho que isso não se usa mais nos tempo das câmeras digitais, mas quem fotografou com filme vai se lembrar delas. São cópias dos negativos em tamanho natural (sem ampliação). A partir dessa prova você escolhe que “cliques” vai ampliar. No documentário “Contacts”, a câmera percorre a folha de contato, deslizando pelos vários cliques até se fixar naquele escolhido para ser ampliado por Cartier-Bresson.

Eu já tinha saído da exposição com esse pensamento: o fotógrafo está lá, imerso no fluxo do mundo, com o dispositivo fotomecânico: a câmera. Ele entende de luz, de química, de mêcanica. Ele sabe ajustar a abertura do diafragma e a velocidade dessa abertura para, regulando a luz que sensibiliza o filme, conseguir a foto que dá aos olhares dos outros: “somos ladrões, mas é para dar”, diz ele no documentário. Então, ele liga o olho ao visor da câmera e prepara sua entrada no mundo. Ele deve entrar desprevinido: “Não se deve buscar. É preciso estar disponível, receptivo. É importante não pensar.” No momento oportuno, ele clica: num momento, vários instantes. Ele revela os negativos e imprime a prova de contatos: “A prova de contatos é como o divã do psicanalista”. Então, na folha de contatos, ele encontra uma composição, uma narrativa insuspeitada: “Tudo vem do inconsciente: não sabemos nada. É inconsciente”. Está lá o instantâneo! O feito! O ato! A ação do clicar efetivou a composição revelada na foto. Revela-se uma composição que não se apresenta ao mero olhar. Ou melhor, se apresenta como ato, depois do clique do fotógrafo.

Indicações preciosas de um fotógrafo para um psicanalista.  “Não se deve buscar … é importante não pensar”! Como disse Lacan, “é preciso não compreender depressa demais”. Não antes do ato … No momento oportuno, pontuamos os instantes e, talvez, alguma composição se revele em nossa prova de contatos. Talvez, o paciente queira ampliá-la. Talvez ele queira enxergar as coisas como elas se apresentaram relacionadas no instante daquele clique, remetendo a uma ordem que não se revela ao mero escutar.

Ficha técnica

1. Director: Astra Taylor
2. Fecha de estreno: 2005
3. Duración: 71 minutos
4. Producción: Hidden Driver Productions, The Documentary Campaign
5. Nacionalidad: EE.UU., Canadá
6. Rodado en: Buenos Aires, Ljubljana, New York.

Sinopsis

Recomendado por Jaume, este es un vídeo subtitulado en español sobre la figura del filósofo esloveno Slavoj Žižek. No es el típico documental relacionado con la filosofía: previsible y aburrido. Son muchas las sorpresas. Por ejemplo el aula abarrotada de Buenos Aires, su curiosa carrera política, la ropa en los armarios de la cocina, su fobia social… En el discurso de Žižek destacan, por un lado, la voluntad de ser claro, de explicar a Lacan de modo que lo entienda “hasta tu abuela” y, por otro, la finura en el análisis de las trampas con que las democracias capitalistas se autolegitiman.

Otra copia del documental en esta excelente Videoteca de humanidades

El enojo es una emoción normal que experimentamos generalmente todos los seres humanos y que se da en situaciones ante las que nos sentimos amenazados, creemos que podemos sufrir daños, pensamos que nos han lastimado, o nos frustramos. Pero esto puede llegar a transformarse en una emoción destructiva si se siente con demasiada intensidad o se expresa de manera inapropiada, lastimándonos, lastimando al otro verbal o físicamente y dañando objetos. psicologo Respuestas de este tipo traen aparejadas consecuencias altamente negativas para nuestra salud física y mental, conflictos en las relaciones interpersonales que incluso pueden acarrear posibles problemas legales y financieros.

Al pensar en bulimia y anorexia automáticamente nos remitimos a los conceptos de “obsesión por la imagen”, “complejos” o “disconformidad corporal”. Se sabe que ambas enfermedades son clasificadas dentro de los denominados “desordenes de alimentación”. psicologo Se ha dicho reiteradas veces que también son desencadenadas por problemas emocionales y de adaptación al medio.  El hecho es que tanto anoréxicas como bulímicas han existido siempre, la diferencia esta en que actualmente  vivimos en un mundo donde las patologías son mas emergentes o mas “comunes” que en otras épocas.