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Stupid theory (or politics) questions

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14:59 / 27.11.07

I didn't think you were being unnecessarily snarky. Hope I wasn't, either.

Anyway, my real point is that while psychiatry might not be practiced as it was in Freud's day, it's still more or less developed along the same paradigms - the idea that there is an unconscious mind to begin with, that treatment can happen by looking for clues from it... that, I think, is still relevant. Isn't it?

I have a feeling that Freudian ideas weren't so much chucked out as set aside in favor of practical applications - I *think* Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and its cousins, along with the neurological/pharmaceutical mode, have more or less taken over, haven't they? Because they're results-oriented, not structural or theoretical - they're not mapping the mind as much as reshaping the bits that show up in the wrong ways.

And I *think* it's that concept of mapping the mind that is so valuable for theory/cultural studies folks.

Closed for Business Time

15:27 / 27.11.07

Hmm. The idea that there is an unconscious mind is, again, something I don't see Freud or his immediate associates should get credit for. You are of course right that for better or worse a lot of the assumptions that Freud made about the functioning of the psyche and the causes of psychopathology has entered both popular and scientific culture.

[..]they're not mapping the mind as much as reshaping the bits that show up in the wrong ways.

That I don't agree with. CBT is founded on a very different theory of the structure of mind. In effect CBT both as a therapy and as an expression of a deeper theory of the human psyche is in direct competition with psychoanalysis as an explanation of the structure of mind.
CBT is based on a computational theory of mind - cognitivism - while psychoanalysis has no comparable founation, at least not one that has any empirical backing.

However, what I was curious about was how people who have little contact with the clinical-scientific roots of psychoanalysis still seem to have great use for it as a hermeneutic. I realise I am biased against psychoanalysis and so find it hard to believe that it can be used for anything positive in itself (it makes for a fascinating subject in the history of psychology though).

04:56 / 28.11.07

How to pronounce 'Homo Sacer'?

'Homo' or 'Omo'?

'Sasser', 'Sakker', 'Sacher', 'Sassair', 'Sakkair', or 'Sachair'?

I know it shouldn't matter. But it bugs...

15:42 / 23.01.08

Hey there,
I'm having a mite of difficulty with a particular sentence in an essay by Thomas Yingling "Acting Up: AIDS, Allegory, Activisim".

It runs as follows:

Unlike the collapse of subjectivity noted in narratives of postmodernism that celebrate the simulacrum of inscription or the break with an oppressive history of metaphysics, the finality marked as and by AIDS includes an undeniably literal death, a death so irretrievably literal that its figurality must be continually exposed as figuration, as cultural critics like Simon Watney, Jan Zita Grover, and Douglas Crimp have been doing for more than half a decade; and (to reverse the burden of literality and figurality) the finality of AIDS is so inwrought with configurations of cultural anxiety and dread that its literality must also be continually addressed in strenuous, referential narratives of victimization, punishment, resistance and healing.

**********

Am I right in saying that a rough approximation of this would be unlike post-modernism which realizes something figurative (the hyper-real) the quandary associated with AIDS remains it incomprehensible dread which must be referred to figuratively/metaphorically yet whose very real and literal threat must also be acknowledged? Or is that, yet again, a too simplistic reading?

19:00 / 23.01.08

Also maybe something on the transgressive power (if at all) of 'outing'?
An alternative resource to Sedgwick and 'The Epistemology of the Closet', perhaps? If there is one?
I'm just thinking about this in relation to Araki's outing of Tom Cruise as "Rock Hudson" for the 90s in "Totally Fucked up", as Mel Gibson as "a homophobic a-hole" and Michael Stipe as "?" and attempting to base a theory around it.
I'm not sure where to go with it other than the angry queer power evoked by the use of such high profile names and a kind of inversion of the outing process by outing Gibson as 'homophobic'.
Any ideas anyone?

08:17 / 25.01.08

i'm sorry, but:

the finality marked as and by AIDS includes an undeniably literal death, a death so irretrievably literal that its figurality must be continually exposed as figuration

what does this mean?? if 'figuration' is the act of foeming something into a shape, then how is it 'final'? and just what is being final in 'the finality marked by aids?? and if it only 'includes' a literal death [so i'll take that to be actually, literally as it were, death then, shall i?] what else does it 'include'? and so can it really be so final?? or is it death-in-literature? in which case, it is only fiction then anyway, so has no real bearing on real aids, which is an invidious disease.

this all seems rather like a load of gobbledygook to me. it's no wonder you fail to understand it... or am i being passe and naive?

08:21 / 25.01.08

sorry 'forming', not 'foeming'...

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:25 / 25.01.08

I don't know anyone who envies AIDS, astrojax. However, I think some confusion might be aroound:

if 'figuration' is the act of forming something into a shape, then how is it 'final'?

Because it isn't, I don't think. Figuration is the act of representing something figuratively. So, the idea is that AIDS is not just acting as a disease (or more correctly a syndrome) but also acts constantly as an allegorical representation of other narratives not concerned with the sickness of the body - narratives of oppression, of political voicelessness. So, the figurality - the expressive potential within the idea of AIDS - is revealed to be a bundle of allegories driven by the impossibility of facing the finality of AIDS as Tot-an-Sich. Whether AIDS is actually more final than other such things is tricky - you could certainly see the same mess of fragmenting associations in, say, cancer. Peggy Phelan in Mourning Sex has some interesting stuff that might be relevant.

Then again, I've got no idea whether this is what the writer actually meant. What's the article, Shrug?

15:03 / 25.01.08

Thomas Yingling "Acting Up: AIDS, Allegory, Activisim", Haus (and thanks).

Yep it seems to be the generally theme behind it. I was getting pretty confused in relation to figurality but I think I got the gist.

Here's a further bit that might add more clarity for anyone that might fancy:
"The gap between the apprehension and the comprehension of the disease is thus an asymptotic space where allegory persistently finds itself at play and where the ongoing histories in which AIDS unfolds (variously comprised of the viral, the personal, the communal, the national, and the global) are referred to larger and more masterful or authoritative histories that guarantee interpretation of its meanings and restabilize (sometimes ironically) those values it places at risk."

15:04 / 25.01.08

And it's from Inside/out lesbian theories/gay theories.

06:25 / 26.01.08

thanks for that, but i still don't know if this isn't all a lot of gobbledygook that hopes it might be interpretted into something approaching plain english that can then say 'yeah, that's what i meant'...

figurality must be continually exposed as figuration is still entirely obscure, whichever meaning of 'figuration' is applied. 'must be'? 'exposed'? - like it hides something otherwise? so then, what?

and i still struggle with aids being 'a bundle of allegory that somehow struggles to face death'. more or less...

and [rant almost over] 'the finality of aids as death as itself' (why the german? what is wrong with using plain english to engage in discussions and argument with other english speakers?) seems just wrong. the thing that dies from aids isn't 'death', but a real once-living human, a person, with a syndrome, disease, ailment that kills them. dead. it is a syndrome that doesn't discriminate on gender, sexual preference, age, anything. if you're human and you contract it, it can kill you. and more deaths are almost certain.

the politics pertaining to large communities that are statistically most liable to contract aids, however, are a subject ripe for discussion of figuration and oppression. but aids itself, and the deaths it instantiates, are - to me - not. which seems to be somewhere shrug's comments head, but i'd be keen for these sort of discussion to try try try to use some plain english.

sorry, don't mind me. i come from a tradition of analytic philosophy and find much of such post-modernist dialogue confused and wondering if there is really anything being said. and find it amusing when people say 'i'm confused by...' - no wonder, i think. but that's just unitiatied me... i'll try to calm down and stay out of this now. please accept my above comments and questions as rhetorical.

[leaves quietly...]

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:33 / 26.01.08

More to say on this later, but. astrojax, i think you might do well to drop the angle that the writer does not understand and is trivialising and abstracting the true pain of AIDS. I think that he was seropositive when he wrote that article, and died of related illness in 1992. this certainly does not make him right, but it does suggest some lived experience.

20:34 / 26.01.08

i didn't think i was suggesting the writer was in any way trivialising the devstating effects of aids, and apologise if that view came across, haus.

as per my end comment, i was taking a broadside at the style of language and its seeming deliberate obfuscation such that its [intended] meaning diminishes to something trivial. it simply isn't at all clear, to me, what this writer was really saying, particularly his attack on metaphysics as 'oppressive'. i still don't see the relevance of metaphysics' history here... i guess this set me off and i came to the rest of the text shrug posted with a negative attitude. maybe i was wrong to post, but this is how i saw it and how i felt...

sorry, too, shrug, if i have seen to be trivial and waylaid your question.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:50 / 26.01.08

Well, I think there's some interesting stuff here, which I will come to tomorrow, perhaps. One question to ask yourself might be why exactly, if you do not understand a passage, it is immediately right to assume it to be the fault of the passage's incomprehensibility and obfuscation.

02:58 / 27.01.08

Oops, silly me. The essay is actually titled "Aids in America: Postmodern Governance, Identity and Experience." and, for some greater context you can read it via googlebooks
here. I'll also come back when a little more lively. I might even write a thread worthy opening post if people feel the topic is debate/discussion worthy. Its an acutely canny essay as far as I'm concerned and is of immense interest to me from a film theory perspective (although I should probably keep that side far out of head shop).

All Acting Regiment

13:16 / 27.01.08

I'm sure there's something there, and I won't belittle the writer's point without understanding it - but I'm having problems with the writing style too, and I'd quite like to start a thread on things like this (also Butler et al) where no doubt very urgent and serious writing about huge problems is - perhaps, and this would be the point of the thread - made needlessly hard to understand by the use of borrowed terms and conventions from (translations of) French critical and cultural theory.

We have the same controersy over in the world Eng Literature - is it acceptable to use hard mathematical/scientific language if you're working in the humanities, and are providing a reading rather than a scientific analysis?

00:42 / 28.01.08

i think, haus, i have the right to attempt to decipher the passage with my [i think, reasonable] knowledge and undersatanding of english (often as not assisted by a dictionary!) and then make - i thought - valid criticisms of the style and language useage that rendered, for me, the passage nigh on unintelligible.

i don't for a moment belittle the intent of the concept which is being [attempted to be] articulated. (i'll have a squizz at the link, shrug. thanks)

indeed haus, you stated: the passage's incomprehensibility and obfuscation. do i take it you agree the passage is thus?

i like regiment's idea of a thread on this aspect. i was mowing the lawn here yesterday and musing on this conversation and in particular on exactly that; importing various terminology [jargon] from science and maths into discussions in humanities and whether a reader is then right to reject the usage as unclear (if it is). it is perhaps worth a longer discussion.

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:57 / 29.01.08

People keep saying this, presumably following Sokal, but "figuration" is a term neither from science or maths, is it? What words - "jargon" being a rather prejudicial term - in particular from the worlds of S&M did you have trouble with?

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:36 / 29.01.08

Oh, and I said:

One question to ask yourself might be why exactly, if you do not understand a passage, it is immediately right to assume it to be the fault of the passage's incomprehensibility and obfuscation.

That is, incomprehensibility and obfuscation is characterised as what the person who does not understand the passage is seeing in it as why they do not understand it. I don't see the passage quoted as ground-breaking, and I'm not sure I agree with its contention out of the context of the whole work, which I have not read, but I don't think it's an impossible read, no.

08:14 / 30.01.08

to address your question, haus, the following grammatical constructions don't strike me as 'simple english' and require disentangling:

celebrate the simulacrum of inscription

an oppressive history of metaphysics

finality marked as and by

irretrievably literal

figurality must be continually exposed as figuration

literality must

especially the insistence on terms like 'must' as commands... why 'must' they? etc... and i still don't see what metaphysics has to do with this and why the insistence that somehow the history of metaphysics is necessarily 'oppressive'. and why 'literality'? what about 'literalness'? like 'historicity' - i never did quite understand what this is supposed to mean. its having history? isn't that what 'the history of' is? the proliferation of 'ity' in many texts flummoxes me and i question as a default reaction [in me] the need for the term and if the writer might have made the point more clearly using simpler language, so a suspicion i bring immediatley to my reading that perhaps they were not able to be more simple because there is no meaning.

and i don't mean 'jargon' to be perjorative and wonder why it might be taken as such - i mean it to be, and understand it to be, terms commonly used among a community to have connotations beyond the 'common person's' understanding, used as shorthand, if you like, among a community of users to denote a [quite] particular concept within that community. what is perjorative in that and who is being prejudiced?

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:14 / 30.01.08

Actually, my question was "What words in particular from the worlds of science and maths did you have trouble with?" None of the terms you are having trouble with above appear to be taken from science or maths. So, which terms from the above have been taken from science or maths? What am I missing, here?

(Oh, jargon - OED. 1. Specialised language concerned with a particular subject, culture or profession 2. language characterised by pretentious vocabulary or meaning. 3. Gibberish).

13:27 / 26.03.08

*Looks Up*
I'm working on this again... or developing it, at least, which is much of the reason why I haven't started anything threadworthy on it.
But...
Can anyone cite me a good web reference that gives brief/detailed explanation of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (the function of the media in postmodern society?).
I'm doing a terrible amount of reading around this so a good base text would be wonderful?

13:41 / 26.03.08

Or, actually, wait a minute..... um...
what Baudrillard says in relation to the Gulf War and its media representation?

14:26 / 26.03.08

You mean besides something like Wikiquotes?

15:26 / 26.03.08

Well, I'm trying to align media-representation of calamitous events in a Baudrillard-ian context. So Gulf War/ AIDS/ Epidemic/ Death of Diana (it works as they are pretty much coterminously plotted in my source text).
I'm going to dance around with Sontag in a bit (and this will probably be my main reference but it would be good to have something quotable on the other).
Wikiquotes doesn't seem to have anything overly concrete.

16:45 / 26.03.08

Well, here's the publication for which Baudrillard wrote "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place", if that helps. It's all in French, but if you click "Archives" and "Recherche" I think you'll find lots of sources surrounding that. Articles seem to cost 3EU each.

18:16 / 26.03.08

Thank you, grant, that's definitely an option. Momentary severe panic for some reason.
*breath*
*breath*
*breath*
etc.

Phex: Dorset Doom

19:27 / 27.03.08

A quick question: is there anywhere apart from the TV series 'A Pervert's Guide to Cinema' where Slavoj Zizek mentions voice?

20:29 / 27.03.08

There's a chapter in Looking Awry called 'Gaze and Voice as Objects.
Also there's a compendium out called Gaze and Voice as Love Objects of which Zizek is a contributor and editor. However, I don't have a copy of this so it may repeat the same essay.

20:31 / 27.03.08

Also, slightly obtuse question; is there a theoretical treatment which investigates Princess Diana (her divorce, charity work, popularity, death) in relation to things like her cultural effect, media coverage, Thatcherite family politics, her charity work and, also, possibly the conception of AIDS?
I'm following up one small strand that may make for a reasonably interesting section.
So, if anyone even has a small idea where to start, please, speak up.
x

Ex

16:43 / 28.03.08

Mandy Merck's collection of essays After Diana: Irreverent Elegies might be of some use, but I haven't read all of it. It was mainly scholarly authors, but for non-academic readership, reflections on her image and the meaning of the mourning.

17:08 / 02.04.08

Ah, thank you so much, Ex. Some of the collection has come in very useful.

18:10 / 11.04.08

In which text does Freud first associate Africa and Women, as the great enigmas the West is faced with? A teacher of mine threw the reference around as one that's been consistently revisited but she didn't manage to point me to the original text. Help appreciated.

16:05 / 14.04.08

I think it would be his general use of the fetish as an image.

(That goes to a collection of quotes from Freud about the fetish and the varying ways he thought of the process/image/allegory of the fetish as "a substitute for the woman's (mother's) phallus which the little boy once believed in and does not wish to forego.")

A fetish literally being a little statue from Africa.

Gendudehashadenough

03:56 / 08.05.08

In brief so as to avoid starting another thread: What are some pragmatic implications of a stance in acceptance of a judgment, where the judgement is levied on the basis of merit, in the event that the criteria for policy/enforcement/judgement/etc. are purposefully obscured and/or unknown to the incurring person (i'm thinking professionally, perhaps socially)?

My idea is ill conceived...yet encircles ideas of responsiblity and merit.Could someone nudge me towards some material? Thanks.

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