> And I'm with Chomsky on Lacan, Ken. A good-humoured
charlatan is the former's take on the latter. I always
wondered, for instance, how Paglia gets so hot under the
collar about poor Foucault (a far more interesting thinker, for
mine), yet so often refers favourably to Lacan, who'd make a
much better target for the sorts of slings and arrows she
launches at Michel (whom, incidentally, I defend only
relatively).
Oddly enough, Foucault and Chomsky are in the same boat. Both place themselves in a position which denies the existence of the Freudian unconsciousness (hell, Habermas and Butler are in this boat too - it's a regular theoretical party boat). I'm not sure why so many people are interested in liquidating the role of fantasy in politics. I mean, almost no one agrees with Rawls these days, but everyone just assumes he's right when they deny the phantasmic elements of the unconsciousness: original position behind the veil of ignorance - reason can do anything we want it to.... there are almost no limits to what we can know. So where does desire come from? (and why are all these folks trying to liquidate its affect?).
When you sit at the computer on email, aren't you (we) "making" desire vitually transparent? You read a name, and put a picture to the face, imagine someone elses place of dwelling... you adopt a persona that you might otherwise not adopt at a dinner reception...
And when uncle buck comes for a visit, and instead of saying "pass the peanuts" you say, "you ruined my life you bastard" is this simply a synapse that misfired? or has something else spoken for you - the Other (lacan), the truth (freud) ? ? ?
And why do people experience "guilty pleasures" ...
And where does the presupposition that reason fits with the world come from? (if not a *moral* imaginary) (we can be reasonable because we must be reasonable!). Doesn't this denote, at some point, the omni-presence of a divine engine?
ken