> [bounced for an address oddity]
> From: "christian a. gregory" <chrisgregory11 at email.msn.com>
> Date: Sun, 3 Oct 1999 14:19:55 -0500
> Hunh? *Only* psychoanalysis does this, but this isn't a claim on an
> authoritative groundwork? That's only badly concealed authoritarianism
> (and, in that way, just like Joan Copjec). I mean, doesn't it strike you as
> funny that you have to trip over yourself to say that this isn't the final
> word? If it really weren't, if you really didn't believe in the superiority
> of one tradition over others, why would you say this?
I'm killing myself laughing! I just said, "this isn't an authoritative framework" and now I'm being accused of using an authoritative framework! I'm so so reminded of the Marx Brothers.... "Why would you tell me that you aren't using an authoritative framework so that I'll think that you're using an authoritative framework when all that while, you're not using an authoritative framework!" Only human beings possess the capacity to fool themselves with the truth. "This Ken guy, he writes like an idiot, he acts like an idiot, but don't be fooled - he's an idiot!" And didn't I mention this the other day? The truth speaks in a lie pretending to be a lie? Look at the *political* effect of what I've said. I've make specific demands, regardless of the content, that authoritarian frameworks are unacceptable. But you don't believe me. Isn't this ideology at work? What you really want to say is that some frameworks SHOULD be authoritarian but you'll back out of this position really quick and repeat mine in an instant by saying yourself, "Your framework is authoritarian, mine isn't" It's a scandal. I want my money back.
> You've just defined
> the most valuable tradition as the one that gives you what you say
> psychoanalysis gives you. (Well, only psychoanalysis gives us the absent
> center, and as everybody knows, that's self-evidently good or right or
> interesting or ethical or whatever . . .)
It's not my fault! And I didn't say the absent centre is good, I explicitly said that ethics is a vewipoint from the perspective of evil. People who think they are good don't give a damn about ethics - because they are GOOD. If a person thinks they are right, or correct, or good - then there is no ethics. Moral consciousness disappears in consensus, in communitarian virtue, and in deconstruction as an ethics of infinite responsibility (whereby one can do whatever they want). All three traditions still maintain an appropriate attitude toward X or Y or Z as *the* attitude... (D's hauntology, H's binding bonding communicative action, G's idea of the good...).
> Sounds utterly tautological to me....
*ALL* theoretical frameworks are tautological. If I study religion, I presuppose that religion exists... If I struggle for freedom, I presuppose that freedom exists... which is why, as Adorno knew so well, we must always tarry with the negative. However the idea of radical contingency challenges this tautology... the concept's relation to itself as concept (form is the negative determination of appearance qua appearance). Despite the frozen conceptual wasteland... it moves. As Castoriadis says, time is nothing other than creativity.
> in fact, suspiciously like what you say about new age stuff: "'bad'
> theology - openly authoritarian or conservative frameworks which, without
> apology or explanation, assume the [superior] validity of one historical
> tradition in an ahistorical manner." Sheesh.
I was thinking of Milbank - who argues that there is no truth... everything is narrative and no narratives are better than any others - except the Christian narrative as carried by a hidden "phantom tradition" - it's the best narrative, and if you don't believe it, you go to hell - even though there is no truth, no better narratives than any others...
> Besides, why try to save psychoanalysis this way? Does its success as a
> critical language depend on, say, deconstruction's failure? I mean,
> accepting what you say about decon or Habermas, for example (tho both your
> characterization seem utterly wrong to me), why aren't those views
> (especially your characterization of Habermas) consistent with the absent
> center?
Because D and H both equate subjectivity with substance. H with communicative competence and D with what I'll ticklishly call spectre competence. There are no other games in town for these guys. But the subject is not substance.
> More importantly: what's so great about the absent
center? Where does that get you, exactly? Who cares?
This says nothing.
The support for our reality is fantasy. Our fantasies facilitate our enjoyment. The modernist political task here is to break the cycle, to interupt the mindless process and bring into consciousness the traumatic Real that we've been sitting on. What does this do? Exactly? It brings our dirty laundry into dialogue. Ultimately, the entire point of a psychoanalytic intervention is to move the conversation along and to encourage subjectivization, a taking responsibility for our enjoyment and its excess.
ken
PS. as for being Sokal'd ... I assure you that this is not a hoax <wink>.