>> Ken wrote:
>> >However, this is *not* what I was saying. My reading goes something more
>like this: a woman who has an abortion because she takes it to be the WORD OF
>GOD (a command), and who doesn't want to have an abortion, but does so anyway,
>because it is the WORD OF GOD, against her desire not to have an abortion,
>can be said to be is acting in a psychotic manner.
>
>> Which woman ever had an abortion for the reason Ken imagines above?
>
>How many women have *avoided* having an abortion for the reason Ken imagines
>above? I should stress that acting in a psychotic manner does not indicate
>psychosis. We act psychotically every single day - whenever we purchase
>something or engage in waged labour - whenever we act as though we know.
Obviously, you are acting as though you know here. Now, pace left-Hegelians like you, X & -X are not symmetrical mirror images, so your inversion above is just an evasion of my question. While it is likely that some women avoided having an abortion because of their religious beliefs, I don't think there has been any woman who had an abortion because she believed it to be God's command. Why? There is no existing religion that says that a woman who aborts is acting according to God's will. I am saying that your theory of ethical choices is entirely disregarding reality.
>> >I would argue that anyone who supports the attitude that "X made me do it,
>even though I didn't want to, I did it anyway and enjoyed it and now I'm not
>responsible because 'I' didn't do it" is psychotic.
>
>> So according to Ken, _everything_ one does is an ethical choice. So if a
>> woman claims that she was forced to have sex, while being unable to show
>> visible physical scars to point to violence and coercion, she is actually
>> responsible for what she was forced to do and probably enjoyed it, too.
>
>Your suggestion is gross. One does not have a choice of whether to feel pain
>when one is being tortured. The very idea is absurd.
Suppose one is not actually tortured at present but has a good reason to believe that such will be the consequence of the refusal to do as commanded? Further, what if one has a good reason to fear such a consequence but no way to prove it to others? Many non-feminists wonder why women stay in abusive relationships, but that's because they don't understand that such women have a good reason to fear what may happen if they leave. Simplistic Lacanian-Zizekian theories of "ethical choices" can't accommodate reality.
>My point, and I'll
>explain this nicely despite having good reason not to do so, is that in
>ethical
>decisions we take responsibility for our enjoyment / trauma. In other words,
>we subjective it. The logic of the superego is to "enjoy!" So if you don't
>want to go to class - your superego cries out "You ought to go to class and
>like it!" This 'register' demands complete fatalistic conformity with
>everything around us in an impossible law-like fashion. And ethical response
>to violence includes taking responsibility (subjectivizing) ones reaction /
>relation to violence. NOTE: I'm not saying that people *ought* to be ethical
>and I'm not saying that ethics is a *good* thing. Such a position would
>simply
>privilege all over again the very standpoint I'm trying to critique.
I'm simply saying that it is ridiculous to conceive of everything one does as an ethical choice, as you are doing here. Why is it ethical to take "responsibility" for "trauma," fear, and other responses to violence? What can "responsibility" possibly mean in this context? I think you are more committed to "personal responsibility" than even Justin & Rob are, really.
Yoshie