On Wed, 12 Jul 2000 03:54:18 -0400 kelley <kwalker2 at gte.net> wrote:
> you explain what is as the result of a process of fufilling a basic human
need (a social function)
Ack! --> desire, he wrote.
> i was objecting to the language. invented? it was invented? by who? you
> write as if there is some conscious intention here to create something for
> the purposes of answering the question "when is it ok to drink"? it smacks
> of conspiracy theory.
It wouldn't be too difficult to trace the history of childhood, would it? Democracy was "invented" ... cars were "invented" ... science was "invented" ... childhood probably didn't "exist" until fairly recent (for reasons you point out below).
> more importantly, you wipe out complex processes involved: the competing
interests that coalesced and clashed over decades, the panic over children
working in factories that were seen as horrid dreadful places, the craft
unions seeking ways to tighten the labor pool, urbanization, the various
groups who wanted to change society in bigger ways but zeroed in on children
as a reasonable place to start (just do it for the kids!), the separation of
home and work, the technological changes that allowed for the dispersal of
activities out of the home and taken care of by "professionals" with
associated tenets of professionalism and expert knowledge. all of this can be
viewed through the lens of class conflict.
Right. This isn't inconsistent with regards to what I wrote, I just skipped the details (which, to be honest, I'm not familiar with).
> if that stuff mattered to you, i'd think that you would write about
> it. but you say we're just hemming and hawing over the dead body of
> history when we do so. you say you want to intervene in the joy i get out
> of taking the above position on why "childhood" came to be understood as a
> stage of life?
I was responding more to your criticism of being objectivistic, functionalistic, Jungian and transhistorical all at the same time. That was quite a load of criticism for a single point about the "lost object of desire" and the role of contingency in identity-formation, which I didn't really think was all that controversial.
> and who gets to intervene in the joy your derive from intervening? i mean,
how fucking arrogant can you get and all the while saying "i'm a blabbering
idiot, so i say nothing" which is supposed to be some sort of joke, yes?
I can say something that almost no one would disagree with (history is contingent, desire is fueled by something that we don't have, language is constitutive of self-consciousness), but if I phrase the idea in Lacanian terms there is often this... reaction ... against it. It is easier for me to say that "this says nothing" than to defend myself against the expected charge of being guilty of surrealistic scientism.
> aaahhhh screw it.
> childhood wasn't "invented" to fill some perceived lack.
Everything you mentioned above points to the idea that there was something lacking: ie. the concept of childhood. If the unions tried to tightened the labour poor - isn't this a response to a perceived "incorrectness" in the labour system? (something is lacking in the current system, so we'd better fix it). Our history is the history of human desire, with a good deal of reasoning and rationalization chucked in. If I'd said that labourers found greater autonomy and value in their work after the Black Plague, which coincided with a series of ideas about the relation between work and freedom, which partially resulted in the tightening of the labour pool through unionization - which had the auxilliary effect of raising the income of many families (which had increasingly become a unit through urbanization), giving them more free time and contributing to the rise of the bourgeois family and a public sphere to voice concerns - which, in part, gave rise to new notions about childhood, coupled with the rising popularity of an education system (seen to be important because of recent technological and scientific developments) ... you probably wouldn't object all that much (aside from the details not coinciding with anything remotely resembling the history books). But if I say - "childhood was invented" that's wrong (which is just a summary of all of these processes).
> firstly, i was taking issue with something else altogether: your claim
> that you see a film and see lacanian thematics. somehow or other, you
> maintain that others are circing a dead body taking up positions. and yet,
> you seem blithely unaware that your own is an interpretive position as to
> what you see in those films. how is it that what you see (and lacanian
> theory in general) escapes your own critique of those who "invented"
> childhood to fill a lack.
Well, you argued that I was transhistorical. My point is that there is no History to be trans- about. That's why my emphasis is more on imagined relations - and theories of imagination / ideology. And I completely agree that I'm in a very specific interpretive position - but we all see different things, and I think that it sometimes helps to intervene with a reading of something that doesn't express itself in the same way. Aside from that: I want everyone to be Lacanian. So I'm a shameless promotionist.
> aside from that: no, i'm afraid that you can't slip out of this "view from
> the object". when you seek to intervene--in the manner of critical
> theorists--you nonetheless uphold a social theory and, inevitably, take the
> view from the object. it is implicit in all critique. you cannot escape
> this. one thing i admire about the frankfurt buoyz is that, in the better
> moments, they rec ognized this. perhaps it sent them straight to a corner
> to investigate their navels but they did grapple with the problem.
Objectivating, not necessarily objectivist. Rocks doesn't desire things ("nothing is lacking in the real"). It is an impossible relation though. Because we all have different perspectives --> which communication depends on --> each of us will bring a perspective or viewpoint which (at least in our own eyes) has something to contribute to the other viewpoints - a correction, a further clarification, a critique... these things always "trump" one another. Your entire argument is that Ken is doing something that he doesn't know that he's doing - which is exactly what you are saying I should be doing.
> at any rate, embedded in the above is an epistemology and, implicitly, an
> explanation as to why folks aren't doing things the way you wish they
> would economists have same when they bemoan their findings that people
> don't act perfectly rationally. i can't recall what it is now , something
> like "satisficing" rather than "optimizing" their self interest. marxists
> have same when they explain the failure to engage in revolutionary
> overthrow of capitalism as false consciousness. you end up taking the view
> from the object no matter what whenever you engage in critique.
>From the object that is subject. If I was truly objectivistic I wouldn't bother
responding to criticism, since I would have assumed that my statments spoke the
truth. I try to avoid making this assumption, by the very fact that I'm still
hanging around. You argued that I was Jungian, and I specified the context of
my intervention and jabbed at Jung's theory about telepathy. You argued that I
was transhistorical, and I specified that I was talking about social
constellations, and contributed something to a theory of history which
problematizes historicist claims. You argued that I was objectivistic, and I
claimed that I didn't assume my method to be universal, nor leaping from the
viewpoint of an object - rather, I emphasized the subjective elements and the
role of the imaginary. And you claimed that I was a functionlist, and I
outlined how I didn't see things as being reduceable to cause and effect,
pointing to the primacy of desire over necessity, which has a different logic.
And now I'm an elitist epistemologist for responding to these charges.
Almost makes me kind of wish I'd left the religious crackpots question alone.
> well, if you aren't advocating an objectivist epistemology then you're
> advocating something else and you need to come to terms with it.
The only thing I advocate is communicative incompetence. Why do I have the feeling that if I simply shot off one-liners that I'd have less work to do? I could have simply cryed out "ha ho, that's a lost cause" and gone on my merry litle way. Still, I know you love to tease me with the keys - pointing out that the car in which I think I'm driving isn't actually running. And I understand that the only thing you've ever gotten out of Zizek is a good night sleep - but can I be blamed for trying? Well, yes, I suppose I can.
disfunctionalist, ken