Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> >On Sun, 15 Oct 2000 10:33:34 -0500 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > You mean desire delinked from any object of desire? ... Terror ...
> >
> >The object of desire does not exist, it is imagined - fantasized. Desire is
> >sustained by precisely this imagined object. So desire does not exist apart
> >from the desired object, which does not exist. Truth delinked from practice is
> >terror, right?
Not quite. I meant such truth could only be supported by terroristic means. I read an interesting study once (I forget where) arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity had necessitated the Inquisition -- it was a "Truth" that could only be maintained through force. Belief in the Trinity was a necessary (and sometimes even sufficient) basis for unity with God. Disbelief in the Trinity was a sufficient condition for separation from God. Or in other terms, theological statements re the Trinity are not about a shared reality but about *you*, the would be communicant.
Psychoanalysis, like the Catholic Church in the U.S., does not wield state power, so its terroristic essence is concealed, as is that ot the Church. Nevertheless, nothing but an Ipse Dixit sanctions its vearious dogmas.
> Truth is the truth of desire, not a corresponding state of
> >affairs between language and reality, since such a perspective assumes that
> >language itself is not part of the objects of reality. The critique of pure
> >desire is the critique of a desire that desires an object which does not exist
> >(which is the foundational point of desire itself). The critique, in other
> >words, is always the critique of material substance, both at it
> >constitutes the
> >subject and as we encounter it objectively.
It is clear why a literary criticism with its (hidden) roots in the New Criticism should be attracted to psychoanalysis. The New Criticism and Psychoanalysis both depended upon the manipulation of words and ideas regarded as having a reality of their own, independent from human practice or human social relations. (And John Crowe Ransom, speaking of Cleanth Brooks, noted the relationship of Brooks's criticism to biblical criticism in southern churches.)
Carrol
>
> >
> >ideologically inclined,
> >ken
>
>
> Well, you are ideologically de-linked from reality, I'm inclined to say.
>
> Yoshie