On Mon, 16 Oct 2000 kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> Zizek has a review of Dennett's work in Cogito and the Unconscious,
> "Cartesian Subject versus Cartesian Theater."
>
> "Dennett is right in emphasizing how our conscious awareness is fragmentary,
> partial, discontinuous: one never encoutners "Self" as a determinate
> representation in and of our mind. However, is not the conclusionto be drawn
> from this, that the unity of the subject, that which makes him a One, is
> unconscious?" ...
>
> ken
>
Umm...no. We are socially (not psychically!) constrained to be unitary subjects. The cohesive, unitary subject is crucial to the functioning of our economic system, our political system, and our legal system (I love the way dissociative identity cases tie the court up in knots--how do we punish one alter for a crime without punishing the innocent alters?). Why Z and friends go searching in some abstract inner realm to understand an obvious social fact eludes me.
Miles