On Tue, 17 Oct 2000 09:16:49 -0700 (PDT) Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> Identity does not "sustain itself"; identity is a social imperative. We have
to maintain a constant identity to function as units in the social structures
like school, prison, and the corporation.
You wrote: "Identity does not sustain itself." This is followed by, "We have to maintain a constant identity." "We" being, what? Let me answer that for you: a person with an identity --> ie. a person with an identity has to maintain a constant identity. In a line: Identity sustains itself. We are fragmented, but we sustain this incoherence through fantasy, by imaginarily connecting all the dots and dotting all the i's. Sure, our identities are 'made whole' through fantasy, but this fantasy is linked to desire and this desire contastly rends our symbolic network apart... hence, the subject is split between its various functions - some are demands, some are desires, some are needs. But we're pulled apart in the meantime.
> We need no "deep" psychodynamic explanation for why gender identity "sustains
itself"; the stability of gender identity is a necessary product of social
relations in a patriarchal society.
Gender identity isn't stable - that's why it is sustained through institutional and social pressure. If gender identity was stable, then instititions wouldn't have to work so hard to enforce this stability.
> My major beef with the "psychobabble" as ken puts it is this:
> the more abstract the theorizing about the unconscious and desire,
> the more attention tends to be shifted away from the issues of
> power and social relations I emphasize above.
Psychobabble does nothing *but* examine issues of power and social relation.
A man lives in a house. He redecorates. A couple days latter he collapses. What happened? As it turns out, in redecorating he'd move a picture from one wall to another, leaving a 'hole' where the picture formerly was. Without conscious effort, he had actually identified with this "misplaced picture" and was overwhelmed by the world - "nothing was in its proper place." He moved the picture back (and after a while was able to move it again) and was able to rework his paralytic trauma into something workable.
The American point to be made is that this makes for good conformity - fix 'em up and put them back to work. This is both trite and banal. The psychobabble point is that something happened in the scene - a series of associations that brought about a breakdown. I can't help but think that this "abstract theorizing" is a mighty friend in time of trouble.
ken