Yoshie writes:
> >Baby humans are of course born this way as the product of their
> >species having biologically evolved into "naturally" symbolic,
> >social, creatures. This symbolic evolution made humans more open
> >and "undetermined," and made their childhoods exceptionally long,
> >more biologically and psychically "traumatic" and more deeply
> >dependent on the social/family formations they're born into.
>
> Why should dependence necessarily be experienced as "traumatic,"
> though? Isn't it the capitalist ensemble of social relations
> (which
> make "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham" the rule) that
> makes
> dependence -- which in itself can be a _pleasurable_ condition --
> "traumatic" for many? In other words, isn't the "trauma" (or
> stigma)
> of dependence a historically-bound experience? These are
> questions
> that have important implications for feminism & disability rights.
>
> Have you read Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych"? How about Jane
> Austen's _Mansfield Park_?
I'm prepared to bite here. What's great about dependence? Accepting that dependence is not a bad thing or an error, and that it can relieve one of less than wholly pleasant things -- like responsiblity for example [god i sound like sartre... well i don't care... it's not incomprehensible we might agree on *one* thing] what would be good about dependence?
babies are not, for me, dependent, because that's a relinquishment (precisely what's pleasurable about it)... they have a different engagement with others, but why make that a hierarchy? And don't tell me only the Satreans of the world make that a hierarchy -- to depend is to hang from, lean on, be determined by ...
And then, what does Mansfield Park have to do with this?
Catherine