No Sex Please - We're Post-Human!

Rob Schaap rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au
Tue Feb 13 05:37:04 PST 2001



>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 ...

Well, I guess essentially social beings are dependent by definition. Sometimes (oft-times) this ain't recognised (eg methodological individualism), so it's a sorta baby thing (if still hierarchical), and sometimes it is (lurv, team sports, terrace yobs, picket lines), so it ain't, and they're all beaut sensations, consciously sought and amplified. Well, for co-dependent types like me, anyway ...


>And then, what does Mansfield Park have to do with this?

Ain't Fanny's dependence on her fickle saviours kinda central to MP's plot? Unlike the other relationships alluded to in the book, the relationship that ultimately causes Fanny's coming and going is a hierarchical relationship. Class, no? Where's the fun bit?

Oh, and thanks for the Pistols' correction, Dennis. Reckon something of what I was trying to say survives the correction, though, doncha reckon?

'Night all, Rob.



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