Yoshie asks:
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.
I agree there's too much of a bourgeois subject presumed in most Lacanian theorizing. It's a mixed package: on the one hand it challenges bourgeois folk theories of a person's core existing prior to insertion into a society/signification system and folk theories of egos as self-contained, etc. OTOH it presumes the structures and processes of subject formation are universal (Oedipal triangle, law of the father, etc.), when the processes are more variable.
And, to me, something about the threshold mirror phase, when the body-image is both biology and culture, makes it where Lacan's cup seems most provocatively half empty/half full. (Which is why I guess I was wistful Zizek didn't examine it more in a biology-themed piece.)
As for trauma "of" dependence, that wasn't quite what I was getting at. I mean there are some anxieties (and pleasures) that all kids face, having to do with similarities of cognitive and motor abilities at different points in the maturation timetable. As bio-symbol creatures, they all will "make something" out of these unfolding feelings/sensations, and of their process of becoming more separated and individuated as they become socialized. I agree that there's wide variation in how traumatic this has to be, and in the kinds of persons/subjects/selves they become, but I think it's heavy stuff, everywhere.
>Have you read Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych"? How about Jane
>Austen's _Mansfield Park_?
Ivan Ilych, yes, Mansfield Park, no.
Catherine writes:
>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 ...
Either my use of dependency was vague, or you're making a subtle point I'm not following. Infants, for all their enchanting engagements, are relatively helpless, biologically. It was a contrast to the young of other species, born with more organic co-ordination and integrity.
The relationship between babies and adults is hierarchical in the sense that it's the babies who are socialized, by adults, into a particular culture/social formation. Oh, and adults have a bit more power over children than vice versa. ...But I sense you're getting at something else.
Maureen