Ashcroft's prayer circle

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu May 17 12:45:44 PDT 2001


Doug claims that Lacan can explain in detail why 6 billion people move fiddle their hands in some way or other. I simply deny that the behavior _of individuals_ can be explained in so simple minded a fsshion. The finger twiddling of X must not contradict whatever is known about the human organism in general, but no amount of knowledge about the human organism (physiological, neurological, psychologial, what-have-you) can even begin to answer the foolish questions Doug and Zizek ask. Those questions are merely to distract attention from questions that can be (very roughly and imperfectly) answered and provide playdough to pass the idle time of intellectuals. The individual person simply does not possess the transparency you assume people possess. See Hamlet, who was a good deal wiser than Zizek -- and rather less arrogant about the scope of human knowledge.

Carrol

Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >If you go back through the LBO archives you should be able to find a
> >number of replies from Yoshie and me to Zizek's silly question about how
> >to explain all the weird things people do.
>
> Right. Humans are so transparent. You can tell exactly how they'll
> think from how they act, and how they act from...what was it Carrol?
> I forget now.
>
> Doug



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list