When Alec wrote about his experience of heroin addiction, he put it in the past tense,
whether he was theorizing it...
e.g., * On one level, my experience of using was that of a kind of deconstitution of subject, a movement of psychic implosion where boundaries gave way, where the meeting ground of subject & society was renegotiated. Where the subject, the private, consolidated the social, the public, to it's body, thereby 'stealing' it's social nature (not letting it be it, not being a social being)."
<http://www.marxmail.org/archives/august98/zizek.htm> *
or speaking personally about it...
e.g., * Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
. The difference
> is rooted in
> biology: "when you get angry, your heart rate and
> blood pressure go
> up, as do the levels of your energy hormones,
> adrenaline, and
> noradrenaline.... Anger is a natural, adaptive
> response to threats;
> it inspires powerful, often aggressive, feelings and
> behaviors, which
> allow us to fight and to defend ourselves when we
> are attacked"
That's why I loved shooting dope. These days, I just can't get sleep.
Alec
<http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0108/1981.html> *
Struggle in the present progressive did make itself felt, especially when he didn't directly refer to addiction:
At 9:48 PM -0700 8/2/01, Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>Delivered-To: orb-furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 21:48:41 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com>
>Subject: bye
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Sender: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
>Well, we gave it a try.
>
>Adios.
At 10:49 PM -0700 8/2/01, Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>Delivered-To: orb-furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 22:49:53 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com>
>Subject: hi
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Sender: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
>What a shitty night.
>
>And I thought bad to worse was supposed to be a good
>thing.
>
>Alec
At 11:12 PM -0700 8/10/01, Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>Delivered-To: orb-furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 23:12:55 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com>
>Subject: re: wishes (was Re: Johnny Got His Gun (was Re: Beeson &
>Singer/ prenatal diagnosis)
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Sender: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Dalton Trumbo's
>> _Johnny Got His
>> Gun_. Here's an excerpt from the book:
>>
><http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/General/JohnnyGotHisGun.html>.
>
>Why bother?
>
>Alec
>
>Confidence Man
At 11:10 PM -0700 8/17/01, Alec Ramsdell wrote:
>Delivered-To: orb-furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
>Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 23:10:31 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Alec Ramsdell <aramsdell at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Re: Compassionate Cannibalism
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Sender: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> >Yoshie said:
>> >
>> >>While Conklin takes the Wari' stories of "the old
>> days when the
>> >>others ate the body" at their face value, i.e., as
>> reliable evidence
>> >>of former practice voluntarily provided by native
>> informants, I think
>> >>that it is very likely that the stories of ritual
>> cannibalism are a
>> >>mix of:
>> >
>> >>(A) a symbolic way of saying that what existed
>> before "three out of
>> >>every five" Wari' died of infectious diseases
>> brought by soldiers,
>> >>missionaries, civil servants, & (very likely)
>> anthropologists was
>> >>better than what they have now;
>> >
>> >>and (B) a performance that the Wari' -- now
>> dependent upon "aid
>> >>provided by Protestant missionaries, employees of
>> the government
>> >>Indian agency, and Catholic priests," as well as
>> upon a never-ending
>> >>stream of anthropologists who come with grant
>> monies to study them --
>> >>(consciously or unconsciously) put on, exchanging
>> stories of ritual
>> >>cannibalism for means of survival, basically
>> giving outsiders what
>> >>they want.
>> >
>> >What makes you suspect the Wari' are BSing the
>> author?
>> >
>> >Todd
>>
> > Check out the work of Alessandro Portelli (a review
>> of his work is
>> available at
>> <http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/0103/0882.html>).
>
>Yes, home is so sad.
>
>By the time you
>read this it will be too late.
>
>Alec
His 17 Aug 2001 post disturbed me so much that I looked him up in the directory and called him. I was so relieved when he called back.
I can't help thinking that I should have done something other than simply e-mailing back -- I don't know what -- when he wrote me offlist on 28 Sep 2002. -- Yoshie
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