Deleuze & Guattari, Zizek on Arendt (More from Brennan)

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at arts.usyd.edu.au
Wed Jan 15 05:33:45 PST 2003


Quoting Grant Lee <grantlee at iinet.net.au>:


> > > perhaps we've reached an analytical brick
> > > wall, if you are saying there is no difference between
> events-in-themselves
> > > and their representation.
> >
> > well "no difference" is not the claim i would make
> > they can be different in their perception
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by this. That there is only a perceptual
> difference between events-in-themselves and their representation?

That's it -- my next project's definitely going to be on masochism.

Let's say I want to compare my trip to the beach and an email describing it, the collapse of the WTC and video of it, a particular case of crushing poverty and an analysis of it, my childhood and my memory of it, Lacan and someone's perception of his work, or a speech about something and what it purports to discuss. In each case I could say they event in itself and a representation of that are obviously qualitatively different. But in each case I could also argue that the event is only an "event" insofar as it is experienced through representation, and even through the demands of the historical and systemic ordering of representation. I know that's not a better explanation of what I meant... but at least it's differently worded, and comes with examples.

....
> > you have to give me an opportunity to obtain the
> > erasure of my transgression.
>
> I think I've got it now ... a hard ask, since it would have to involve
> something as traumatic as going to every Rabbitohs game this year *lol*.
> The Sydney Swans might be easier, although they are obviously not as "popular"
> in Sydney as RL.

What? Wow, that's savage. An entire season, for one post in which I failed to adequately inflect my response? One game would be extreme, given that it would condemn me to two hours minimum of boredom and frustration punctuated by painful embarrassment and bad childhood flashbacks (the "bad" is probably redundant there), bookended by probably an hour of travelling in close proximity to people who make me want to scream, cry, or intervene. I think I'd find a different confessor. Though, to be honest, I'm vaguely impressed.

. . . .
> There is also the argument that sport serves as a means of teaching
> discipline to a workforce (and by extension an army), which is fair enough,
> although I would have to say I think that what happens on the factory floor
> or behind the counter at Macdonalds is more relevant, simply because it is
> more typical of capitalist relations of production in general. And while
> the
> consumption of products of that factory or Macdonalds may well be
> "cultural"
> and while the way in which work is organised may reflect, in part, the
> broader culture, the overwhelming impetus for that work is not "culture".

But the football thing, not being perceived as training for labour, is so much more effective at doing it. Oh, the teamwork, the sportsmanship, the focus, the training regimens, the rhetoric of the self-made man, the separation of work and leisure, the staggering stupidity, the ethno/hetero/macho-centrism, the heroism of sheer bulk, the repetition, the repetition, the clothes (eww), the pie+stalebeer+vomit combination, the absence of necks and coherent speech on field and the absence of waists and a sense of proportion off field, the fucking cheer squads. Oh yeah, sorry, the topic was a whole capitalism thing, wasn't it.


> ... Good luck with the home hunting.

It's hideous. So much larger and less predictable than Melbourne.

Catherine

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