-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Miles Jackson Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 10:38 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Freud
Okay, here's what bugs me about this kind of celebration of Freud:
1. It assumes that knowledge is a thing produced by some smart guy or gal, and we need to cherish that brilliant person's insights. In my view, this completely misrepresents how knowledge develops. Especially in scientific fields, knowledge is a communal process that emerges from collaborations and conflict among many different people; it is not a nugget of wisdom created by an individual.
** How is it that the mention and perhaps celebration of Freud is so easily raised and criticised as an exhortation of wisdom created by the individual? There is nothing about psychoanalysis that is individual - neither its methods nor its proposed object of inquiry. Analysis is a dialogical situation. Its findings are not so much the findings of the analyst as they are the sustained reflections of the analysand theorised (theorisation tends to be an expert culture, for various technical reasons). Why psychoanalytic theorists are identified as elitist when electricians are not is not the fault of psychoanalysts. Both operate like affinity groups or guilds. Freud happened to be the author of a good many works - but these are joint efforts. What's an analyst without an analysand? Psychoanalysis is radically communal, even for Freud - the analyst without an analyst. He worked in heavy collaboration with others and did not hesitate to make his findings public or defend them similarly. On this point Freud is probably more of an exception than the rule. Perhaps it is better to talk about the Freudian field... on this point I'll stand corrected.
2. Imagine if physicists took the attitude about Newton that Kenneth does about Freud above: "People say the Newtonian conception of time and space are dead, but Newton was brilliant, he was an important physicist, therefore we shouldn't replace his concept of time and space with new, incompatible ideas (e.g., curvature of spacetime around massive bodies)". Today's wisdom is tomorrow's naive misunderstanding. If that applies to the Newtonian conception of time and space, that surely applies to Freud.
** Of course if the general perception of Newton was that of an apocalyptic scientist with a messiah complex then I would imagine that a good many people would say: "You really need to read Newton." Errr.... (see below). Perhaps I should rephrase that. If the general perception of Newton was that his theory had something to do with the grazing patterns of ruminants.. then the followers and readers of Newton would be justified in saying: "You really need to read Newton!" Besides, only morticians say "Newton is dead." http://www.angelfire.com/retro/echobeach/Newtonreport.html This is in sharp contrast to the quite commonplace "Freud is dead." Why is that? Don't we tend to emphasise that something is dead only when, in this disenchanted world, we're presently seeing the ghost in the flesh? Doesn't "Freud is dead" actually mean "We should kill Freud" - and is this not a call for an intensification of the Freudian field rather than is eclipse? Augustine claimed that women were inferior creatures... and indicated that sexuality is the fall of man: "Sex is dead" or "sex is death" (right?). And wasn't the PRACTICE then to institute repentance, with the confession of sins being first and foremost. And the most salient sins that one should confess? The sin of lust, of course! Perhaps Augustine was a proto-feminist --> installing gender and sexuality as aspects of culture that must be continually reflected upon and criticised? And so it is with Freud and his readers. If Freud is dead, so is sex. Isn't this a symptom of a post-human era of technological reproduction more than anything else? We've got body trouble, and as Joanna noted, pills to make it worse. Sedation is psychoanalysis in reverse.
Freud is dead! LONG LIVE FREUD!!!
it really was broken when I borrowed it, ken
Newton's apocalypse is near February 25 2003
Sir Isaac Newton predicted the world would end in the year 2060, scribbling the date on a piece of paper, according to theories uncovered by academics in Jerusalem. The prophecy has been unearthed from little-known handwritten manuscripts in a library, a BBC documentary due to screen on Saturday will show. The pages show Newton's attempts to decode the Bible, which he believed contained God's secret laws for the universe. The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060. Newton, who died in 1727, is best known for discovering gravity - supposedly when an apple fell on his head. Voted among the 10 greatest Britons last year, he is credited with being the forefather of modern physics. But he was also a theologian and alchemist, who predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would follow plagues and war and would precede a 1,000-year reign by the saints on earth - of which he would be one. Newton's fascination with the end of the world, which has been researched by a Canadian academic, Stephen Snobelen, is to be explored in a documentary, Newton: The Dark Heretic, on BBC2 on March 1. "What has been coming out over the past 10 years is what an apocalyptic thinker Newton was," Malcolm Neaum, the producer, said. "He spent something like 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. But until now it was not known that he ever wrote down a final figure. He was very reluctant to do so."
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/24/1045935318204.html