Oh come on. Wojtek said the other day that people need mystery. If they live like he wants them to, above, then they'll shit all over himself -- I mean, themselves. (somedays, my typhos are fortuitous, eh?)
It's The Two Wojteks! And, I believe, his theme song should be something like this:
"I have a can of shit. Can you open it?"
Speaking of, I wrote about this recently when The Bitch got serious for a moment and replied to A on splitting, reparation, depression, etc. as it related to her thoughts on Marx's letter to Arnold Ruge, a letter which Althusser points to as significant to Marx's break with Hegel, the infamous split in Marx that some point to as an important way to understand the various tribes among Marxists, Marxits, Marxishes, and Heavy Users of Marx.
Anyway, I thought about the list because I think the passage inthe book is useful to understanding the productivity of shame and the regressiveness of guilt, issues about why things never change (constant recycling), etc. etc. and whether things like patriotism and shame at the behavior of a nation are phenom that can be progressive or are only ever regressive.
And frankly, given the phenom of depressive marxism doug talks about, and the slew of extremely depressed people it seems i encounter all the time, maybe it's worth reading no matter what your interests are or where your politics are:
It's a shame http://blog.pulpculture.org/2005/11/01/its-a-shame/
Over the weekend, a friend couldn't figure out why she was crying over something that happened years ago, a memory that surfaced adjacent to what otherwise might have seemed a happy situation. Someone she'd hurt a month ago (the person had also hurt my frienda virtual gang bang of pain goin' on there) revealed that all was well between them. ...
I decided to read a passage of the book, to help her understand why I thought she needed to stop obsessing about the memory and get at what was really eating her: her own anxiety about the friend she'd hurt and fear that the olive branch, while welcome, might end up making her feel exposed to potential pain once again.
<...>
The Reparative Process
The sense of shame appears to have several roots. One is shamed by the damage done to others, particularly when these others have contributed positively to one's life; one shamed by one's pettiness, and one is shamed by the discovery of one's defensiveness, of the lies one tells to oneself. ...
In a third, key element of the reparative process, shame leads one to repair one relationship to others, but not in order to ask forgiveness. When we act out of guilt, we affirm our insignificance (emphasis added): We cannot transform the feeling that we are unworthy, and we require that others more powerful than we are to tolerate our inadequacies. In contrast, when we act out of shame, we affirm our value to others by offering something of value to them. In such a situation, we do not see the other person as all powerful, as one who can either punish or forgive, bur rather as someone whom we have hurt. We thus overturn our experience of being inadequate by being adequate and important to that person.
Completely Shameless Bitch,
Culture Lab | Pulp Culture Collective
http://www.pulpculture.org http://blog.pulpculture.org