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Month: September 2013
While I was reading the texts of Freud and Lacan, I was thinking that Psychoanalysis and narrative are related in the process that both are created. In order to discover why a patient is experimenting some symptoms, the analyst has to begin taking elements of the conscious the get to the unconscious and recreate what is going on in it. In other words, the psychoanalyst tries to build up the story, which is behind the illness, it is, the elements that are working in the unconscious, and provoke anxiety, psychosis, hysteria, etc. in the conscious level.
The process of writing is similar: the author takes elements from the reality (a conscious world, we can say) to create his or her work. Once these elements are selected, he proceeds to make his tale or novel. Of course, the main difference between a writer and an analyst, is that the first one builds a work of fiction, and the last one –it is suppose- discovers a hidden reality. But, at the end, both create a story that is presented to someone else (the audience in the case of the writer and the patient in the case of the analyst).
In the fragment of the Interpretations of Dreams that we read, for example, Freud describes an own dream and some from his patients. What he does in his analysis is create relations between the elements of the dream that are condensed, searching for the dream-thoughts. In his analysis what he does is create a story based on a specific reality. The same happens when in a process of psychoanalytical analysis, the analyst recreates the childhood experiences of the patient. He has to explore in the past, rebuild the traumatic experiences that stayed in the unconscious and then come to the conscious in form of mental or physical illness.
It is interesting that some of the fiercest critics that are made to Psychoanalysis are that in some cases the analyst builds up a false story based on the information given by the patient. For example, trying to understand which trauma that remains in the unconscious is causing a mental illness, the therapist could determine, by mistake, that the patient suffered of some kind of abuse in his childhood that is blocked in his unconscious. Then, the patient blames to whom he or she considers that committed the abuse and a terrible conflict –now in the reality, but, paradoxically, false- arises and the patient ends suffering more.
I had heard of Freud before but had never read his work so this weeks reading was quite interesting to me. Freud is definitely very knowledgeable (as Lacan admits) and is also quite clear about what he believes. Something that stayed with me was the meaning of uncanny (heimlich) which can be both familiar and something kept out of sight or concealed. His example of Hoffman’s story The Sand-Man brought back memories of the Sand-man when I was a little girl. But, I can honestly say that this version of the Sand-man was very different than what I experienced as a child. My Sand-man actually helped us go to sleep by sprinkling magic sand on us, he didn’t come by, throw sand in our eyes, and take them out. Even when thinking about the Sand-man the song Mister Sandman by The Chordettes comes into mind:
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Give him two lips like roses and clover (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over.
Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
(scat "bung, bung, bung, bung, ...")
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him the word that I'm not a rover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over.
Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
(scat "bung, bung, bung, bung, ...")
Mr. Sandman (male voice: "Yesss?") bring us a dream
Give him a pair of eyes with a "come-hither" gleam
Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci
And lots of wavy hair like Liberace
Mr Sandman, someone to hold (someone to hold)
Would be so peachy before we're too old
So please turn on your magic beam
Mr Sandman, bring us, please, please, please
Mr Sandman, bring us a dream.
In the song, Mr. Sand-man is asked to bring about a lovely dream about a boy. This “new” version is definitely uncanny to me and its interpretation by Freud is as well. I would hate to think what kind of eyes The Chordettes boy would bring….I suppose what struck me most about Freud is that he believes that most things refer back to a sexual nature which I am not so sure about. In the Sand-man, I understand but in the other examples sometimes I think he is stretching it a bit.
As I continued my readings, Deleuze and Guattari then led me to the wonderland (or maze…) of lines and plateaus. I understood where they were coming from in saying that a book was an assemblage but then as they went into lines, rhizomes, and plateaus, my mind went into Math mode where I was basically visualizing a plane with lines going everywhere and then this plateau. The lines are said to be concepts. Ok, I get that. But I feel like I need more examples to truly understand the whole thing because they believe that the rhizome has no beginning or end but something had to have started everything….so what about that?
I had heard of Freud before but had never read his work so this weeks reading was quite interesting to me. Freud is definitely very knowledgeable (as Lacan admits) and is also quite clear about what he believes. Something that stayed with me was the meaning of uncanny (heimlich) which can be both familiar and something kept out of sight or concealed. His example of Hoffman’s story The Sand-Man brought back memories of the Sand-man when I was a little girl. But, I can honestly say that this version of the Sand-man was very different than what I experienced as a child. My Sand-man actually helped us go to sleep by sprinkling magic sand on us, he didn’t come by, throw sand in our eyes, and take them out. Even when thinking about the Sand-man the song Mister Sandman by The Chordettes comes into mind:
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Give him two lips like roses and clover (bung, bung, bung, bung)
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over.
Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
(scat "bung, bung, bung, bung, ...")
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen
Give him the word that I'm not a rover
Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over.
Sandman, I'm so alone
Don't have nobody to call my own
Please turn on your magic beam
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
(scat "bung, bung, bung, bung, ...")
Mr. Sandman (male voice: "Yesss?") bring us a dream
Give him a pair of eyes with a "come-hither" gleam
Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci
And lots of wavy hair like Liberace
Mr Sandman, someone to hold (someone to hold)
Would be so peachy before we're too old
So please turn on your magic beam
Mr Sandman, bring us, please, please, please
Mr Sandman, bring us a dream.
In the song, Mr. Sand-man is asked to bring about a lovely dream about a boy. This “new” version is definitely uncanny to me and its interpretation by Freud is as well. I would hate to think what kind of eyes The Chordettes boy would bring….I suppose what struck me most about Freud is that he believes that most things refer back to a sexual nature which I am not so sure about. In the Sand-man, I understand but in the other examples sometimes I think he is stretching it a bit.
As I continued my readings, Deleuze and Guattari then led me to the wonderland (or maze…) of lines and plateaus. I understood where they were coming from in saying that a book was an assemblage but then as they went into lines, rhizomes, and plateaus, my mind went into Math mode where I was basically visualizing a plane with lines going everywhere and then this plateau. The lines are said to be concepts. Ok, I get that. But I feel like I need more examples to truly understand the whole thing because they believe that the rhizome has no beginning or end but something had to have started everything….so what about that?
Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.
The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).
Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)
Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?
Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?
Deleuze and Guattari’s defying discussion on the rhizomatic mode of organization as a more attainable way to explain the being, the production of knowledge and the way to stand before the State is very controversial. Their critique to the traditional arboresque, hierarquical and Hegelian model to understand the world has clear echoes with Derrida’s concepts of differance (despite some differences, such as mapping and trace) and deconstruction. Both play with the notion of systems of signifiers and signifieds not being unequivocally correspondent as well as of the potentiality of multiplicity, a continuous process of re-invention that shakes up static notions and structures internalized by the individual.
The analogy with the biological term, rhizome, suits the constant renewal of identity proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This is explained in the beginning of the excerpt when they justified the use of pseudonyms, “To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think.(…) To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves.” (378) (I can see also the ghost of Barthes wandering around here).
Subjectivity is then progressively constructed in enunciation; so, in that sense, language and signification has a plasticity feature that as part of the proposed system would enable alternations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the plateaus, if I’m on the right track. My question is more about the abstract concept of “line of flight” because according to Deleuze and Guattari “Multiplicities are defined by the outside: by the abstract line, the line of flight or deterritorialization according to which they change in nature and connect with other multiplicities. (…) The line of flight marks: the reality of a finite number of dimensions that the multiplicity effectively fills.” (382)
Is the rhizoid-type-of-book (as opposed to the root-book) that has the potential of outlining or suggesting the lines of flight (but the authors said a book has no subject or object) or is in the individual in a virtual dimension who defines those lines?
Perhaps I am still thinking in terms of a system with a unity, a center and static referents, because I don’t see the empirical application of Deleuze and Guattari other than comparing the rhizomatic structure to the Internet. The power of imagination is infinite, but how can we be nomads or think about multiplicity in a reality that is still concrete and use binary oppositions?
Categories
Ode à Lacan
I have to agree with everyone in saying that Derrida, is difficult to understand!
Here is one quote I found specially challenging “Differences are thus “produced” – differed — by differance” what does this mean? Well, what I understood is that is all a big circle of differences. This “differance” is what produces things, like language that is it is said that first there are differences and then the thing with out essence is visible!!! Still this was hard to comprehend for me so I had to look at other sources to understand this concept of how differences makes something that is not really there (a ghost of what something is) and that it has no essence visible and what allowed me to understand this difficult concept was a simple example/metaphor and at the same time reminded me of my childhood. In the book an intro to lit. Theory they compared this concept of diffarance to the flip books that most of us made as children, and the explanation was that only the slight differences in drawing is what made us see the illusion of movement. What we saw had really no essence the only thing that allowed of to visualize this was the difference in the drawings. And with this metaphor I was able to better comprehend what Derrida was trying to say of course this is only one of the manny aspects he talks about. But for me it was one of the hardest to comprehend.
Categories
Derrida????
I have to agree with everyone in saying that Derrida, is difficult to understand!
Here is one quote I found specially challenging “Differences are thus “produced” – differed — by differance” what does this mean? Well, what I understood is that is all a big circle of differences. This “differance” is what produces things, like language that is it is said that first there are differences and then the thing with out essence is visible!!! Still this was hard to comprehend for me so I had to look at other sources to understand this concept of how differences makes something that is not really there (a ghost of what something is) and that it has no essence visible and what allowed me to understand this difficult concept was a simple example/metaphor and at the same time reminded me of my childhood. In the book an intro to lit. Theory they compared this concept of diffarance to the flip books that most of us made as children, and the explanation was that only the slight differences in drawing is what made us see the illusion of movement. What we saw had really no essence the only thing that allowed of to visualize this was the difference in the drawings. And with this metaphor I was able to better comprehend what Derrida was trying to say of course this is only one of the manny aspects he talks about. But for me it was one of the hardest to comprehend.
I’m not sure of many things when it comes to this week’s readings, but I am indubitably sure of one thing:
I love Barbara Johnson.
I love her because after struggling through 62 pages of Derrida, it was like coming home to a glass of warm milk and a Snuggie to have Barbara pat you kindly on the shoulder and say, “Here: in case you didn’t get it, this is what you just read.” I love her because she brings in the ideas of Saussure and Barthes in addition to Derrida – her piece put things in context, and felt like a very comprehensive, understandable compilation of theories about writing. But most of all, I love her because she provided a missing link between the Derrida readings and the Lyotard and Baudrillard readings that I would have otherwise missed. At the end of her essay, she highlights that it’s reading, not just writing, that gives us the ability to translate differance, traces, and other semiological terms into the “politics of language,” to eventually begin to question the roles of things like power and authority in society.
Both of the following readings then address power and rhetoric. Lyotard focuses on the way power is “legitimized,” – through the definition and manipulation of “reality.” Baudrillard, in turn, argues that reality is constantly being replaced, that new “signs” are developed as images that attempt to alter and replace what is real with what is not real.
Therein lies the one question I’ve wrestled with that Johnson, unfortunately, did not answer for me. What is reality? Does reality actually exist? Baudrillard would say no, since he suggests the following:
“The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks, and command models – and with this it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer envelopped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all.” (Rivkin and Ryan 366).
This sounds a lot like Derrida’s line of logic to me – if there’s no true opposite of reality, then on principle, reality cannot exist, right? There is no differance, and as such, reality ceases to be. What, then, is this web of connecting “images” that are left in its wake? We are cognizant beings, and there is a world that exists – I can see it, I can feel it. There must be something “real” about the world.
That being said, our perception of the world around us is ever-changing. Derrida cites this beautiful quote from Rousseau: “We are born and die every moment of our life” (Ibid 326). Is it possible, then, that because we’re forever moving forward, away from the present, that the same could be true of reality? Maybe it’s not that reality isn’t ‘real,’ it’s just that – much like our constant inability to grasp the present – reality is simply something we cannot grasp because it’s always evolving.
Barbara didn’t answer this one for me, but I’d love to see us explore more of what the other authors have to say about this in class today.