The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with David Metzger about his book The Lost Cause of Rhetoric: The Relation of Rhetoric and Geometry in Aristotle and Lacan beginning September 10th, 1996.
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 1996 11:44:41 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: REINVW: Second Announcement
New Re/inter/Views to begin.
The L*st PRE*TEXT, now associated with the Spoon Collective, will begin on September 10th a Re/INter/VIEW with ...
David Metzger and his book The Lost Cause of Rhetoric: The Relation of Rhetoric and Geometry in Aristotle and Lacan. (Southern Illinois UP, 1995).
SIUP has given us permission to reproduce electronically the first chapter of David's book, which can now be found at The Lost Cause.
David has agreed to begin on or about September 10th.
If I can be of any help in the meantime, please drop me a private note: sophist@utarlg.uta.edu
If anyone would like to sub*scribe or unsub*scribe, please write to: majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu and leaving the subject heading blank, send the following message: sub*scribe pr*etext your address
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******
So join us for our kick-off, l*ist-warming party and some protalk with David. And vvhatever else!
Forward this message to other l*sts or individuals, if you wish.
******
victor
sophist@utarlg.uta.edu
From: ENGROSEN@acs.eku.edu
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 09:43:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: REINVW: Announcement
Victor:
Great book idea. Looking forward to reading the book and the interview.
Did you know that Henri Bergson, whose critique of geometry (which drew on Poincare) anticipates contemporary complexity theory in both physics and cognitive science, did his masters thesis on the idea of place in Aristotle? He also won the French national prize in mathematics in his youth, which was when Poincare became aware of the young philosopher.
mer
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 10:07:36 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: REINVW: Announcement
Hi, mer. No, this is new to me. What relevant works by Bergson, in translation or otherwise, are available on the specific topic you mention (geometry).
I got interested in Bergson a few years ago when KB (in LASA) sets B aside for having dismissed the negative since it does not exist in nature. And then, of course, I found Deleuze who has written extensively here and there on B. But the geometry/Aristotle connection is new to me. Any additional into would be appreciated.
looking forward to the discussion,
v
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 10:55:17 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re/enter/view...Metzger, The Lost Cause...
I would like to begin the re/inter/view with David Metzger and his book _The Lost Cause of Rhetoric: The Relation of Rhetoric and Geometry in Aristotle and Lacan_. (Foreword by Jasper Neel) Carbondale: SIUP, 1995.
For those of you new to the list, the first chapter of the book can be
found at the PRE*TEXT website:
http://jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU:80/~spoons/pretext/
Once at the webpage, click on REINVW and you will find at the bottom of
the page a link to the chapter. From there you can download the chapter.
Also, for those who have been active in discussions on this l*st and for those who are new to the l*st, BE AWARE that your posts are automatically sent through to all subscribers. They are no longer read by a moderator and then reposted to the entire l*st.
Also, please do not send messages to this l*st to be un*subscribed or sub*scribed. Send such messages to me personally: Sophist@utarlg.uta.edu.
If you should want to un*subscribe, then, please send a message to: majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu and leaving the subject heading blank, send the following message: un*subscribe pre*text your address
...do **not** of course use this quasi-Lacanian symbol * . As I have explained before I have to use the symbol * in this message; if not, then, the message, given MajorDomo, will not go through but will be delivered to our switchboard and then will have to be reforwarded.
In past re/enter/views, we have tried to use a basic format for separating questions out from coments. When asking a question, please try to set it off with a series of these underscorings _, such as _____So David what do you think? Also please try to put helpful information in the subject heading such as your initials and the topic of your question. And of course, please sign your name.
I will send out the first question on a separate post, illustraiting this simple process.
The pace of re/inter/views should be a natural one, which means the questions and responses can be either fast and furious or slow and thoughtful. As before, the reinvw (the questions, comments) is in a roundtable style. Therefore, feel free to carry on a conversation, or put questions to any and everyone on the list, not just to David.
One other thing: For those interested in the next re/inter/view, we will be conducting one with John Schilb, U of Maryland.
As usual, if I can be of any help, please drop me a note.
Victor
Sophist@utarlg.uta.edu
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 12:11:05 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>dm: counting
David, you deal with numbers, counting, etc., a bit in your book. It's been written that Lacan was very interested in counting and that he often asked his interlocutors, "How far can you count?" Ellie has an article on this issue of counting, as you well know. And Schneiderman writes of it, etc. And I have been concerned with it in relation to Third Sophistics. There is a considerable amount of stuff published on how (far) the so-called ancients could count (this is an issue in the dialogue the *Sophist.*) Counting, accounting for, are often equated with the word "logos." Some contemporaries say that there is nothing beyond the count of three (M. Duchamp). Etc., etc. Therefore, David,
_____How far *can* you and *do* you count?
And of course, please provide us with an explanation, if you so desire.
victor
From: "Michael T. Harper"
David,
I was wondering why you chose Aristotle rather than Plato as a classical
analogue to Lacan. In many ways, it strikes me that Plato's discourse on
desire in the _Phaedrus_ and as part of Diotima's speech in the _Symposium_
directly ties into Lacan's theorizing desire as lack (granted, Plato's theory
of desire gets worked through Hegel and then Kojeve before it reaches Lacan).
Both Plato and Lacan seem to suggest that desire arises out of a lack. In
Plato, the lack seems to be a whole self, and in Lacan, it seems to be the
mother (though this is an oversimplification of both).
Anyway, I was wondering if you could comment on this.
Thank you,
Todd Harper
From: ENGROSEN@acs.eku.edu
Hi Victor:
If its ok to intrude so early on the conversation, i thought your use of
the duchamp quote (damn I can't FIND it right now! ;-)) was apt:
On one, two three.....
He's heavily invested in Poincare's critique of geometry, and especially
the three body problem, which we now see (post Jurassic butterflies etc)
as the origin of the concept of "sensitive dependence on initial
conditions."
The three body problem puts the lie to the "mastery" of calculus over
basic dynamical events, with the number after three implying infinite
complexity. So nevermind the problem that thermodynamics poses for the
classical frame, the frame itself is fraught with problems.
Here we are back to the coincidence of mid-late 19thC simultaneous
interests in entropy, trope theory, history and the sophists.
mer
From: Diane Davis
David,
I've enjoyed rereading your book in the last few days. I have loads of
questions, and am anxious to get be able to talk with you about your
work. I'll try, however, to limit myself to one question at a time. :)
The first one that seems to want to be asked deals with Derrida and
presence. You suggest that both Descartes and Derrida privilege a
certain kind of infinity--Descartes privileges the infinity of the one
(metaphor); Derrida privileges the infinity of the many (metonymy).
This seems tricky to me. So let me first ask you the obvious question...
____How are you defining 'infinity' here?
For Descartes, it seems to me, infinity would be tied to METAphysics.
But for Derrida, infinity seems tied to the physical...more
specifically, to finitude...to that endless play of differences
(différance) from which we must theorize UP to get generalizations.
Derrida, as I hear him, would buy into infinity only inasmuch as it is
inscribed within the excesses of finitude. Infinite regress would seem
not a problem for finitude but rather one that is born at the moment one
begins to take finitude into metaphysics--to *infinitize* finitude, to
theorize up from its excesses.
When, in _Of Spirit_, Derrida says that the truth of the truth "belongs
to the beyond," I hear him say it "belongs to excess." That is, a la
Nietzsche: "excess reveals itself as truth." I don't hear this as a
metaphysical or mystical statement. I don't hear it as a metaphor for an
"identificatory limit." What are you hearing that I don't hear?
Lay it on me. :)
ddd
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
David, When I read your book from front dust cover, through the foreword,
introduction, chapters, WC, index, to the back dust cover, I felt that I
had gone through several different (rather different) contexts and
experiences. This statement does not capture what I am alluding to. Of
course, a reader might expect this kind of trip through a good book, and I
find your book a 'good' (and necessarily evil) one.
To capture what I am alluding to, let me explain it this way:
After reading the dust cover blurbs, I read Jasper's foreword, which
establishes a context for the book. Then I read your introduction. There is
a certain harmony between the two, but there is an interesting disharmony
as well. And strangely enough, there is a disharmony between the foreword
and introduction, on the one hand, and the book, on the other.
These disharmonies are not necessarily bad in any sense of what is or
should be an acceptable writing protocol, whether traditional or
experimental (avant-garde). And obviously, you, I assume, had nothing to do
with what is on the dust jacket or in Jasper's foreword. Therefore, please,
this is not to make a criticism, but more to speak *a curiosity* that I
have with this book.
I am not going to be able to give you lots of specific examples (of what?),
but here are a few.
---I don't know what to make of Jasper's foreword. I thought I knew when I
read it, but after reading your contribution to the book, which is what we
call *the book,* I was and still am not sure, What Jasper is saying. Now,
it so happens that Jasper is on the PRETEXT list and he can pop in at
anytime and speak his mind about the foreword and its dis/content, etc. But
I am not hailing him to make an appearance. If he wants to, that's cool;
but an appearance would be neither here nor there or anywhere in relation
to my point here. What am I alluding to? Specifically, Jasper's view of
*readers* in our field, then, his view of himself as a reader, me
(parenthetically) as a writer, others as writers, you as a writer of this
book, and then finally Derrida as a writer. And then towards the almost
conclusion, Japser says, you write "better than Derrida." Now forewords are
NOtorious for being examples of epideictic (panajeerick) discourse, and so
the conventions of that genre might explain a lot in terms of praise and
blame, etc. Or, shucks, Perhaps there is NOthing at all here but my
alluding to a lack of another un/kind.
_____Who could presume to know? Could you? , if we reverse tables, as a
reader of comments about your own writing? (This is not just a cute
question, but a trick one, right? And I am not alluding to the w/hole
problem of the genre of forewords/prefaces, etc.)
Well, I have said NOthing so far! ("something can function and not exist"!?)
---Next, I read your introduction, and in the first sentence you start
alluding (knowingly?) to the Heideggerian problematic: "keeping the
question [of Being] alive." Parallel to this opening statement is an
'adventure' into the question of 'What is X?,' and then closing the page
(xi) is a wonderful statement about rhetoric, "rhetorical studies in the U.
S. is to become, like catfish in the amazon River, only bigger with age,
not better."
The two topoi/thematics, thus far, are bigger and (not) better.
**You are not as big as Derrida is in the writing about discourse, but you
are better!
**Rhetoric is going to get bigger in the U. S. but not better.
And then there is some talk about _dunamis_ (power) and impotence!
Of course, all this becomes greatly enhanced when you talk about *zero* as
a third term (a mis/representation of an excluded middle [muddle] that
always returns as desire and/or symptoms). As a third term, Zero, is
extremely powerful while perpetually impotent.
If rhetorical studies could simply Real/ize this zero it would become even
bigger but not (in a disciplinary sense, or metadisciplinary sense) better.
And thank the gods, goddesses, and Tiresias for all that!
Now what have I (not) presumed to have said with this not so cute, for the
most part, gibberish?
The book seems (is!) greatly indebted to the Negative. There is something
but it is nothing; there is nothing but it is something. By now a
commonplace topos: absence is presence; presence, absence. Out of the
impossible comes the possible! (Again, this is not a criticism!! Don't
identify what I am saying as a slam. Slam, I (h)am (not)!) For the most
part, this Zero is where we dwell, no doubt about it? And yet...
My question, David, is ...
_____What would the other, non-Aristotelian _dunamis_ be like and without
the Negative. (Now, I know, the whole point here is that Zero is excess,
etc. But I ain't talkin' about an idea of excess predicated on Zero! For
Lacan, excess is the impossible! I am not alluding to an impossible that
gives us the possible. I am not talking about Negative and Positive and
then Zero as the middle term. I can't use the Symbolic as a means of
talking about the excluded; for if I do, as Lacan does, then, yes, I would
be talking about Nothing! Modernist JCage that I would be! And have been
here to illustrate the pointlessness of it all!)
AND SO, one difference, or place to rethink this whole notion of Rhetoric
as lack ... I am not suggesting that it is what the profession variously
says IT IS!! ... Because I believe, as I said in 1987 in _RR_, we are a
"nondiscipline" and it's in our libidinal, productive interests to be a
nondiscipline!-- ... and so one 'place' to rethink this whole notion of
Rhetoric as lack is no longer, as D&G suggest, to think of Desire as
acquisition (of knowledge), but Desire as production (but not of
knowledge/NOledge). (See AO, 25-27). Affirmatively Forget the olde
Aristotelian knowing, doing, and making! Which probably will need some
explaining here, but I have gone on ... enough.
(Actually, what I really want to ask you is ...
This Lack ... their absence but powerful presence ... is a Real mystery for
me as a reader!)
_____Have I CAUSED enough trouble so that we can talk?
Some more later,
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Dear Michael:
Plato made too much of the *unconscious.* And I don't think the
unconscious has a person's best interests in mind. To its credit, the
unconscious does baby sit *lack.* This isn't to say that the
unconscious can recognize lack as such. But it wanders about the
house until the house disappears, absolutely certain that the
antecedent conditions for the *absent* baby (a.k.a *lack*) obtain.
So, where's the baby? Plato's Answer: it's in the cave taking a
bath. Question: Was Plato ever able to find the cave? No, he
thought the cave was a baby. Plato, then, constructs a house out of
love/hate/ignorance, so that he can wander around in it forever, like
the unconscious, looking for a baby (a.k.a. *lack*).
So, a book about Plato and Lacan would provide an object lesson in how
transference (love/hate/ignorance) makes a reality out of the
unconscious--the subject of Lacan's *Seminar VIII*. Lacan also
provides an extended reading of *The Symposium* in that seminar. And
he has a few things to say about Plato in *Seminar XI* (translated as
*The Four Fundamental Concepts*).
During the time that I wrote *The Lost Cause,* I was more interested in
Lacan's *Seminar XX* (portions of which have been translated in the
book, *Feminine Sexuality*), particularly his reintroduction of "the
discourse structures" that he presented earlier in *Seminar XVII*.
And Aristotle figures prominently in *Seminar XX*. In fact, Lacan
reorients Aristotle's four causes (final, efficient, material, and
formal) in light of the rational exigencies of the Other's presence
(truth cannot logically imply falsity, though falsity can logically
imply truth). Aristotle's four causes become, in light of the
psychoanlytic discourse, four structural positions: agent, other,
production, and truth. Lacan, unfortunately does not go on to explain
how these four positions in discourse specifically relate to the material,
final, efficient, and formal causalities delineated by Aristotle.
However, we might begin to understand Lacan's point if we consider, as
he did, that Aristotle's notion of causality addresses four possible
responses to the human subject's "birth into language": 1)Subject: I
am something for the Other understood as efficient cause, 2)Other:
But my actions are not wholly constrained by this Other as formal
cause, 3)Production: Something else (a material cause) assumes the
duties I presumed were the Other's, 4)Truth: I can know what Other (a
final cause) constrains my actions. In other words, for Lacan,
discourse promises that we might know our Other. What is more, these
four structural positions are based on the fact that a final cause might be
substituted for a material cause but not a formal or efficient cause,
and that a formal cause might be substituted for an efficient cause
but not a final or material cause.
I look forward to reading your response. Thanks.
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Dear Victor, Todd, Diane, and MER:
____________How far *can* and *do* you count?
*The unconsious can count up to 6 and not beyond.*
(Ellie Ragland, *Counting from 0 to 6: Lacan, Suture, and the
Imaginary Order.* Lacan and Criticism. Ed. Patrick Colm Hogan and
Lalita Pandit. U of Georgia P, 1990, p. 31)
There you go, Victor. That's the question. How do I know
potentiality as such? How do I know something if I haven't said it?
How do I say something if I haven't known it? How can I do the "even"
problems as math homework when we only did the "odds" in class?
One response (1): the difference between evens and odds makes no
difference. Another response(2): the difference between evens and
odds makes all the difference. Child of Another Response(3): the
fact that *the difference between evens and odds makes all the
difference* makes no difference. Bride of Another response(4): the
fact that *the difference between evens and odds makes all the
difference* makes no difference. Return of Another Response(5):
there is no difference between evens and odds. Revenge of One
Response (6): There's only difference between evens and odds.
1,2,3,4,5,6.
Although the ucs might count, it doesn't add. So, the conflation of
addition and counting becomes a serious matter: 1) like transference,
a way of making the ucs a reality; 2)like psychosis, experiencing the ucs as
reality. For example, a Lacanian orientation of Cantor's transfinite
cardinal (yes, MER I'm trying to catch your attention) would be
something like 1,2,3,4,5. . .then a miracle happens-you see the Other
in the mirror-Aleph. . .6. Seriality, something necessary for
counting becomes cardinality, something necessary for addition. That
is, Cantor figured out how to "add" with "infinities" because he, like
the ucs, couldn't count beyond six--though from where Cantor was standing
his answer to the question *how high can and do you count?* might be *I had to count to
infinities because others couldn't add them.*
I'll say more about this when I respond to Diane's question
about infinities and Victor's question about Counting and The Third Sophistic.
I provide something of an answer to Diane's question on pp 73-74 of
the book, and I make a cryptic reference to Cantor there as well.
Also, MER ,
you'll need to get me up to speed on the ol' "three-body
problem."
Thanks and Best Regards, David
From: "DAVID D. METZGER"
Dear Friends:
Victor has asked me to "contextualize" The Lost Cause in terms of
rhetorical promise of "negation."
I. General Comment about Lacan and Negation
I would say that Lacan's interest in "negation" per se is limited to
his early period --Seminar II, where he argues that "negation" is
perhaps interesting only to those who equate unconscious with
"not-the-ego"; and two ecrits, "Introduction au Commentaire de Jean
Hyppolite," "Reponse au commentaire de Jean Hyppolite sur la
Verneninug de Freud," where he argues that the unconscious is the
discourse of the Other.
II. General Comment about Aristotle and Negation
I think "negation" may be more important for Aristotle than it was for
Lacan. At the beginning of On The Soul, he asks the question, "Why
isn't the world not a world in name only?" Just as the eyes of a
statue cannot see, so a world without soul is a world in name only.
There must be something not of the symbolic order that nevertheless
does not embody a lack in the symbolic order: the soul. Why is that?
Let me apologize at the onset for expressing A's argument as warmly
and charmfully as he does.
Aristotle's Argument: For Aristotle, the body is the instrument of
appetite. And instruments are to be found where a beginning and an
end coincide, where two separate entities are separate in definition
but are not separable spatially. The body can be an instrument of
appetite but only because there is such an entity as "the soul."
In these terms, one might say that the soul is an answer to the
question, "How might the body be an instrument?" The other question
to ask is why one should bother with such a question. If the body is
not an instrument, then what?
If the body is not an instrument, then the world is a fiction. If the
body is not an instrument, then it is not to be found where a
beginning and an end meet. If the body is not to be found where a
beginning and an end meet, then there is no place where the soul is to
be found. If the soul is not to be found, then it does not exist. If
there is no soul, then the world is as such in name only (a fictional
world) because, at this point, no distinction could be made between
affirmation and negation.
III. Negation and The Lost Cause
In fact, I can see how some people might reasonably look at my
elaboration of "potentiality" and "object a" as types of negation, but
they are types of negation that do not involve a lack of a signifier;
rather they assert "this is precisely what is not a signifier."
However, for Aristotle, the "this" is sometimes a master signifier,
sometimes not. And for Lacan, it's always the object a.
Lacan also introduces the sinthome as the ground for fantasy--just as
we might look at "fantasy" as the ground of discourse. If the "Other"
cannot explain the logic of fantasy--since the Other does not
exist--then the sinthome must function as a substitute for the Other.
In other words, negation is a big deal for Aristotle (and probably for
philosophy in general, and probably for philosophies of rhetoric):
"But since, for better or worse, the mystery of the hierarchic is
forever with us, let us, as students of rhetoric, scrutinize its range
of entrancements, both with dismay and in delight. And finally let us
observe, all about us, forever goading us, though it be in fragments,
the motive that attains its ultimate identification in the thought,
not of the universal holocaust, but of the universal order--as with
the rhetorical and dialectic symmetry of the Aristotelian metaphysics,
whereby all classes of beings are hierarchally arranged in a chain or
ladder or pyramid of mounting worth, each kind striving towards the
perfection of its kinds, and so towards the kind next above it, while
the strivings of the entire series head in God as the beloved cynosure
and sinecure, the end of all desire" (Rhetoric of Motives 333).
Victor's request pushes me to speak about my book as an argument for
making "negation" less of a big deal. I don't mean to say negation
doesn't have its place in a general theory of discourse. I do mean to
say that a rhetoric should not be simply a general theory of
discourse. And I'm very concerned about the emphasis some "Lacanians"
have placed on the study of discourse, even though this brand of Lacan
is easily assimilated into media studies since it bounces with such a
fecundity of meaning from the "discourse of analysis" to the
"discourse of the master/philosophy."
For example, "The psychoanalytic discourse, introducing the knowledge
of analysis into the political field, constitutes the particular real
of a jouissance--that promised by politics but that turns out to fail
in the accompanying discourse. Applying psychoanalysis to the
political discourse can only bring out the dominant function of the
discourse in the field of representation, while at the same time it
entraps jouissance motivating the impossibility inherent in that
discourse" (Willy Apollon, xxvi, xxvii, Lacan Politics, Aesthetics).
I'm particularly concerned that Apollon does not mention the sinthome,
Lacan's fourth order, the order of the particular. Without the
sinthome, Apollon opens up the delicious possibility ("the particular
real of a jouissance") that we might be able to lay down our gaze
before the Other of art, understood here as the "everybody's fantasy
of aesthetics." Quite frankly, I don't see how one gets back to
psychoanalysis at that point because, in its "application," analysis
itself is put in the position of language, allowing us only to write
out a "fantasy," express the particular modalities of its confirmation
in terms that are "meaningful." Granted, this is great deal of fun
and quite pleasing. But the only controls for such an "application"
are taste and will, the basic tools of thugs.
The basic tool of analysis is the object a, insofar as it provokes the
analysand to make an Other that will send it away. But the Other can
only ex-ist in the Real, so the analysand must encounter the Real,
allowing the analysis to rework the analysand's sinthome in order to
guarantee the meaning of another fantasy/discourse. This
description of the analytic process might be contrasted with the
proposal "to negate the negative." And this description might as well
explain the response many Lacanians have had to it, namely "psychosis
ain't what it's cracked up to be." Their reasoning runs something
like this: "to negate the negative means negating fantasy, so the
Other must be experienced only in the Real, that is, only as the Other
ex-ists." This description might also explain another response, "if
difference cannot be expressed in terms of the Other, which does not
exist, then difference can be expressed in terms of the body as an
instrument of my jouissance." This is de Sade's solution. On the one
side, we find psychosis, and on the other we find perversion. Note,
however, that the pervert finds "negating the negative" means there is
no difference, and the psychotic finds "negating the negative" means
there is (I am the Other of the Real. . .). In other words, "negating
the negative" doesn't effect change at the level of fantasy; it's a
way to write fantasy.
(1)"In fact the subject of the unconscious is only in touch with the
soul via the body, by introducing thought into it: here contradicting
Aristotle"; (2)"the world is merely the fantasy through which thought
[discourse] sustains itself" (Television 6).
...more on the politics of citation...the intentionality of
tropes...identifications and gradatio
Take Care and Thanks, David
From: Marshall Alcorn
David,
Let me risk a simple question that for all I know you answered in the
first page of his essay. (I was not able to download David's file at the
pretext web page with my lynx link, not able to find David's book in our
library recently. I thus speak in complete ignorance of what appears to
be an interesting work.)
But anyway, as we say.
When David explains that he wrote on Aristotle rather than Plato because
he says, "I don't think the unconscious has a person's best interests in
mind." I wonder how psychoanalysis is related to self-interest. Can a
psychoanalytic rhetoric work to further a person's "best interests"?
A specific question for David is________ Does psychoanalysis or Lacanian
analysis recognize the usefulness of something like self interest or
rational self-interest? What is it?
Rational self-interest would seem to be a core belief of rhetorical
theory and of a liberal logic that describes an ideal democracy.
Democracy gives us the freedom to pursue our self-interests.
But rational self-interest, also, from a psychoanalytic perspective, can
be considered a contradiction in terms. We cannot be rational about
self-interest. It is a kind of specular, narcissitic mirage implicated
in a larger and more complex social and personal libidinal economy. The
unhindered pursuit of rational-self interest, might thus be considered
not a social and personal ideal, but a social and personal disaster. (I
am not arguing that this is true, only asking to think through the
issue.) What exactly is self-interest? Is it related mostly to need, to
demand or drive, or to all those narcissistic identifications that
capitalist societies sell for hard work?
What does rhetoric do for us when it serves our best interests? Does
psychoanalysis serve our best interests or disinvest us of them in our
better self-interest? Maybe its in our rational self-interest to give
up most apparent rational-self interests?
It would take more words than anyone has patience to read for me to
explain this further, but I could briefly allude to Slavoj Zizek's
discussion of the problems facing utopian democracies (a society making
possible to every individual and community the free pursuit of "the
different sorts of little things around which [they] center their
fantasies and their lives,) in Looking Awry, p. 159. Some of my
colleagues read Zizek as denying that there can be anything like rational
self-interest. I am not convinced of this, but would sure like more
clarity on this one.
Marshall Alcorn
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Mer, you were looking for the (a) quote from Duchamp. Here it is, or here
is one that works and that I have gotten a lot of mileage from:
"For me the number three is important, but simply from the numerical, not
the esoteric point of view: one is unity, two is double, duality, and
three is the rest. When you've come to three, you have three
million--it's the same thing as three."
from Pierre Cabanne, _Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp_, trans. Ron Padgett.
NY: Viking P, 1971: 47
Duchamp's sentiment is expressed by others in many different places. It's
an interesting way of counting.
E.g., Ken Pike records a linguistic 'sub-group' as counting: 1 fella, 2
fella, plenty-fellow. (in _Linguistic Concepts_)
Ha, Ha!!
So Mer, what's your "interest" in counting, or accounting for?
VV
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
David, I am still trying to figure out what you are saying in response to
my question(s) concerning negation. By figuring out, I mean, from what
conceptual starting points, or interests, you are speaking. The answers
seem to be more declarative than conversational. Hints, it is difficult
to carry on the dialogue about them.
We may be speaking at cross purposes when we use the term Negation, but
for sure we are speaking semiotically across the negative itself. And
therefore, what I want to know is as precisely as possible _____What does
it mean to say that a particular point in time Lacan slips out of the
Negative. Does he become Psychotic? Is it possible that denegating the
negative might mean something other than going psychotic? Whose interests
are being served to think that denegating the negative is inviting
psychosis. Kristeva, in _Black Sun_ says anyone who wants to say NO to
No is ... advancing a badddddddddd proposition. I think that I understand
her interests! _____But what would be yours? If it is yours?
_____When Bataille advances the proposition against Hegel, moving from a
restricted to a general economy, is this a bad proposition? I can
understand from a Logician's interest this would be terrible. I can
understand from a M.D.'s interest, this would be baaaaddddddddd! And from
a Sighcryahhtist this would be baaaadddddd! Etc. But from yours? I am
asking for conversation on this topic ... not what _is appearing_ to me to
sound like officially sanctioned answers. I would like to read you
thinking the contrary thoughts from what is sanctioned by the Church.
_____What is good and what is bad in relation to saying Yes, No, Maybe in
response to the problematic of the Negative (or, say, Symbolic)?
Those are my rhetorical (Sophistic-Kynical) interests.
Marshall, _____your thoughts about rhetorical (Sophistic, Kynical,
Stowawayical) interests?
Much enguards,
VVictor
From: Diane Davis
David:
I'm going to try to be really careful here...b/c I think you and I are,
to a large extent, speaking at cross-purposes and spawning baby
differends in our effort to discuss this issue. We're using the same
terms, but they are not really the same terms b/c you and I are not, I
don't think, playing commensurable language games. The moon-as-planet
and the moon-as-satellite are but are not the same moon. Both are valid
within their own conceptual frameworks...but the validity doesn't cross
over. I think we're doing something like this when we question/answer
each other. Any question has always already got the potential answers in
its mouth, so questioning each other will probably only perpetuate a
speaking at cross-purposes...
When you answer my questions from where you are, your answers won't help
me hear you better from where I am. But I really *want* to hear you
better. I know, b/c I know YOU, that it'll be worth the effort.
Well, so, let's try something else, K? There are, I think, ways to
construct affirmative differends...differends that encourage a continued
"hearing." Let's try--if you want to play--the descriptive route.
When I discuss a third position, it's not a sequential third. That is,
there is no ac/counting for this counting once it hits three. There is
no point in counting to four, five, or six, then, once you hit THREE.
Three is, as VV (and others) has said, s'mo: one, two, s'mo. All
"threes" are not equally excessive...and it seems to me that when/if we
feel the need to go to four, it will have been b/c there is something
fishy about the three that proceeded it.
My suspicion is that this three that precedes a need to go to four will
not have been of a general economy but of a restricted one; it will have
been a three that arises out of the negative every bit as much as 1 and
2 do...in fact, this three will have been a *function* of 1 and 2. It
will have been set in a progressive, logical (and so), negative series.
I don't see Derrida's affirmative deconstruction as a search for that
kind of third position.
To describe all this in this way, of course, demands that I leap into
the negative myselphs. So here I am...I might as well wallow around a
bit while I'm here: When I talk about excess, I'm talking about a
general economy (which Bataille affirmed and Hegel negated). A mysticism
based on a general economy is a mysticism that doesn't rely on the
negative. A mysticism based on a restricted economy begins with and
perpetuates the negative. Derrida seems to me, as I said yesterday, to
be an affirmative mystic (at least most of the time). He affirms as he
says in his "Structure, Sign, and Play," "the non-center as something
otherwise than as loss of center"...he's content to play without the
security of a constant code, structure, grammar...he is content to
negate negation. This is why I suggested that his infinity is inscribed
within the excesses of finitude...
Well, I'll stop. And rather than ask you another question, I'll ask you
instead, if you want to, to
____Describe what you hear in these descriptions of what I hear.
It might help to talk/listen for a while in descriptive mode (e.g. "I'm
here, and it looks like this from here...et tu?") b/f we try to play the
question/answer game again. So, waddaya say? wanna play s'mo? :)
ddd
From: Marshall Alcorn
David, Victor others...
Victor asked if I had any thoughts about rhetorical sophistical, etc
interests.
Here goes some thoughts:
Interests are ways of connecting and disconnecting.
While I agree with Victor that it is a good idea to see where the
discourse of another is coming from, to understand his/her interests in
speaking, I also think that it is not useful to worry too much about
these interests. This goes back to the argument about the paradox of
self-interest.
While some of the interests of the other can be linked to the functional
workings of real power (which we need to watch), much interests are
simply, I think, sympotmatic. They are non-rational accidents of
imaginary identifications, libidinal attachments that simply exercise our
identities in the vast emptiness of discourse. We feel threatened by
these interests in the other that pressure us because we ourselves have
different, opposing interests/symptoms, that we would be better off
working through rather than defending against. It is just that we always
want the other person, not us to change.
This should make dialogue a rather complicated business of self-analysis,
other analysis, and rational power interest analysis. But we have to
take risks in regard to our interests and those of others. Their
interests could be our cure, and vice versa, the best indicator of this
possibility is when we "know" with some intensity of our ego that the
other is wrong.
What makes these issues even more complicated for me is contemporary
theory has become so complicated that I cannot keep up, connect AT ALL
with all the different tribes and conflicts. In our present discussion,
I do not really understand the philosophical implications of negation,
and I am not motivated to compensate for my ignorance here. What I try
to do in these contexts is learn what I can and teach what I can, and try
to get involved only when the discourse seems to relate directly to human
action or experience, as I understand it.
And of course this means that when David writes:
(You probably should not read this again, if you did not understand it
the first time; if you do it will only irritate you.)
The basic tool of analysis is the object a, insofar as it provokes the
analysand to make an Other that will send it away. But the Other can
only ex-ist in the Real, so the analysand must encounter the Real,
allowing the analysis to rework the analysand's sinthome in order to
guarantee the meaning of another fantasy/discourse. This
description of the analytic process might be contrasted with the
proposal "to negate the negative." And this description might as well
explain the response many Lacanians have had to it, namely "psychosis
ain't what it's cracked up to be." Their reasoning runs something
like this: "to negate the negative means negating fantasy, so the
Other must be experienced only in the Real, that is, only as the Other
ex-ists." This description might also explain another response, "if
difference cannot be expressed in terms of the Other, which does not
exist, then difference can be expressed in terms of the body as an
instrument of my jouissance." This is de Sade's solution. On the one
side, we find psychosis, and on the other we find perversion. Note,
however, that the pervert finds "negating the negative" means there is
no difference, and the psychotic finds "negating the negative" means
there is (I am the Other of the Real. . .). In other words, "negating
the negative" doesn't effect change at the level of fantasy; it's a
way to write fantasy.
This makes perfect sense to me, though probably no more than 2000 people
in all of the US could make sense of it. (But I confess that I do not
accept or can not follow all of what David and other Lacanians write.)
We are all prisoners of those imaginary identifications we form as we
develop our academic expertise, admiration of certain people and ideas in
the profession.
While I "recognize" the truth of David's claim about negation and
psychosis (our imaginary identifications overlap), I don't feel impelled
to jump into the discussion about negation; it gets too complicated to
work through on an email discussion. If Victor and other Deleuzians
(delusions I might write, testing out an imaginary identification both
with and against Victor, probing the symptom of the other with a sharp
stick) want to negate negation, I don't see this as really operating on
the same level as the Lacanian and Kristevan claim calling this baadddd
(though Victor and apparently David do).
People don't become psychotic because of their beliefs. Psychoanalytic
negation is an involuntary psychic structure; it happens to us before we
ever think. Philosophical negating negation is usually not a psychic
structure, it is a representation. It is something that generally sane
people think about (and I include Lacan and Deleuze and myself here with
some hesitation). Negating negation can be simply a way to not give up
on desire, and to idealize plural authorities in discourse. I am all for
this, (as I see it) a good Lacanian/Deleuzian idealization that Victor
and I share, I assume.
But let me end by defending David a bit. It is the paradoxes and bad
connections we have to suffer with, and not dissolve. Isn't this a
Deleuzian idealization? Victor and I want plural discourses. Doesn't
this mean that David has to speak like a high church Lacanian? If he
does not, plurality goes. We would all speak the same empty language.
Victor and I and everybody else can get what we want only if we do not
get what we want. Have I come back to the circle about that interest in
the other that is so irritating, yet we need?
Do I sound pompous, defending interests undefensively? This text is
beginning to irritate me. I am divided, hysteric, unstable in discourse.
Marshall
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 13:15:09 -0500 (CDT)
Marshall's middle ground, as a working out of a permutation, is indeed a
middle, synthetic position. And one well worth advocating (i.e., adding to
the calling). I agree, and yet do not, when he writes:
What is it that I find problematic here? (I agree but do not; I am
"against" this statement.) I find the *disjunctive* nature of the statement
problematic. And I refuse to think that my rejection is possibly a
"symptom." My understanding of discourse is a cohaggling that is predicated
on transference. (Hence, a mixture of Burkean street fighting and
psychoanalysis, but neither having hold or winning out over the other! Call
it an analogue of "Homer's Contest"!) I could not begin to haggle with
someone if I did not like and dislike, that is, have a major investment in
what is B/being said by the other Party. I assume that the other Party also
has the desire to cohaggle (co-babble). I have to be predisposed in this
(bad) manner(ism)! For this particular approach is generally frowned on my
The Discipline, which, as David points out, is a lost cause!
Specifically, what I disagree with is "that we always want the other
person, not us to change." (To a degree, there is generally some accuracy
in this statement, but I don't think that it speaks for particulars,
singularities, and how they connect or disconnect, and after all has been
said and undone, What's the difference? and advantage? between
dis/connecting? Speaking at cross purposes is one of the most *inventive
situations* (paratopoi) that people can find themselves in! How lucky they
are when they discover themselves in that space! There is not always
something baddd about speaking at cross purposes. Such speaking, writing,
thinking, when it occurs is, in using a possible Deleuzian term,
*Becoming-Aphoristic*!)
I disagree with you Marshall (which should be accepted as a comPLEment . .
. because I do not think that change occurs in only one person; it occurs
in both interlocutors and in the audience, though 'they' or one of them
might not REALize this change. Only later does it work or play or wpolraky
itself across the surface of our bodies and speaking language.
What I have enacted and describe is an alternative to any Hegelian or even
Kojevean working(s) out of M/S dialectiks.
Also, I have problems with this statement, but in the form of a
quasi-sophistical question. You write:
What is this thing called "cure" and "wrong"?! These are words that are
best made phun of than taken seriously! They belong to another conversation
that I would have to cohaggle with. And so I do. And have un/done.
In response to David's warning and discussion of Negation, you write:
Numbers here matter and don't! Your "confess"ion comes very close to what I
was saying previously, so we are probably not so far off, and yet would
have to be far, far apart in dis/order to continue speaking. Zizek says
(and I can locate and argue for) that Lacan says that the psycho-analytic
moment says that there is no relationship, no love relationship, no
social/political relationship, etc., no connection ... except by the
Negative (the function of loss) and that we might best serve ourselves and
others (now, here comes the pedagogical statement!) if we "go through [take
ourselves and our readers through] the fantasy." I have something invested
in this interpretation, and yet I do not, for when speaking to a Lacanian,
I will be a Bataillean, a Deleuzian, etc. "Desire," D&G write, "does not
lack anything"!! And then, there is that rather, not ironic, but (very
perverse) "humorous" statement in a footnote on the de/facing page, about
"Lacan's admirable theory of desire...." Don't we know how the Party of the
Lacanian Church represents Deleuze? Schneiderman has some things to say
about who attended and did not attend or attended by sending a stand-in
(little _a_) to take notes when Lacan was holding court!
I don't know who Lacan is! (a complex statement!) any more than I know who
L. Ron Hubbard is! But I read the disciples. Or I see them on _Television_!
(And sometimes in reverse!) I don't know who Christ is but I know who (St.)
Paul is (in a manner of writing!) And so, Marshall, what is desired--and I
have no control over "it" (I agree when you write: "People don't become
psychotic because of their beliefs. Psychoanalytic negation is an
involuntary psychic structure; it happens to us before we ever
think.")
And Marshall, you write:
And then you write:
The issues/interests for me are always already paraethical and parapolitical!
Marshall, thanks for your note. I hope that the children do not think that
this primal scene of discoursing is one of fighting!
unguarded enguard,
copyright 1996 Victor J. Vitanza and David Metzger.
All Rights Reserved.
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being given.
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 15:09:04 -0500 (EDT)
Subject: Lacan and Plato
I have just begun reading the first chapter of your book, so I am sorry if
this question is addressed in it.
University of Louisville.
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 15:53:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: vjv>dm: counting
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 11:05:55 -0400
Subject: ddd-->dm
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 11:43:34 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>dm: contexts/negations
_____How would you rethink your book in paraterms of denegating the
Negative. What if you were to rethink the book in paraterms of a General
Libidinal Economy and _not_ a Restricted Economy and therefore no longer
tarry with the Negative? any better or bigger or longer?! It's allllll so
Phallllllic, n'est pas? What would such an anOedipal book look like? Read
like? Experience like?
____Why don't you also work out of, or even mention, all the work done by
Paul de Man (_Allegories of Reading_ and _Blindness and Insight_, and his
discussion of geometry and rhetoric, and his notion of Negative Knowledge)
and KB (_Language as Symbolic Action_, and his 65-page genealogy of the
Negative)?
victor
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 13:23:53 EST
Subject: Re: Lacan and Plato
_____Why *not* write a book about Plato and Lacan?
_____Why *write* a book about Aristotle and Lacan?
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 14:03:40 EST
Subject: Re: vjv>dm: counting
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 15:42:51 EST
Subject: Re: vjv>dm: contexts/negations
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 16:03:39 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: rhetoric and self-interest
George Washington University
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 10:43:34 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>mer:Duchamp/counting
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 11:02:55 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: vjv>dm: negation?
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 14:07:39 -0400
Subject: Re: ddd-->dm
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 1996 10:18:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: connecting AT ALL.
From: sophist@UTARLG.UTA.EDU
Subject: vjv>ma: Not to Connect!While some of the interests of the other can be linked to the functional
workings of real power (which we need to watch), much interests are
simply, I think, sympotmatic. They are non-rational accidents of
imaginary identifications, libidinal attachments that simply exercise our
identities in the vast emptiness of discourse. We feel threatened by
these interests in the other that pressure us because we ourselves have
different, opposing interests/symptoms, that we would be better off
working through rather than defending against. It is just that we always
want the other person, not us to change.
This should make dialogue a rather complicated business of self-analysis,
other analysis, and rational power interest analysis. But we have to
take risks in regard to our interests and those of others. Their
interests could be our cure, and vice versa, the best indicator of this
possibility is when we "know" with some intensity of our ego that the
other is wrong.
This makes perfect sense to me, though probably no more than 2000 people
in all of the US could make sense of it. (But I confess that I do not
accept or can not follow all of what David and other Lacanians write.)
We are all prisoners of those imaginary identifications we form as we
develop our academic expertise, admiration of certain people and ideas in
the profession.
But let me end by defending David a bit. It is the paradoxes and bad
connections we have to suffer with, and not dissolve. Isn't this a
Deleuzian idealization? Victor and I want plural discourses. Doesn't
this mean that David has to speak like a high church Lacanian? If he
does not, plurality goes. We would all speak the same empty language.
Victor and I and everybody else can get what we want only if we do not
get what we want. Have I come back to the circle about that interest in
the other that is so irritating, yet we need?
VVell, I don't think that David needs to be defended! That's all there is
to it. I think that David is one of the most brilliant people I know. (I
have made that claim in several venues already!) And of all the people I
would want to talk with, it would be David. And you! And others on this
list. Which is what I am doing! But I do understand that some people in the
audience might need to hear someone defend David! And that's kewl! But I
really don't think that "David has to speak like a high church Lacanian." I
don't think that "plurality goes" if he does not! I guess what I desire
here is to see David being plural with Lacan! I would like to see David
cohaggle with Lacan et al. But then, this may not be what David desires for
Lacan, himself, and others! And that, too, is kewl! Most of discoursing is
metadiscourse, and Are we not always dis/engaging in that way? If we strip
it away, there really is not much left to talk about.Do I sound pompous, defending interests undefensively? This text is
beginning to irritate me. I am divided, hysteric, unstable in discourse.
You sound not at all pompous to me! It is best to be hysterical! How else
can we survive? I would hope, however, that in being hysterical, we would
not write about Lacan in the hysterical way that Schneiderman in __JL: The
Death of an Intellectual Hero_ and Clement in _The Lives and Legends of JL_
write!!!!!! Clement passes the symbolic on to her 'daughter' (circa p. 22).
If she would just spit it back up! (Abjection!) At times hysterical
discourse puts us into a conservative position (I do agree with Clement
when she counter-points-this-out in _Newly Born_. Ah, is this the
difference between writing about death, on the one hand, and life, on the
other!! Then, let us be reborn as Cixous says!). Hints, I would go with a
more schizo perpetual repositioning, as I describe above. Such a
repositioning goes way beyond the apparently ethical and political
interests of the Sophists and their tactic of discoursing by way of _dissoi
logoi_.
Rotciv
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