Episodit
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Just catching up with my friend Seth.
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Dr. Richard Boothby is professor of philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. He is the author of a handful of books on Freud and Lacan and Philosophy. I have been obsessively reading his latest two books: Embracing the Void: Rethinking the Origin of the Sacred and Blown Away: Refinding Life after My Sonās Suicide.
In our talk we lay out how Lacan theorizes anxiety and its relation to das Ding: the enigmatic, unknown zone of the other. Richard shows how this theory of anxiety differs from those put forth by Heidegger and Sartre. For Sartre anxiety was linked to the radical dizzying, nausea inducing freedom that we as humans essentially are. It's not just that we fear falling off a cliff when standing next to its edge, we fear that we ourselves might throw ourselves off. It's our freedom to do so or not. There's no one stopping you from doing it except you. However, Lacan complicates anxiety one step further. Yes, it is eventually linked with oneās existential freedom, but Lacan crucially first locates the primary source of anxiety somewhere elseāwithin the neighbor, indeed the first neighbor: the mOther.
Boothby explains how Lacan reframed Freudās Oedipus Complex insisting that itās actually the infant, not the father, that weans itself and argues that itās the the name of the father: the function of language, rituals, symbolic gestures and identities that helps to allay the infantās anxiety in face of das Ding.
For Boothby, these Lacanian concepts ultimately help us to rethink the origin of the sacred, and they shed light on how we might better understand why we continually in the terrifying confrontation with das Ding tend towards forms of tribalism.
In the end, Boothbyās challenge is for us to remain open to das Ding. In a similar manner, every effective analyst must undergo a transformation in their desire. One that becomes directed to the unconscious in the other. In the face of the das Ding of the other, the monstrousness of the neighbor, the analyst like the saint courageously welcomes what others have at best only ever tolerated. The analyst with a sincere and gentle curiosity, without judgment welcomes das Ding's arrival. This openness to the otherness of the other and even to the otherness in oneself, is what Boothby sees as the injunction of Christ: to love not only the neighbor, but also the enemy.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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My dear friends itās my privilege to introduce to you the one and only Matt Blakeslee. He has been such a wonderful friend to me for many years. Heās the guy thatās responsible for so many great things Billings including the Art House Cinema and Pub, CMYK (back in the day), multiple albums by some of Billingsā best musicians and his own album: Fare Thee Well ā which we talk about a bit during this interview.
He has over the years courageously, publicly shared his struggles with faith, belief, doubt, complexity, ambiguity and has been gracious to me and others even when we at times opposed him ā often to later realize one day that we needed his friendship as we too entered our struggles with faith.
Thanks Matt!
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Weāre back! Iām hoping to record and publish more conversations with friends once again on a more consistent basis. Kole is one such friend that I hope to record regular chats with.
In this episode we learn a little about Koleās faith, his studies in Bible School, how it related to CrossFit, and then we end up talking a little about the Brother K by Dostoyevsky.
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This week I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Jamieson Webster.
I have recently been reading her book: Disorganization and Sex and highly recommend reading it as well as her recent article in the New York Times entitled I Don't Need to Be a 'Good Person.' Neither Do You.
I was thrilled to get to hear Jamieson's thoughts on the unconcious, superego, guilt, transgression, and how psychoanalysis might help to give desire back to the subject and also how we might alleviate anxiety and guilt on a more collective level.
You can find many fascinating interviews with Jamieson on Youtube as well!
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Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, Spike Art Magazine, Apology and the New York Review of Books.
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Ideal Ego: who we desire to become (curated Instagram image of self)
Ego Ideal: that for whom we wish to become our Ideal Ego (the person whose ālikeā or āviewā on Instagram matters most, however the Ego Ideal can also be broader and more vague than one person. It can be rooted in what a given society deems important or the values of oneās family. For me, āThe Murphy Wayā can function as an Ego Ideal.) When we are released from a "givens" I believe this has occurred because of an intrusion from the real and that this intrusion forces us to reconsider the goodness or validity or substantiality of our Ego Idealāāāthe object cause of our desire. Losing the object cause of desire can lead to existential anxiety, nihilism, a sense of being unmoored and that we donāt belong anywhere, and depression. If having an Ego Idealāā an other in whose goodness you trust and whose goodness and pleasure you seek to invokeāā is necessary for human flourishing, then how do we conciously and wisely choose an ego ideal that will not let us down like the last one did? Is it even possible to conciously choose our Ego Ideal? I kind of donāt think so. Instead I think that the kind of Ego Ideal that wonāt break our hearts is the kind that chooses us. Mari Ruti often emphasizes the idea that as we live life we will find that we are at times summoned by people, places, events, areas of study and any number of various activities and that as we remain faithful to the things we feel compelled to followāā as we heed the summons eminating from certain objects we will find a peculiar kind of freedom. Itās in a sense a paradoxical freedom, because itās as if we have no say in the matter. Here I stand. I can do no other. Todd McGowan makes a similar point in a talk entitled Capitalist Subjectivity and Unconcious Freedom: "The unconcious acts freely prior to the intrusion of conciousness which is always kind of lagging behind and so concious will is never free in the way the unconcious is, but if we're unconciously free this means that freedom is also radically opposed to free will. So whenever anybody says to me, "Do you believe in free will?" I say, "No, but I believe in freedom." And, "The most that conciousness can do in the face of our unconcious freedom is to acknowledge its priority and identify the unconcious act as an expression of the subject's desire." In other words, freedom is concious only in so far as it cosigns the check its unconcious already wrote. And in my experience this feels quite true. Never am I more alive, more guilt free, than when I have remained faithful to the singularity of my desire. I am most myself when I have followed what I know in my heart I have to do even when such a stance is indefensible to others and even to my concious, rational self. Isnāt remaining faithful to oneās singular desire just hedonism? This is a very difficult question, but ultimately I donāt think it is. Let me see if I can argue for why it isnāt ultimately hedonistic ā¦ Throughout McGowanās work he argues that we achieve unconcious satisfaction through sacrifice. When we over eat or drink excessively or even workout excessively to the point of injury we sacrifice our future health. There is an undeniable satisfaction in creating problems for ourselves. Life is always at least psychically more interesting, though usually more painful, when itās imploding. Racking up debt, procrastinating what you really shouldnāt procrastinate, making oneself more machine than man, hitting the āself destructā button on a relationship by saying the one thing that would cause it to all fall apartāā these are all various ways we get unconcious satisfaction. Whatās common to all these scenarios is that we in some way are sacrificing what would be our own good. In the same way, remaining faithful to the summons of love sacrifices oneās own good. Often the summons of love calls us to act a fool or destroy our symbolic identities. As Zizek says, āLove is a catastrophe!ā Itās not hedonistic because it sacrifices oneās own good. So what have we learned? Iād argue that a 'release' occurs when an Ego Ideal is revealed as insubstantial. But without an Ego Ideal we are prone to nihilism and depression. Painful though these moments are, confrontation with this negativity is the necessary condition to experience something like a summons in which a new sort of Ego Ideal begins to emerge. -
Daniel Garner returns for another wonderful conversation. Daniel explains in more depth terms like "givens" and "releases". From there we touch on Lacan's Ego Ideal and the Ideal Ego and how the loss of faith in the substantiality of an Ego Ideal may lead to the experience of a release. This then brings us to thinking of C.S. Lewis and his conception of Glory as fame/acknowledgement/recognition with God and how love actually does involve desiring the desire and praise of an other. After a release has occurred the question becomes who or what will occupy the position of the Ego Ideal... ?
We also talk a good deal about leisure and how it differs from toil, laziness, and sloth. Daniel brings out an important distinction between toil and work and how as a parent he loves finding that his kids are at times lost in their play and work.
We finish the conversation with some great thoughts on the skills of community building. How consistency is key and how a home is place where the door is always open.
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Alyse, Josh, and I discuss Barbie! I loved the film and started to immediately write an essay on it which I have attached below. I still have lots more to add to it. Alyse and Josh really helped to shed new perspective on the film for me as well!
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Barbie Starts out with homage to 2001 Space Oddysee ... the girls only have baby dolls and therefore only ever play and dream about being mothers and housewives. But then The Barbie, a giant monolithic Margot Robbie, is introduced and suddenly a new form of play, a new way to dream, a new horizon of possibility becomes available. The girls destroy their baby dolls. This act symbolizes the growing dissatisfaction of women being relegated to the scripts of mother and housewife. The film then goes into idyllic Barbieland where the Barbies rule the supreme court and white house. They can be any occupation. We see Barbie as doctor, president, journalist, author, even construction worker. It's a utopia where everyday is positive, beautiful, and fun. Barbie hosts a dance party at her dream house. All the sudden, in the middle of dancing, out of no where Barbie blurts, "You guys ever think about dieing?!" The record screeches, the party comes to a halt ... Barbie is confused, uncertain of why she's said that. She recovers with a, "I mean you guys ever think about how much your dieing to dance?!" The outburst brings to mind the Lacanian understanding of the unconcious: a nothing that becomes a something through slips of the tongue, dreams, nightmares and jokes ...these all point to the ways our symbolic and imaginary identities do not correspond one to one with our actualities. In other words the unconcious makes itself known through the difference between the map and the territory. For Freud such outbursts point to an unconcious desire or uncognized traumatic past event that conciousness is not yet ready to fully confront and take ownership of. Barbie seeks to repress the intrusive thought of death. She covers over the slip with a, "You guys ever think about how much your dieing to dance?!" Which alows the party to resume. We engage in similar acts of repression anytime we shrug off intrusive thoughts that may cause us to challenge our given status quo when we utter thought terminating cliches like, "it is what it is," or, "boys will be boys," or, "just trust the plan." Such phrases stave off for the moment cognitive dissonance and allow for the continuation of the functioning of a given structure. However, for Freud, what we repress always returns through symptoms -- sometimes bodily symptoms as seen with Barbie after she tries the repress the intrusive thoughts but finds that her feet have inexplicably flattened. (It should be noted that Freud eventually came to believe that repression is necessary ... for example its necessary that the ceaselessly questioning child eventually is stopped by the thought terminating cliche, "Because I said so." Such a statement is a necessary tautology. For more on the necessity of Law as form see Todd McGowan's video.) Barbie's friends tell her that she must go to Weird Barbie to be fixed. Just as the children of Israel had to return to the wilderness and to their prophets when things went wrong so too must Barbie venture to the outskirts of Barbieland. Weird Barbie, a kind of John the Baptist type figure is the only one who can help Barbie ... to be continued... -
Daniel Garner and I today got to discuss a wide range of topics. We discuss the possibility of relating to the Lacanian lack in a positive way that helps lift such a concept out of nihilistic tendencies. We talk about das ding, the other of the other, and its seeming similarities to the Holy Spirit in Christianity. We touch on relational or communal ontology and we talk a bit about understanding Paul and his writings in light of some of these ideas.
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I had the privilege to interview my friend Michelle Garner of the writing duo OG Rose. I've been enjoying and learning from their book "Belonging Again" and their Youtube channel. So check em out! The breadth and depth of their work is astonishing.
Michelle and I got to briefly touch on their work as it relates to "givens" and "releases" and how these states of being coincide with a sense of belonging. We then touched on paranoia and how philosophy can potentially rescue us from crippling anxiety that is connected with our sense of certainty. Lastly, we briefly touch on Das Ding ... if that's even possible ... pretty sure we nailed it and there's nothing more for anyone to need to say on the matter.
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Lenny Returns to help me prep for my upcoming interview with Mari Ruti.
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In this episode I try to give my zoomed out understanding of the movement of concepts I see over and over in various Psychoanalytic theorists' work.
Fall - (Mirror Stage - Imaginary - Symbolic - Real. Law - Castration - Loss of Imagined Unfettered Jouissance, ie. the Lost Object)
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Lack - (1. Constitutive Lack: Inherent, Necessary ... Restlessness, Hungry Hearts | 2. Contingent Lack: traumas that are particular to you like say a car accident that changes your life ... but contingent lack is also to do with your gender, skin color, and class and how the society of your time relates to those contingencies)
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Call - (Echo of Das Ding: The experiences when we feel we've found "IT" ... the sense of feeling haunted by something ... the sense of being summoned by something in the world ... inexplicably drawn to x ... objet a ...)
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The struggle for Fidelity to the Call - (the struggle to manage and direct Jouissance in the midst of a world that constantly wants you to give your time/passion/attention over to its ends ... this is where we could talk about Neoliberal tendencies in society today, the Superego, and the pressure to Enjoy every minute of your life.)
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In the preface to the Call of Character Mari Ruti introduces what she'll cover over the expanse of her book. That while many self help authors and gurus advocate for streamlined approaches (do these 12 things to attain or achieve x) to living the good life, she intends to show that a big part of life is realizing that struggle and hardship are to some degree necessary. And that, counterintuitive though it may seem, we wouldn't actually even want a life without some degree of lack.
Though trauma and lack can wound us greatly -- that these lack shouldn't be overlooked or minimized but rather metabolized ... and in a strangely hopeful way these injuries can also be sites that open us up to the possibility to hear a call that when heeded can usher us into new forms of being that can be emancipatory not only for us as individuals but for our communities as well.
She'll argue against essentialism and advocates instead for a way of dwelling or being toward the world that has made peace with the fact that we never completely attain equilibrium ... or that if we do, we do for relatively brief moments.
She believes that instead of pursuing an authentic core or kernel within the self, that one can alternatively attune oneself to the call of character -- that we become our most authentic selves when we remain faithful to the specificity of our desire and that this specificity can free us from the herd mentality that stifles the idiosyncratic spirit that resides within every person.
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My ol' pal and ol' roommate Josh L ... his last name is too complicated to spell ... helps me test online podcast recording services as I prepare for an upcoming interview with Mari Ruti. We talk about some of Ruti's concepts (following and remaining faith to the specificity of desire ... the summons of love) as well as how do we tarry with the ethical (if it is so) component of sharing "I reckon" modalities of discourse with the necessity of coming to know what we believe through simply giving it our best shot.
If you're interested in attending an upcoming Theory Night here in Billings ... email [email protected].
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In this episode I am trying to briefly cover the concept of lack and the two ways in which it insists in every human being. I am using the work of Mari Ruti, especially her book Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings ... an alternative title could be (if I'm understanding this correctly) Castration and other forms of Lack ... or Ontological Lack and Contingent Lack.
I plan to interview Professor Ruti in the coming weeks and will record episodes leading up to the interview in the attempt to make sure I am grasping as well as possible her work.
Thanks,
Tyler
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