In light of today’s protest against the recent actions of the University of Nottingham, I thought this document might be pertinent. Entitled ‘Who Rules Columbia’, it charts the objections of the students at Columbia during the student uprising in 1968. While clearly the issues raised are specific to a particular time and place, it’s an interesting example of students who are protesting, not just against the actions of a university, but against the structures and connections that sustain those actions.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
I was recently reading an essay by Rober Pfaller entitled ‘The Familiar Unknown, the Uncanny, the Comic: The Aesthetic Effects of Thought Experiment’, in which he argues that both the uncanny and the comic are related to illusion. This relationship occurs on two levels. The first level is the illusion of the uncanny, which must be suspended for an occurrence to be either uncanny or comic. The second is the illusion of the comic, which is only overcome in the comic.
Pfaller provides the example of a dead man on a stage who sneezes. If I am fooled by the illusion and believe he is dead, the event is uncanny (from my perspective, though potentially comic for others). I have overcome the illusion through the sneeze. If it is not I but others who are fooled by the illusion (that is, I occupy a place of ‘enlightenment’), the event is comic (from my perspective). We laugh because the illusion of death has been broken. Pfaller references Mannoni, writing ‘the comic is what is uncanny for others. What is comic for us, because it includes an illusion to which we do not succumb, is uncanny for others who are unprotected and naïve’ (210).
Recent American politics, in the wreckage of Bush’s presidency and a presidential race that seems to have already lasted forever, might be examined as the confrontation of an illusion or illusions. For those who succumbed to the illusion, or continue to succumb, headlines of torture, extraordinary rendition, and the constant reference to future military aggression register as the uncanny. For those who stand outside this/these illusion(s) it registers as comic. The dead man on stage has sneezed and we find ourselves either gasping or ‘laughing’.
Moving past Pfaller’s remarks, however, this comic is not purely comic, but the tragic comic. And the comic tragedy is mixed by the experience of the uncanny in witnessing the comic experiences of others continuing to experience the uncanny without breaking the illusion of the comic. In this sense, perhaps those who are ‘laughing’ find themselves increasingly joining the anxious. After all as Pfaller states, again referencing Mannoni, when it comes to the uncanny its cause ‘is not the lack of enlightenment; on the contrary, it is knowledge itself that makes us anxious’ (210).
This is the proposal I submitted for a paper that I will be giving in Rome in September:
The inability of modern, secular states to manage the divergent interests of their populations has been and continues to be demonstrated in conflicts between religious groups as well as religious and secular voices. Drawing on the intersection between theology and psychoanalysis this paper critiques modern political strategies in two moves: first, it challenges the secularity of the state. Jacques Lacan famously stated that even if we do not suppose religion, religion supposes us. All of life, including its political organization, is open to theological questioning. By demonstrating that religion structures being, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity, I move to the second point: the offering of a rival political organization based on neighborly love. Paralleling the work of Kenneth Reinhard, Eric Santner, and Slavoj Zizek, I outline this love and examine difficulties in identifying the neighbor. This understanding is based on a Lacanian re-reading of the Augustinian tradition in order to define a distinctly Christian notion of love.
This political theology addresses ‘neighboring’ populations, especially religious and ethnic communities living in perpetual tension. It opens the possibility of recognizing alterity within Christianity’s universalism. Only thus may the neighbor may be acknowledged as other, without being reduced to merely other.
‘In this alethosphere the prosthetically enhanced, plugged-in subject does not to flee reality in order to indulge his pleasure principle, for he is now able to remould reality in accordance with it. In other words, in the ultra-modern, advanced capitalist world, the pleasure principle and the reality principle are no longer in competition, but have merged to form a kind of corporation. The image Freud paints is of a friendly takeover of reality by the pleasure principle, which presents the former with a set of blueprints for the global cyber-city of its dreams. But Lacan stresses the underside of this merger. As the twentieth century wore on, and the utopian view of science gave way to dystopian visions, while capitalism grew more muscular, it became more difficult to hold on to the idea that pleasure had the power to programme reality. The reality (of the market) principle was clearly calling the shots, telling the pleasure principle in what to invest and what pleasures out to be sacrificed to get the best returns on those investments.’
- Joan Copjec, ‘May ‘68, The Emotional Month’ in Lacan: The Silent Partners
I suppose it’s natural when starting a blog to provide some kind of introduction. This blog is my attempt to organize my thoughts as I work on the connection(s) between theology, psychoanalysis, and politics. Mostly I’ll focus on things that I’ve been reading, but I’m also interested in aesthetic reflections on these themes. I’m especially interested in photographic interpretations of subjectivity and psychoanalytic critiques of architecture and urban planning.
More to come soon…
