I have just passed my comprehensive exam for my MA in Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University. The area of focus is critical theory, specifically Marxism, psychoanalysis, and Foucault and Deleuze. I thought I would pose my responses to the first two parts of the exam (the third and last part being the oral defense).…
Tag Archives: Anti-Oedipus
In delineating the unconscious as the (no longer merely psychic, as in Freud, but Symbolic (social?)) repository, as it were, of repressed elements, Jacques Lacan stresses that the rules (the Law) these elements are subject to (that determine the shape, as it were, of the unconscious, what it looks like, what’s in there, what happens…
[A schema of (Real) being and the (Symbolic) Other from lacan.com] In a previous post I suggested that in contrast to Alexandre Leupin‘s ontological presentation of Jacques Lacan’s three orders, Bruce Fink in The Lacanian Subject offers a durational model, i.e. a model that portrays the relationship between the orders as historical configurations, i.e. as…
So: Who am I? (Either) Ryan or Aless? (Or) Aless or Ryan? And, isn’t it: / ? As it turns out, I am constituted by parts that connect (especially with alien parts, in all different sorts of connection, ones no I can really claim), that is, when they’re not saying No!, when they could, when…
[A chart of secret societies] In an overture to fascism, a preliminary suggestion as to what underlies its potency (to capture the masses, to make one desire to be led, one’s own repression, that then connects with social oppression (of the other, e.g. the Jews, but also of the supporting populace itself, i.e. of oneself)),…
[Rembrandt's Saint Paul in Prison] So, coming straight out of our last conversation (about their playfulness, their promiscuity, i.e. their connectivity), we’re still talking about desiring-machines. (Either) Ryan and I (or, more precisely: /). (Or) Aless and /. S/he asks me (one of them, ‘can’t remember who) (/ suspect after the Dionysian celebration that commenced,…
[Masochism and its rejection] I’ve been here in Germany for almost two months now, and, for all that time, every single f**king weekday, with the annoyingly loud ring of my alarm clock, I’ve been waking myself up early in the morning, taking a shower to make myself somewhat presentable to the outside world (as best…
[Nuclear Family by Dag Weiser] Sigmund Freud describes the beginnings of the mechanism he calls the Oedipus complex in The Interpretation of Dreams, although I am at a loss at the moment as to where he describes its resolution (If anyone can point me to the right direction, that would be much appreciated). In what…
[Image from Cartoonstock] There is a certain way of life that makes the house a private fortress. I don’t mean medieval fortresses defended by soldiers to prevent the entrance of others. Then again, maybe it is that. Only our fortresses are not only safe havens or a simple mark of territory. They contain not only…
[Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam] In contrast to Deleuze’s intensive ontology, you can look to the hylomorphic model (hylo meaning matter, morph referring to form): form imposed on matter, matter made to conform, form realized in matter, matter exemplifying form, thing corresponding to idea, person measured against standard. Think of Platonic forms, of which things…
