We're still thinking about the second Venn diagram from yesterday's post. I shouldn't say "still" thinking, because I didn't think of it at all from the end of yesterday's post to the beginning of this one.
Rather -- insofar as the thinking cap is concerned -- I focussed on other things, mainly The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self, which isn't the sort of book one can skim. Rather, it's very triggering: one damn insight after another, more than I can wrangle and domesticate into a post or even series of posts. I suppose I could try, but why bother when I got Bailie doing it for me?
It reminds me of bands that cover a perfectly realized song instead of a song that failed to achieve its potential, so they might improve on the original.
Another factor is that Bailie and I are not into the same bag, man. For him, Girard's theories of mimesis and scapegoating are the main course, wheres for me they're a side dish. Was the purpose of the Incarnation really just to teach us a lesson about the naughtiness of human sacrifice?
That's a stupid and impertinent way to put it, Bob.
Sorry. Probably my Francophobia coming out. René Girard just doesn't do for me what he obviously does for Bailie, and he is as central to Bailie's thought as... no one in particular is for me, I suppose. I pick my influences retrospectively, i.e., people who think as I do -- what Churchill called anticipatory plagiarists.
For example, I'm always citing Dávila, not so much because he's an influence but because he articulates my own thoughts better than I could.
Granted, sometimes these are thoughts I technically haven't yet thought of, but they're nevertheless down there somewhere in inchoate form. Give me another hundred years and another 30,000 posts, and I would have gotten around to them. He's a shortcut, in more ways than one.
Hmm, a shortcut to myself. What an excellent idea for a post, especially since The Apocalypse of the Self is all about the... apocalypse -- which is to say, unveiling -- of this selfsame self. Yes, Dávila helps reveal myself to me, just as Girard quite clearly does for Bailie.
This itself goes to a Very Important dynamic vis a vis self-development -- or better, self-discovery -- in that this is precisely how it happens, through the discovery of other persons who reveal to us who we are. Very strange, but that's how it's done.
I suppose my favorite author on the subject is Christopher Bollas, although that was way back in grad school. Let me see if I can find a quick summary. Perhaps Professor Wiki knows something about him that's not too completely inaccurate.
Bollas "is one of the most widely read authors in the field of psychoanalysis," in particular, his theory of the "unthought known" -- an example of which is what I just said about how our friend Nicolás makes my own unthought knowns known to me.
The aphorisms literally hit me where I live, because each one is explicitly unthought but implicitly known by yours threely. Perhaps Bailie felt the same way upon discovering Girard's thought: how stupid of me not to have thought of that!
And how stupid of me not to have thought of what Bollas calls the "destiny drive," through which we search for the relationships -- persons and objects -- needed to express our unique idiom. For example, think of how much less annoying I'd be if I had never discovered Joyce.
In Being a Character, Bollas argues that everybody has their own idiom for life.... As adults, we spend our time looking for objects of interest -- human or material -- which can serve to enhance our particular idioms or styles of life -- perpetually "meeting idiom needs by securing evocatively nourishing objects."
Being willing to risk exposure to such transformational objects is for Bollas an essential part of a healthy life: the readiness to be metamorphosed by one's interaction with the object world.
The contrast is a refusal of development and self-invention, of open-endedness: the state of psychic stagnation. Bollas sees in what he calls the anti-narcissist a willed refusal to use objects for the development of his/her own idiom, and a consequent foreclosure of the true self. The result can lead to the core catastrophe of being trapped in someone else's (usually the parents') dream or view of the world.
Thank you Professor Wiki, that wasn't bad. Now that I think about it, there is a great deal of overlap between Bollas and Bailie. Except I haven't yet thought of it. In other words, I'm quite sure it's down there among the unthought known.
Let's get back to my Venn diagram, because I think it will help us think about and know this steaming pile of unthought known. I'll begin with a real Rat-zinger highlighted by Bailie:
We receive our lives each day from without, from others who are not ourselves yet relate to us in some way. Man's self is not contained only within himself but exists almost even more so outside himself.
Boom! That pretty much says what Bollas says with different words, as does this:
Man is relational, and his life, his very self, only exists by way of relationship. I, by myself, am not "I" at all, but am so only in relation to a "Thou," and it is the "Thou" that makes me myself (Ratzinger).
Now let's look at our Venn diagram:
There's much more to say, but we'll dredge it up in the next post.
6 comments:
... this is precisely how it happens, through the discovery of other persons who reveal to us who we are. Very strange, but that's how it's done.
Witnessed a good example of this last night. My kids' TKD instructor is a neighbor who has been teaching his class for years, purely as a labor of love. They only charge enough each month to cover the rent on the space we use. He's passionate about it, and wants other people to be passionate about it as well.
The past couple of years, he's been battling lung cancer and hasn't been able to lead the classes as much, so passed the baton on to a group of other black belts who have been willing to take turns leading. One of those is a younger guy who has really stepped up. Last night I overheard them talking after class, and the younger instructor was talking about how delighted he is to see the progress the kids are making. You can see it in how he leads the class. In essence, their progress is his progress, too.
For a long time, I never cared one way or another about Affirmative Action. Mostly because I was the kind who when trying to join Obama’s Choom Gang was told: “We got enough haoles.” It took years before I realized that AA was actually a nod to the dark man, good ole boy style.
Anybody who’s been to college and then worked in the corporate world knows that only a minority gets into a good school because of “merit”. And that’s if they’re white. As they say, the greeks don’t want no freaks. Most applicants get in because they knew somebody, are a legacy, are on the same team in some way, or via some other kind of nepotistic shit.
I for one witnessed a guy attending my local prestigious state university, who could barely read. I knew this because I sat next to him in high school senior reading class and he told me. But his father was rich, so….
Affirmative Action was a way to get the unqualified dark man to keep their mouth shut and not rat on their new unqualified rich white friends. Just ask Clarence Thomas. Now I’m left wondering what the outcome of all this might be. But I'll do that right after I figure out this Venn diagram.
Dems haven't been this upset since they almost lost their slaves in 1865.
Indeed Dupree. Hieroglyphs found at Thebes (Wasat) speak of the folly of the Dems. It did get a bit confusing when Jesus spoke of them but thankfully, Vespasian set the record straight when he marched them to Rome to build the Colosseum, before disposal in the arena.
Unfortunately, some survived. And now look at the mess we're in.
O, is that the way with you, you craythur? In the becoming was the weared, wontnat! Hood maketh not frere. The voice is the voice of jokeup, I fear. Are you imitation Roma now or Amor now.
Shaun the Penman, do you have a favored Irish renaissance fair blog you could link to? I'd like to go to the recommended local festival as a fair maiden.
I'll certainly shave: face, ankles and chest. But since I fear my voice will be a dead giveaway, I kindly request a Dems only fair. (or af-fair, for a wee bit of spallaíocht if I might be so bold)
May the hinges of our friendship never grow rusty!
Post a Comment