Rosaura Martinez Ruiz
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780823298273
- eISBN:
- 9781531500535
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823298273.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This book considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Principle of Pleasure. There Freud suggests that he will investigate a psychic tendency that is not subject to the ...
More
This book considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Principle of Pleasure. There Freud suggests that he will investigate a psychic tendency that is not subject to the pleasure principle, but in fact for Freud the latter remains sovereign. Following Jacques Derrida, Martínez argues that when the pleasure principle comes into contact with the death drive (a tendency toward aggression or cruelty), the psyche can take detours that, without exceeding the limit of the pleasure principle, can nevertheless defer it. Eros: Beyond the Death Drive reflects on these deviations of the pleasure principle, which Martínez finds both in the political sphere and in intimate relations. Following these erotic paths, Martínez argues that the forces of the death drive can only be resisted if resistance is understood as an ongoing process in which erotic action and the construction of pathways for sublimation are interminable tasks. We know that the final accomplishment of these tasks is impossible, but, like Freud’s “impossible professions,” they remain imperative. Though always incomplete, they remain undeniably urgent, and psychoanalysis and deconstruction remind us of their urgency. In complementary ways, both Freud and Derrida teach us that the death drive is insurmountable, but that through political action we can delay, defer, and postpone it. Martínez shows us that this effort of resistance must be uninterrupted. Calling for the creation and maintenance of a “community of mourning duelists,” this book builds toward the affirmation of the kind of “erotic battalion” that must always be mobilized.Less
This book considers a promise left unfulfilled in Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Principle of Pleasure. There Freud suggests that he will investigate a psychic tendency that is not subject to the pleasure principle, but in fact for Freud the latter remains sovereign. Following Jacques Derrida, Martínez argues that when the pleasure principle comes into contact with the death drive (a tendency toward aggression or cruelty), the psyche can take detours that, without exceeding the limit of the pleasure principle, can nevertheless defer it. Eros: Beyond the Death Drive reflects on these deviations of the pleasure principle, which Martínez finds both in the political sphere and in intimate relations. Following these erotic paths, Martínez argues that the forces of the death drive can only be resisted if resistance is understood as an ongoing process in which erotic action and the construction of pathways for sublimation are interminable tasks. We know that the final accomplishment of these tasks is impossible, but, like Freud’s “impossible professions,” they remain imperative. Though always incomplete, they remain undeniably urgent, and psychoanalysis and deconstruction remind us of their urgency. In complementary ways, both Freud and Derrida teach us that the death drive is insurmountable, but that through political action we can delay, defer, and postpone it. Martínez shows us that this effort of resistance must be uninterrupted. Calling for the creation and maintenance of a “community of mourning duelists,” this book builds toward the affirmation of the kind of “erotic battalion” that must always be mobilized.
Clayton Crockett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227211
- eISBN:
- 9780823235308
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227211.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This book represents a powerful theological engagement with psychoanalytic theory in Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Žižek, as well as major expressions of contemporary continental philosophy, including ...
More
This book represents a powerful theological engagement with psychoanalytic theory in Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Žižek, as well as major expressions of contemporary continental philosophy, including Deleuze, Derrida, Marion, and Badiou. Through creative and constructive psycho-theological readings of topics such as sublimation, schizophrenia, God, and creation ex nihilo, this book contributes to a new form of radical theological thinking that is deeply involved in the world. Here the idea of the Kantian sublime is read into Freud and Lacan, and compared with sublimation. The sublime refers to a conflict of the Kantian faculties of reason and imagination, and involves the attempt to represent what is intrinsically unrepresentable. Sublimation, by contrast, involves the expression and partial satisfaction of primal desires in culturally acceptable terms. The sublime is negatively expressed in sublimation, because it is both the “source” of sublimation as well as that which resists being sublimated. That is, the Freudian sublime is related to the process of sublimation, but it also distorts or disrupts sublimation, and invokes what Lacan calls the Real. The effects of the sublime are not just psychoanalytic but, importantly, theological, because the sublime is the main form that “God” takes in the modern world. A radical postmodern theology attends to the workings of the sublime in our thinking and living, and provides resources to understand the complexity of reality. This book is one of the first sustained theological readings of Lacan in English.Less
This book represents a powerful theological engagement with psychoanalytic theory in Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, and Žižek, as well as major expressions of contemporary continental philosophy, including Deleuze, Derrida, Marion, and Badiou. Through creative and constructive psycho-theological readings of topics such as sublimation, schizophrenia, God, and creation ex nihilo, this book contributes to a new form of radical theological thinking that is deeply involved in the world. Here the idea of the Kantian sublime is read into Freud and Lacan, and compared with sublimation. The sublime refers to a conflict of the Kantian faculties of reason and imagination, and involves the attempt to represent what is intrinsically unrepresentable. Sublimation, by contrast, involves the expression and partial satisfaction of primal desires in culturally acceptable terms. The sublime is negatively expressed in sublimation, because it is both the “source” of sublimation as well as that which resists being sublimated. That is, the Freudian sublime is related to the process of sublimation, but it also distorts or disrupts sublimation, and invokes what Lacan calls the Real. The effects of the sublime are not just psychoanalytic but, importantly, theological, because the sublime is the main form that “God” takes in the modern world. A radical postmodern theology attends to the workings of the sublime in our thinking and living, and provides resources to understand the complexity of reality. This book is one of the first sustained theological readings of Lacan in English.
Vesna A. Wallace
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195122114
- eISBN:
- 9780199834808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195122119.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
The first part of this last chapter discusses the path of actualizing gnosis in relation to the individual. The Kālacakratantra's theory of the nature of gnosis, prāṇas (life force or life winds), ...
More
The first part of this last chapter discusses the path of actualizing gnosis in relation to the individual. The Kālacakratantra's theory of the nature of gnosis, prāṇas (life force or life winds), spiritual ignorance, and mental afflictions, as well as the relationships among them, provides the rationale for the Kālacakratantra practices for eliminating mental afflictions and actualizing the four bodies of the Buddha. Among the Kālacakratantra's multifaceted approaches to the eradication of mental afflictions, several are especially significant: first, the path of eliminating mental afflictions is the path of sublimating the afflictive nature of mental afflictions into the peaceful and pure nature of the enlightened beings, who are the pure aspects of the elements from which mental afflictions arise; second, the path of sublimating mental afflictions in the Kālacakra tradition is the path of recognizing the ultimate nature of one's own mental afflictions, which is gnosis. The following three sections of the chapter look at the transformative body of the path of initiation, the transformative body of the path of the stage of generation, and the transformative body of the path of the stage of completion. The last section examines the phases of the ṣaḍ‐aṅga‐yoga (six‐phased yoga) of the Kālacakratantra; this is a meditative process that manifests the successively more encompassing aspects of the mind.Less
The first part of this last chapter discusses the path of actualizing gnosis in relation to the individual. The Kālacakratantra's theory of the nature of gnosis, prāṇas (life force or life winds), spiritual ignorance, and mental afflictions, as well as the relationships among them, provides the rationale for the Kālacakratantra practices for eliminating mental afflictions and actualizing the four bodies of the Buddha. Among the Kālacakratantra's multifaceted approaches to the eradication of mental afflictions, several are especially significant: first, the path of eliminating mental afflictions is the path of sublimating the afflictive nature of mental afflictions into the peaceful and pure nature of the enlightened beings, who are the pure aspects of the elements from which mental afflictions arise; second, the path of sublimating mental afflictions in the Kālacakra tradition is the path of recognizing the ultimate nature of one's own mental afflictions, which is gnosis. The following three sections of the chapter look at the transformative body of the path of initiation, the transformative body of the path of the stage of generation, and the transformative body of the path of the stage of completion. The last section examines the phases of the ṣaḍ‐aṅga‐yoga (six‐phased yoga) of the Kālacakratantra; this is a meditative process that manifests the successively more encompassing aspects of the mind.
Frank Graziano
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195136401
- eISBN:
- 9780199835164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195136403.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, ...
More
An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, including a devaluation or dismissal of erotic and psychological aspects. The concluding section treats the inversions of values and meanings in mysticism, then surveys perceptions regarding whether saints’ mortification is for imitation or wondrous admiration.Less
An analysis of what mysticism might mean if its underlying presumptions–that God desires suffering, that mystics marry Christ–are false. Also explores trends in the scholarship on female mysticism, including a devaluation or dismissal of erotic and psychological aspects. The concluding section treats the inversions of values and meanings in mysticism, then surveys perceptions regarding whether saints’ mortification is for imitation or wondrous admiration.
Marie McGinn
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199691524
- eISBN:
- 9780191742262
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691524.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
In his later work, Wittgenstein attacks the tendency to sublime the logic of our language that he finds in Russell and his own earlier philosophy. This chapter argues that this tendency should be ...
More
In his later work, Wittgenstein attacks the tendency to sublime the logic of our language that he finds in Russell and his own earlier philosophy. This chapter argues that this tendency should be taken to include, not only our craving for generality, but also the temptation to picture meaning as a remarkable act of mind. The chapter then discusses the strategies employed by the later Wittgenstein to undermine both aspects of this tendency.Less
In his later work, Wittgenstein attacks the tendency to sublime the logic of our language that he finds in Russell and his own earlier philosophy. This chapter argues that this tendency should be taken to include, not only our craving for generality, but also the temptation to picture meaning as a remarkable act of mind. The chapter then discusses the strategies employed by the later Wittgenstein to undermine both aspects of this tendency.
Peter Otto
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198187196
- eISBN:
- 9780191674655
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, Poetry
This book examines the relation between Blake's text and the visual designs in The Four Zoas, one of the most important works in Blake's oeuvre. It uncovers a Blake deeply engaged with the cultural ...
More
This book examines the relation between Blake's text and the visual designs in The Four Zoas, one of the most important works in Blake's oeuvre. It uncovers a Blake deeply engaged with the cultural discourses of his time, in profound dialogue with Swedenborg, Locke, and Young. In the course of this conversation, Blake anatomizes a remarkable variety of cultural practices (including religion, science, and art) designed to achieve transcendence. He focuses in particular on the fate of the body in cultures of transcendence, developing perhaps the first theory of sexual sublimation. Blake's radical visual and verbal strategies in this poem are part of an attempt to defer the movement of transcendence, long enough for the reader to see the warring elements of the fallen world as the dismembered body of humanity.Less
This book examines the relation between Blake's text and the visual designs in The Four Zoas, one of the most important works in Blake's oeuvre. It uncovers a Blake deeply engaged with the cultural discourses of his time, in profound dialogue with Swedenborg, Locke, and Young. In the course of this conversation, Blake anatomizes a remarkable variety of cultural practices (including religion, science, and art) designed to achieve transcendence. He focuses in particular on the fate of the body in cultures of transcendence, developing perhaps the first theory of sexual sublimation. Blake's radical visual and verbal strategies in this poem are part of an attempt to defer the movement of transcendence, long enough for the reader to see the warring elements of the fallen world as the dismembered body of humanity.
Joseph M. Hassett
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199582907
- eISBN:
- 9780191723216
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582907.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Yeats's conversations with Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult, during the summer of 1916 inform the intriguing essay on poetic creativity that he wrote while wrestling with the idea that Iseult might ...
More
Yeats's conversations with Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult, during the summer of 1916 inform the intriguing essay on poetic creativity that he wrote while wrestling with the idea that Iseult might succeed her mother as Muse. In the essay, called Per Amica Silentia Lunae, he says that he seeks inspiration by ‘invit[ing] a marmorean Muse,’ thus invoking the image in the accompanying poem, ‘Ego Dominus Tuus,’ of Dante setting his chisel to the hardest stone and hungering for ‘the apple on the bough/Most out of reach.’ Yeats asks whether advancing age requires that he continue his quest for an unattainable Muse: ‘A poet, when he is growing old, will ask himself if he cannot keep his mask and his vision without new bitterness, new disappointment.’ He concludes that there is no alternative to the ‘bitter crust’ of unrequited pursuit of the Muse — a conclusion fraught with peril because it suggested that, in order to retain his access to poetic inspiration, he needed to relive his unsatisfied quest for Maud Gonne in uncanny pursuit of her daughter. Chapter 4 examines the way in which Iseult Gonne accelerated Yeats's career when it threatened to stall upon his abandonment of her mother as Muse. Iseult, the pupil as Muse, helped Yeats formulate his alternative to Freud's theories of the role of desire and sublimation in creativity. Her presence, ideas, and her own poetry profoundly influenced Yeats's work during this critical period. Yeats proposed marriage to Iseult in September 1917. She declined, but seemed unwilling to let him go completely. The prospect of a second generation of pursuing the unattainable was unnerving. Almost immediately, Yeats decided to marry George Hyde‐Lees, a young woman to whom Olivia Shakespear had introduced him a few years earlier.Less
Yeats's conversations with Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult, during the summer of 1916 inform the intriguing essay on poetic creativity that he wrote while wrestling with the idea that Iseult might succeed her mother as Muse. In the essay, called Per Amica Silentia Lunae, he says that he seeks inspiration by ‘invit[ing] a marmorean Muse,’ thus invoking the image in the accompanying poem, ‘Ego Dominus Tuus,’ of Dante setting his chisel to the hardest stone and hungering for ‘the apple on the bough/Most out of reach.’ Yeats asks whether advancing age requires that he continue his quest for an unattainable Muse: ‘A poet, when he is growing old, will ask himself if he cannot keep his mask and his vision without new bitterness, new disappointment.’ He concludes that there is no alternative to the ‘bitter crust’ of unrequited pursuit of the Muse — a conclusion fraught with peril because it suggested that, in order to retain his access to poetic inspiration, he needed to relive his unsatisfied quest for Maud Gonne in uncanny pursuit of her daughter. Chapter 4 examines the way in which Iseult Gonne accelerated Yeats's career when it threatened to stall upon his abandonment of her mother as Muse. Iseult, the pupil as Muse, helped Yeats formulate his alternative to Freud's theories of the role of desire and sublimation in creativity. Her presence, ideas, and her own poetry profoundly influenced Yeats's work during this critical period. Yeats proposed marriage to Iseult in September 1917. She declined, but seemed unwilling to let him go completely. The prospect of a second generation of pursuing the unattainable was unnerving. Almost immediately, Yeats decided to marry George Hyde‐Lees, a young woman to whom Olivia Shakespear had introduced him a few years earlier.
Johanna Malt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199253425
- eISBN:
- 9780191698132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253425.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own ...
More
This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own practice in the domain of object creation diverges from that of Salvador Dalí and others in one crucial respect: the incorporation of language into the surrealist object. The chapter considers how Breton's own involvement with visual forms of surrealist activity is motivated by particular aims, notably that of including language in the category of phenomena to be reappraised and inscribed in a dialectic of subjective and objective forces. For in seeking to prove the materialist credentials on which surrealism's political engagement relied, Breton created a class of poème-objet in which a power struggle takes place between word and image, between concealment and display, between fetishism and sublimation.Less
This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own practice in the domain of object creation diverges from that of Salvador Dalí and others in one crucial respect: the incorporation of language into the surrealist object. The chapter considers how Breton's own involvement with visual forms of surrealist activity is motivated by particular aims, notably that of including language in the category of phenomena to be reappraised and inscribed in a dialectic of subjective and objective forces. For in seeking to prove the materialist credentials on which surrealism's political engagement relied, Breton created a class of poème-objet in which a power struggle takes place between word and image, between concealment and display, between fetishism and sublimation.
Rebecca Bowler and Claire Drewery (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474415750
- eISBN:
- 9781474415774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415750.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between ...
More
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between the public and private, the cerebral and the corporeal and the spiritual and the profane in both her fiction and non-fiction. The essays contained in this volume are grouped under two sections entitled ‘The Abstract Intellect’ and ‘Abject Bodies’. They each address the various ways in which Sinclair endeavoured to formulate aesthetic techniques through which the subjective, physical and intellectual experience of ‘reality’ might be represented. Together, the two sections of the monograph investigate the many fruitful connections between Sinclair’s fictional, critical and philosophical output and the structures of epochal change traditionally associated with literary Modernism. They focus in particular upon Sinclair’s engagement with early-twentieth century cultural changes in perceptions of the construction and representation of the human subject. Such interrogations were made possible through contemporaneous shifts in humanist beliefs about subjective construction following thinkers like Freud, who theorized humans as constructs of unconscious drives and desires. Ultimately, the essays and the volume as a whole conclude that Sinclair’s work might be viewed in this context as a radical ontological challenge to traditional assumptions about what it means to be human.Less
This monograph brings together the most recent research on Sinclair and re-contextualises her work both within and against dominant Modernist narratives. It explores Sinclair’s negotiations between the public and private, the cerebral and the corporeal and the spiritual and the profane in both her fiction and non-fiction. The essays contained in this volume are grouped under two sections entitled ‘The Abstract Intellect’ and ‘Abject Bodies’. They each address the various ways in which Sinclair endeavoured to formulate aesthetic techniques through which the subjective, physical and intellectual experience of ‘reality’ might be represented. Together, the two sections of the monograph investigate the many fruitful connections between Sinclair’s fictional, critical and philosophical output and the structures of epochal change traditionally associated with literary Modernism. They focus in particular upon Sinclair’s engagement with early-twentieth century cultural changes in perceptions of the construction and representation of the human subject. Such interrogations were made possible through contemporaneous shifts in humanist beliefs about subjective construction following thinkers like Freud, who theorized humans as constructs of unconscious drives and desires. Ultimately, the essays and the volume as a whole conclude that Sinclair’s work might be viewed in this context as a radical ontological challenge to traditional assumptions about what it means to be human.
Anne Dufourmantelle
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823279586
- eISBN:
- 9780823281459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823279586.003.0025
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Is gentleness a form of sublimation? Sublimated desire requires that the very place from which it comes be abolished. From this perspective, gentleness culturally sublimates the violence and ...
More
Is gentleness a form of sublimation? Sublimated desire requires that the very place from which it comes be abolished. From this perspective, gentleness culturally sublimates the violence and brutality of our most archaic animal reflexes. As power, gentleness is not sublimation in the sense of a life drive that strives to always preserve the conditions of its own fulfilment. What it sublimates is the very access to the living—a gentleness drive?Less
Is gentleness a form of sublimation? Sublimated desire requires that the very place from which it comes be abolished. From this perspective, gentleness culturally sublimates the violence and brutality of our most archaic animal reflexes. As power, gentleness is not sublimation in the sense of a life drive that strives to always preserve the conditions of its own fulfilment. What it sublimates is the very access to the living—a gentleness drive?
C. Anne Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198152484
- eISBN:
- 9780191710049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198152484.003.0017
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
A large collection of chemical recipe texts dating from the end of the first century BC to the Byzantine period appear to describe actual chemical experiments and reactions carried out in ancient ...
More
A large collection of chemical recipe texts dating from the end of the first century BC to the Byzantine period appear to describe actual chemical experiments and reactions carried out in ancient Greece with the object of transforming the outward appearance of copper first to silver, then to gold. However, the gold was not a realistic imitation designed to deceive the unwary, like the adulterated or imitation gold and silver of the recipes in the Egyptian goldsmiths' notebooks of the third century AD. To determine the experimenters' real aims, this chapter examines the experiments' theoretical background as well as the role of distillation (evaporation of liquids and collection of the recondensed vapour) and sublimation (the heating of minerals within a sealed vessel to release gases which can react with other substances placed in the vessel). It argues that metalworkers already skilled in those technologies were among the founders of the chemical art, and discusses the significance of Democritus to them.Less
A large collection of chemical recipe texts dating from the end of the first century BC to the Byzantine period appear to describe actual chemical experiments and reactions carried out in ancient Greece with the object of transforming the outward appearance of copper first to silver, then to gold. However, the gold was not a realistic imitation designed to deceive the unwary, like the adulterated or imitation gold and silver of the recipes in the Egyptian goldsmiths' notebooks of the third century AD. To determine the experimenters' real aims, this chapter examines the experiments' theoretical background as well as the role of distillation (evaporation of liquids and collection of the recondensed vapour) and sublimation (the heating of minerals within a sealed vessel to release gases which can react with other substances placed in the vessel). It argues that metalworkers already skilled in those technologies were among the founders of the chemical art, and discusses the significance of Democritus to them.
Harper Shalloe
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781474482349
- eISBN:
- 9781399501606
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474482349.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter underscores important links between trans studies and psychoanalysis through the case study of Let Me Die a Woman (1978) and presents the film as a site of struggle pertaining to genre ...
More
This chapter underscores important links between trans studies and psychoanalysis through the case study of Let Me Die a Woman (1978) and presents the film as a site of struggle pertaining to genre classifications (documentary and pornography), the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation, and recent theorizations of trans negativity in trans studies. The chapter arguing that trans studies’ ontological turn has underacknowledged relations to psychoanalytic understandings of the process of sublimation. The author discusses editing as the key formal element in the film that initiates a sublimation-like process, coining a novel conceptual parallel that the author calls “editing as edging.”Less
This chapter underscores important links between trans studies and psychoanalysis through the case study of Let Me Die a Woman (1978) and presents the film as a site of struggle pertaining to genre classifications (documentary and pornography), the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation, and recent theorizations of trans negativity in trans studies. The chapter arguing that trans studies’ ontological turn has underacknowledged relations to psychoanalytic understandings of the process of sublimation. The author discusses editing as the key formal element in the film that initiates a sublimation-like process, coining a novel conceptual parallel that the author calls “editing as edging.”
Suzi Adams
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234585
- eISBN:
- 9780823240739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234585.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, ...
More
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, respectively. This chapter focuses on the radical imagination of the psyche. Castoriadis elaborates the radical imagination as the basis of an anthropology of subjectivity, leaning on—and reconstructing—Freudian psychoanalysis in the process. In elucidating the psyche, Castoriadis uncovers the psychic monad as a deeper, more primordial layer than Freudian unconscious. The radical imagination appears as the psychic flux of representations; the representations are elaborated as creations ex nihilo, which in turn presume the psyche to be defunctionalized. The psyche encapsulates Castoriadis's understanding of human modes of being as magma; indeed it was originally in relation to the psyche that he first used the term. Representations form (proto)meaning, which, through the process of social-sublimation encounter the other dimension of meaning: social imaginary significations.Less
The following two chapters address the creative imagination in its two, mutually irreducible poles: the radical imagination of the psyche and the radical imaginary of the social-historical, respectively. This chapter focuses on the radical imagination of the psyche. Castoriadis elaborates the radical imagination as the basis of an anthropology of subjectivity, leaning on—and reconstructing—Freudian psychoanalysis in the process. In elucidating the psyche, Castoriadis uncovers the psychic monad as a deeper, more primordial layer than Freudian unconscious. The radical imagination appears as the psychic flux of representations; the representations are elaborated as creations ex nihilo, which in turn presume the psyche to be defunctionalized. The psyche encapsulates Castoriadis's understanding of human modes of being as magma; indeed it was originally in relation to the psyche that he first used the term. Representations form (proto)meaning, which, through the process of social-sublimation encounter the other dimension of meaning: social imaginary significations.
Oliver Marchart
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624973
- eISBN:
- 9780748672066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624973.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
In 1956, troops of the Warsaw pact states invaded Hungary and cracked down on the Hungarian revolution. This event had heavily dislocating effects on Western political thought. As a reaction, Paul ...
More
In 1956, troops of the Warsaw pact states invaded Hungary and cracked down on the Hungarian revolution. This event had heavily dislocating effects on Western political thought. As a reaction, Paul Ricoeur published one of his best-known essays, ‘The Political Paradox’, in which he seeks to come to terms philosophically with the exigency of the Hungarian events. Counter to state-Marxism, his aim is to think what he perceives as the double originality of politics: a specifically political rationality and a specifically political evil. In order to work his way towards this double specificity he has to disentangle the rationality of politics from the sphere of economic rationality, to which it was reduced by Marxism. It seems that the way ‘the political’ is understood differs between the followers of Hannah Arendt and the followers of Carl Schmitt. While the ‘Arendtians’ see in the political a space of freedom and public deliberation, the Schmittians see in it a space of power, conflict and antagonism. Both the Arendtian and the Schmittian trajectory share what can be called the neutralisation or sublimation thesis.Less
In 1956, troops of the Warsaw pact states invaded Hungary and cracked down on the Hungarian revolution. This event had heavily dislocating effects on Western political thought. As a reaction, Paul Ricoeur published one of his best-known essays, ‘The Political Paradox’, in which he seeks to come to terms philosophically with the exigency of the Hungarian events. Counter to state-Marxism, his aim is to think what he perceives as the double originality of politics: a specifically political rationality and a specifically political evil. In order to work his way towards this double specificity he has to disentangle the rationality of politics from the sphere of economic rationality, to which it was reduced by Marxism. It seems that the way ‘the political’ is understood differs between the followers of Hannah Arendt and the followers of Carl Schmitt. While the ‘Arendtians’ see in the political a space of freedom and public deliberation, the Schmittians see in it a space of power, conflict and antagonism. Both the Arendtian and the Schmittian trajectory share what can be called the neutralisation or sublimation thesis.
Rosaura Martínez Ruiz
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780823298273
- eISBN:
- 9781531500535
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823298273.003.0004
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This chapter offers a detailed account of the philosophical and political implications of the death drive. The author reads Freud himself as well as commentators including Paul Ricoeur, Herbert ...
More
This chapter offers a detailed account of the philosophical and political implications of the death drive. The author reads Freud himself as well as commentators including Paul Ricoeur, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Kristeva in order to locate some alternative paths or “detours” for the death drive. These are, according to the author, ways in which this drive can be redirected rather than repressed or denied. They open onto possibilities for erotic cohabitation and less cruel forms of coexistence. Sublimation and humor are two key means of rerouting the death drive, the author argues, and they can point the way to erotic alternatives, including the formation of “erotic battalions” of the kind envisioned in the author’s Postscript “Toward a Community of Duelists.”Less
This chapter offers a detailed account of the philosophical and political implications of the death drive. The author reads Freud himself as well as commentators including Paul Ricoeur, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Kristeva in order to locate some alternative paths or “detours” for the death drive. These are, according to the author, ways in which this drive can be redirected rather than repressed or denied. They open onto possibilities for erotic cohabitation and less cruel forms of coexistence. Sublimation and humor are two key means of rerouting the death drive, the author argues, and they can point the way to erotic alternatives, including the formation of “erotic battalions” of the kind envisioned in the author’s Postscript “Toward a Community of Duelists.”
Andrea Hurst
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228744
- eISBN:
- 9780823235179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823228744.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
This chapter elaborates on the theme of action and its implications for Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic account of ethical action. It shows that the masculine je, formed ...
More
This chapter elaborates on the theme of action and its implications for Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic account of ethical action. It shows that the masculine je, formed via a rejection of castration, dominated by the death drive as return, and bound by the stereotypes of an existing order, operates from a position of ideological paranoia, whereby his lot is the fixated action of an obedient functionary of the externally imposed law. In contrast, the feminine je, formed via wholesale acceptance of castration, dominated by the death drive as dissolution, and bound to smash up existing stereotypes, operates from a position of hysterical transgression, whereby her lot is the paralysis of pure destruction. Beyond these two libidinal styles, Lacan derives a third style, namely, one of inventive sublimation. This style, which invokes the aporia of a paradoxical interweaving of inventive and destructive action, is the key to Lacan's account of ethical action.Less
This chapter elaborates on the theme of action and its implications for Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic account of ethical action. It shows that the masculine je, formed via a rejection of castration, dominated by the death drive as return, and bound by the stereotypes of an existing order, operates from a position of ideological paranoia, whereby his lot is the fixated action of an obedient functionary of the externally imposed law. In contrast, the feminine je, formed via wholesale acceptance of castration, dominated by the death drive as dissolution, and bound to smash up existing stereotypes, operates from a position of hysterical transgression, whereby her lot is the paralysis of pure destruction. Beyond these two libidinal styles, Lacan derives a third style, namely, one of inventive sublimation. This style, which invokes the aporia of a paradoxical interweaving of inventive and destructive action, is the key to Lacan's account of ethical action.
Clayton Crockett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227211
- eISBN:
- 9780823235308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227211.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter deals with the general question of sublimation and its relevance for understanding religion. The sublime is clearly located within the subject and not within the object. This ...
More
This chapter deals with the general question of sublimation and its relevance for understanding religion. The sublime is clearly located within the subject and not within the object. This disorientation provoked by the process of sublime judgment signifies a discord at the heart of the self, and this process prefigures the complexity and disorientation within the self diagnosed by psychoanalysis.Less
This chapter deals with the general question of sublimation and its relevance for understanding religion. The sublime is clearly located within the subject and not within the object. This disorientation provoked by the process of sublime judgment signifies a discord at the heart of the self, and this process prefigures the complexity and disorientation within the self diagnosed by psychoanalysis.
Clayton Crockett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227211
- eISBN:
- 9780823235308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227211.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter opens up the question of the ethics of psychoanalysis by considering the desire for the Thing discussed by Lacan in his Seminar VII. The desire for the Thing is beyond good and evil in a ...
More
This chapter opens up the question of the ethics of psychoanalysis by considering the desire for the Thing discussed by Lacan in his Seminar VII. The desire for the Thing is beyond good and evil in a conventional moral sense. Moreover, it also indicates a powerful desire for what Lacan calls the Real. Sublimation is important because people cannot approach the Real in itself. More than being, people want God to be good, but psychoanalysis suggests that this is not a simple want, and theology's God may be more subtle and ambivalent than many are prepared to admit.Less
This chapter opens up the question of the ethics of psychoanalysis by considering the desire for the Thing discussed by Lacan in his Seminar VII. The desire for the Thing is beyond good and evil in a conventional moral sense. Moreover, it also indicates a powerful desire for what Lacan calls the Real. Sublimation is important because people cannot approach the Real in itself. More than being, people want God to be good, but psychoanalysis suggests that this is not a simple want, and theology's God may be more subtle and ambivalent than many are prepared to admit.
Clayton Crockett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823227211
- eISBN:
- 9780823235308
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823227211.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter investigates the question of the theological generation of meaning, which is a process of sublimation. It provides an understanding of creation ex nihilo from a confrontation of Lacan ...
More
This chapter investigates the question of the theological generation of meaning, which is a process of sublimation. It provides an understanding of creation ex nihilo from a confrontation of Lacan and Tillich. A confrontation emerges out of a contrast between Tillich and Žižek in their respective readings of Schelling, and the chapter provides a reading of the second draft of Schelling's Ages of the World. The psycho-theological concept of creation ex nihilo at the center of the book functions as an axis around which the other essays on previous chapters partially pivot. The end of the chapter confronts Tillich and Schelling directly with Lacan on the concept of creation.Less
This chapter investigates the question of the theological generation of meaning, which is a process of sublimation. It provides an understanding of creation ex nihilo from a confrontation of Lacan and Tillich. A confrontation emerges out of a contrast between Tillich and Žižek in their respective readings of Schelling, and the chapter provides a reading of the second draft of Schelling's Ages of the World. The psycho-theological concept of creation ex nihilo at the center of the book functions as an axis around which the other essays on previous chapters partially pivot. The end of the chapter confronts Tillich and Schelling directly with Lacan on the concept of creation.
Judith A. Peraino
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520215870
- eISBN:
- 9780520921740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520215870.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Knowledge of the “truth of God” can only be achieved through a process of thorough self- examination that leads to self: regulation of sexuality. But equally important to sexual discipline in the ...
More
Knowledge of the “truth of God” can only be achieved through a process of thorough self- examination that leads to self: regulation of sexuality. But equally important to sexual discipline in the production of truth and subjectivity is the discipline of disclosure. This chapter explores how the notion of confession applies to music; that is, how music can function as disclosure and as discipline. The primary focus is on the post-Freudian cultural climate, in which Christian confession was secularized through psychoanalysis. At nearly the same point in time in the late nineteenth century, the medical category of the “homosexual” emerged. Two composers, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Benjamin Britten, provide case studies for the role of musical disclosure and discipline in the modern homosexual subject. The finale of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony offers an exemplar of presumed sexual sublimation and confession, while Britten's compositions Billy Budd and Abraham and Isaac together disclose a methodical exploration of the ethics and erotics of self-discipline.Less
Knowledge of the “truth of God” can only be achieved through a process of thorough self- examination that leads to self: regulation of sexuality. But equally important to sexual discipline in the production of truth and subjectivity is the discipline of disclosure. This chapter explores how the notion of confession applies to music; that is, how music can function as disclosure and as discipline. The primary focus is on the post-Freudian cultural climate, in which Christian confession was secularized through psychoanalysis. At nearly the same point in time in the late nineteenth century, the medical category of the “homosexual” emerged. Two composers, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and Benjamin Britten, provide case studies for the role of musical disclosure and discipline in the modern homosexual subject. The finale of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony offers an exemplar of presumed sexual sublimation and confession, while Britten's compositions Billy Budd and Abraham and Isaac together disclose a methodical exploration of the ethics and erotics of self-discipline.
