deflected light

Concerning mood, I have been reading Edith Jacobson's book, Depression: Comparative Studies of Normal, Pathological, and Psychotic States. It is easy to overdo thoughts about mood when traveling, I think. Perhaps because it is also easy to overdo mood. Jacobson makes a distinction between mood and affective state on the basis of the "generalized" nature of mood--its capacity to recode all feelings in the pattern of the mood, regardless of whether or not these feelings are related to the same particular object.

picture: "Beach," Berlin

In thinking again about unobservable change, it is a certain return to perception, to self-perception, to the equivalence of these two things in the eyes of some external world, the one that Zizek says does not exist. There is so much at work in such logic. And logic, it seems, derives from the persistent desire to resolve something about all of those inperceptible entities, even as they seem to push towards perceptibility.

street life

At the same time that she is critical of this perspective, Julia Hell also must spend some time in the midst, and murky waters, of the Cold War logic that she claims "functioned like a mirror." Hell objects to the use of the term "totalitarian" (even as a critical concept, it seems) on the grounds that it remains bound to this "mirror logic," and insofar that it remains blind to "the specific forms of domination and resistance to that system." She also describes this Cold War "mirror logic" as one that creates dichotomies that need to be critically evaluated, such as between "Lukacsian realism" and "Western modernism." So in large part, her book, Post-Fascist Fantasies, is a thorough re-reading of those works in the tradition of "Lukacsian realism" in order to provoke and provide insight into the elements of non-realism (i.e. "fantasy") in these novels. As a project, this is productive and necessary to a reconsideration of East German literature. The wish to interrogate totalitarianism no further is, however, another thing. But it is an interesting "other thing," since it seems to me that the wish to dismiss "totalitarianism" is the backhand of a more moral endeavor--one that more self-consciously wants to discuss its past, future, and present--to deal with the repressed past (and implicit here, is "of the German nation"). Hell does not go at repression from the point of repression until the very end of her book, perhaps, in the epilogue, titled "History as Trauma." Instead, she uses the psychoanalytic notion of "fantasy" to designate an unconscious that functions alongside conscious political activity. In these versions of national repression, which pop up everywhere (I am becoming more convinced of this--not only because they "do," but also because people (?) also want to see them everywhere), the wall functions as a splitting mechanism, one that projects all of the bad elements to the other side. Hell uses the "Iron Curtain," but the logic of the wall (see Klaus Theweleit, for example) follows, "what was valued on one side of the Iron Curtain was devalorized on the other; what counted as a "good," "realist," affirmative text in the GDR became a "bad" text outside the GDR and vice versa" (11). This reading, of the wall as both a symbol and psychic fact of repression, fixes the projective fantasies of both the East and West Germans. With the fall of the wall, the continuation of this perspective was to claim that the "invisible" wall "within the head" was a sign of greater repression. So the "wall within the head," the unconscious "fantasy," becomes the conceptual and methodological turning point of post-totalitarian ideology. Similarly, the figure that Hell reads in this literature is the "sublime body" of the post-fascist father, which she takes from Zizek. What is it about this split, antagonistic subject--the transcendental/material, idealist/realist, communist/individual self--that is threatened by the very conceptualization of "totalitarianism"? It might perhaps be something similar to the threat that could be perceived by finding value in the Berlin Wall, by reading the Berlin Wall not as a symbol or thing of repression, but as something that reconfigures the mood of the people living around and after it. Arendt describes totalitarianism as an "experience"--of indeterminate quality--that becomes either foundational or pervasive. In "Ideology and Terror," she notes that this experience has a "general mood," which, "although it may be familiar in every other respect—never before has pervaded, and directed the handling of, public affairs" (461). This mood is an elusive, but nonetheless essential quality of the totalitarian state, and one which might prove useful for thinking about the wish to dismiss totalitarianism.

the difference between one and zero

In her June 1966 preface to Part Three of The Origins of Totalitarianism [1950], Hannah Arendt writes that totalitarianism can perhaps best be identified by what can exist when it is no longer:

“The clearest sign that the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term is, of course, the amazingly swift and rich recovery of the arts during the last decade. To be sure, efforts to rehabilitate Stalin and to curtail the increasingly vocal demands for freedom of speech and thought among students, writers, and artists recur again and again, but none of them has been very successful or is likely to be successful without a full-fledged re-establishment of terror and police rule. No doubt, the people of the Soviet Union are denied all forms of political freedom, not only freedom of association but also freedom of thought, opinion and public expression. It looks as though nothing has changed, while in fact everything has changed. When Stalin died the drawers of writers and artists were empty; today there exists a whole literature that circulates in manuscript and all kinds of modern painting are tried out in the painters’ studios and become known even though they are not exhibited. This is not to minimize the difference between tyrannical censorship and freedom of the arts, it is only to stress the fact that the difference between a clandestine literature and no literature equals the difference between one and zero.”

Arendt notes that totalitarianism is experienced as a "zero" environment, in which not only does art not have a public, it is also not produced. The above then, the change that appears "as though nothing has changed," is her description of the "thaw," a word she uses hesitatingly to describe the process of destalinization following the death of Stalin. It seems that this tension--"the difference between one and zero"--is raised in particular through the genre of lyric poetry. Emily Lygo has written of the "embargo on lyric poetry" during the Stalin era, but this seems to involve, for her and for the others, the idea that despite the official taboo, writers continued to produce poetry, among other things, "for the drawer." She and other historians of Soviet destalinization would perhaps prefer to discuss this period as one of the "impoverishment" of lyric poetry, which suffered most because it was the most direct form of expression. Those loyal to the party line might have felt differently, or justified the impoverishment of individual expression for the sake of upholding communal solidarity. Here, lyric suffers simply out of the moral sense that there were "more important things to do." But this argument is also one that seems to be echoed whenever this discussion is raised, since it involves deciding or placing a judgment upon the art that can actually do something to achieve political or social justice. In short, this is the issue that Arendt seems also to highlight; one part of it is something like seeing change where there appears to be none, and the other part, perhaps implicit, is that you would have to hold off, or not be swayed, by the insistence of the need to make decisions about moral, or artistic, or aesthetic realities. Perhaps I can't write anymore regarding this here, but it seems that at this point, Zizek's arguments about "complexity" being used to avoid making decisions you need to make could be seen as iterations of this problem. I think it's also interesting that Arendt wants you to see something where nothing appears; Zizek to see "nothing" or the "real" where something appears (in his language, to "discern the hidden necessity") as an irreducible antagonism. The location of antagonism in Arendt's formulation is always deferred, however: here, not one v. zero, but the difference between one and zero, also not locating the point at which ideology becomes itself, but about identifying the perceptual desire to see "one" in the first place.

the totalitarian mind

A world turned upside down carries with it the idea that there would be new things to revere. how are these things not salvatory? I'm reading an article by Karl Figlio, "The Absolute State of Mind in Society and the Individual" (Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 2006), which develops a theory of such a mind in terms of Wittgenstein's notion of the difference between certainty and knowledge. Taking into consideration the idea that knowledge is disposed with a certain emotive aspect, Figlio moves on to discuss this phenomenon in terms of pyschoanalysis. He discusses the difference between certainty and knowledge--both strategies for eluding doubt--in terms of the relationship between Melanie Klein's notions of the paranoid-schizoid position and depressive anxiety. Depressive anxiety, a response to the loss of an object of perception, differs from the paranoid-schizoid loss of object of phantasy (and how is this related to mourning/melancholia), and it is this difference that results in the "totalitarian mind." Since the loss on the side of certainty (paranoid-schizoid) is of a phantasized object, it is experienced internally, as a persecution of the self, and thus the response in "reality" is the disparagement of the external world. So according to Figlio. This process is aided by an externalized other, the externalization of the "doubt" from which escape is sought. Figlio announces that this is the point of lapsing into "psychosis." And here, he writes, "the rules are different": "Phantasy is unchecked by perception; indeed perception becomes a vehicle for phantasy. One "sees" clearly and accurately the hidden thoughts and motives of others. One "knows" through conviction rather than through evidence. The slow, straightening lessons that the external world forces upon the reality-oriented ego, do not impinge upon the ego that is identified with the ego-ideal" (128). It is easy enough, from the perspective of my recently described negativity, to imagine this process. But I think that this is also a helpful intervention in Zizek's super-structural ways of schematizing ideology, and for that matter, the largely subject-oriented ways of thinking about ideology. He continues, "In such a state, there is a "collusion of reality," in which events in the external world seem so pressing or so reasonable, that they conceal the phantasy that drives them" (128). Now, I think that conceiving of a phenomenon as "collusion" rather than as "lack" is an interesting idea. In place of "lack," Figlio refers to something like an engraining, or channeling, of this emotive aspect of thinking, as something that once done for the first time functions somewhat like a "template." He writes,

From now on, the perceived object will, in its good qualities, also be attacked, so the good internal object will be in danger of annihilation and loss. This state of "depressive anxiety" at the first loss of an object is the template for all further loss; as such it is a most powerful stimulus either for psychic growth or defence. The ego will always be unfulfilled by any actual object, whether by frustration, inconstancy, frailty or unappeasable anxiety. The psyche reacts to this state of perturbance either with thinking and internal dialogue or with action and narcissistic idealization. (128-129)

The turning upside-down of the world (something that both Bela Grunberger and Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel are credited with discussing) results in the idealization of some sort of turned-over object (they take shit, in a "faecalized universe"). Like something that might have the form of an annihilated wish, this object seems to be somewhat like the objects that fill Grunbein's "grayzone" landscapes. Still leaves the question of salvation...

picture: parking lot with flies as streaks of light and a painting of Mary that seems a church in its own right, Echo Park

beatrice and choco hang out in the backyard in the evening. i feel like choco's tail is taking on a personality of its own. mark wanted a picture of the tail next to the corn, in order to size the corn, but mark, it might be the other way around. we may never know. bea and choco are key creatures in this zoo. and then there is cyrus, the rabbit, and most recently, his new rabbit friend, the colonel. i guess this is the remaining sense of backyard adventures. and i feel like floundering for words, and figuring out what more there is to say. an-i-mals, daniel would say. the Grenzhund of Grunbein's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Border Dog," are the Grenzganger, "boundary walkers" of Schneider's Wall Jumper. Grunbein de-humanizes this fantasy figure; his dogs are written in memory of Pavlov and all of the laboratory dogs of the medical academy of the Russian armed forces. It seems that this series of poems is perhaps a light attack on the dialectic, since it seems that Grunbein rightly corrects the "Herrn/Sklaven" relationship to "master/dog." But I think what the poems also do is refigure the "frozen" past; the "Frozen dog [Eingefrorener Hund]" of the epigraphic poem, "Brought back to life [Wurde wiederbelebt]" is not alone in his thawing.

Typically, and maybe in this story, images like this would be ones to contend with. But let's take one part of de-ideology par Zizek/Eagleton, which is the idea that ideology is an issue of totality. This is Balibar's point, in his still systematic but less systemic ways: that, perhaps on the one hand, it is (or presents) the fantasy of a certain completeness of methodology (or closure between consciousness and representation/reality) and that the gap of ideology (for Zizek, the real) is a "non-totalizable complexity." I am interested in this notion, because it seems to be similar to D.W. Winnicott's notion that the positive thing "in favor" of the Berlin Wall is the proof it offers that humans cannot withstand "totality." I think that this is a really interesting cross-over, since it is Zizek's ideas about ideology that are both so predominant and so confounding. There are a few points--one is his dismissal of any remaining good to come from a discussion of the problem of "representation, and the other the strictness with which he equates psychoanalysis with repression. This reminds me, as a side note (and because I am trying to get a grip on my argument for the third chapter of my dissertation here), of Geoffry Cocks' article on psychoanlysis, psychotherapy, and psychiatry in divided Germany, which is titled, "Repression, Remembering, Working-Through," as if "repression" can, without comment, both stand in for psychoanalysis and substitute for a notion of repeating, or acting out. I have no thoughts about this "totality" yet, although I do have to say that I don't think it is the above image, which means that the image above would also have to be one of "unraveling"; maybe it would just be harder to digest.

picture: voyeur's view of recycled materials, near the train tracks, Los Angeles

so unraveling is accomplished, unlike becoming deideologized, by having a focus, or a fetish.

LA in the rains

More and more I find myself feeling this absurd juxtaposition of seemingly trivial, superficial details of life, of livivng and these heady, profound even unthinkable questions about the meaning of existence. The feeling is bizarre. And all words in this register apply--it always strikes me that this should actually be one of the most normal feelings, so to speak. Since I have been trying, in the past days (save for the day of feeling totally trivial, myself), to get a generous sense of Zizek's take on ideology and ideology critique, I have thought that this feeling is related to this confusing process of externalization and internalization that he finds at work in the process of ideology--both the standard, normal Ideology and the new, Zizek-redefined IDeology. The old version would have that internalization is the process of ideology--that contingency is turned into necessity through a process of taking in the contingency and giving it meaning (through our belief in some necessity). The new version has that the inner necessity of external, contingent events is ignored, thus ignoring the inherent logic of a system that produces such contingencies. Thus the contrast between versions:

• V(old): "internalization of the external contingency"
• V(new): "externalization of the result of an inner necessity"

I feel like the sense that these things (the internal/external, necessity/contingency) are very distance from one another is one of the inevitable points of Zizek's theorizing, although I feel that this seems, in his writing, to happen accidentally--or by way of method, to be one of the things you must accept, if you are to think of things in the end in the way that he does. It seems, on the one hand as bizarre as the above-mentioned feeling of the normalcy of feeling estranged from your very own life. This feeling, an affect that Zizek does not comment on, but one that I feel is the predominant outcome of his theoretical writings, founds the desire I have to think critically about his work, and ultimately to not want it.

picture: Forest Spirits, from Hayou Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke

picture: Beatrice, a cat.

This would be included in images and visions of the unraveling.

of the things to be unraveled

picture: Square Navels, Erin Trapp

I have this idea for a children's book that would be about the unraveling of the world. The images that I think of are ones with lines unwhorling and flattening out, or becoming invisible. And all the textures and depths lessening.

out there

We did some gardening today. My mom has a wooden sign in her kitchen that reads, "gardening is cheaper than therapy." This is certainly true. And by this, I don't think that my mom has ever meant, "so you don't need therapy." It seems to be more a testament to her sense of a certain fluidity between psychic and social realities.

picture: from MOCA exhibit Collecting Collections, courtesy of the iphone camera of Becky Bowden.

double language

there's already a lot going on this week. surprisingly, it has to do--in part, at least--with things i don't really have much context for. "Not knowing many things about a thing"--this type of knowledge is also always a pardon begged in relation to knowledge. It makes me wonder if we should ever hope to resolve such a thing. this lack of context is surprising because i thought that these things were continuities of things i had already been working with. like Spinoza, for example. But what were last year questions of ideology and the individual put to Hegel, are this year questions of belief, theology and the relation to the political put to Spinoza. Looking back at my notes, I find much of it unintelligible. what did make sense to me was Balibar's explication of the "double truth" as a strategy for speaking the universal. well, it did not actually make SO much sense in terms of speaking the universal, except that i think it is similar to Badiou's notion that the separation of spheres for science, art, love, and politics would allow non-interference between them. Spinoza is also similar to Wittgenstein, who wrote two dissimilar theoretical pieces during his life. So Balibar brings this question of authorship into the circle of things that there is to say about how Spinoza might be able to speak the universal. He concludes that the Political-Theological Tractatus is, minimally, a certain disguise of the author's opinions.

One of the things i very much like about the idea that the Political-Theological Tractatus is disguised in some way, or cryptic, in others, is that Balibar eschews the somewhat normed idea that censorship functions to hide those "real" or "true" elements that otherwise would not allow the text to get past the censor. Instead, he proposes that the genre of the tractatus is such that basic philosophical ideas fall under the cover of imaginative representations immediately accessible to the common ideas. With this style, Balibar concludes, "truth is not accessible in the same way." Similar to the "double truth" of the Spinozan and Wittgensteinian doctrines, language itself becomes doubled, and the prolbem with language is once again how to transform ideas to representations and truths to opinions (held by many). So it is, language.

Picture: from The History of Egypt, "The Occupations of Ani in the Elysian Fields" followed by text "...in the Great Hall of the Double Truth, who have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on Truth in Aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it before the Lord God who dwelleth in his solar disc."