Friday, May 30, 2008

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

No comments: