Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 08:14:45 +1000 (EST) From: Christopher Mcmahon <Christopher.Mcmahon-AT-jcu.edu.au> Subject: Re: deleuzian lord of the flies Thanks for these thoughts: Have you read K. Oe's "Nip the buds, shoot the children?" - Chris On Mon, 15 Jun 1998 Unleesh-AT-aol.com wrote: > A friend of mine recently was describing the behavior of her sister's infant > son and asking me whether it was normal, indicating it wasn't an aggressive > move at all. "He likes to pull hair and scratch faces", all the time, even > when not apparently angry. I replied, "it's probably an enjoyable interaction > for him." I paused and wondered, "What would it be like if those behaviors > were not culled out of children? What would a world of adults be like where > these spontaneous behaviors of childhood were not actively discouraged? What > would happen if we either turned the filters off or radically changed our > selection criteria? It's interesting to imagine a world of adults going around > pulling each other's hair and scratching each other's faces." Whenever I see a > child or children I always like to imagine their behavior in an adult. > Which made me think that it might be interesting to construct a fictional > story about a group of infants and toddlers who grew up on their own, say, on > an island, and what sort of society they might develop. Lord of the Flies > attempted something similar, but with people who had already been raised > several years within the heart of Empire, and so already had emergent imperial > selves, thusly it is no wonder that they created barbaric imperial states. > (And how I remember in high school this book being used as "proof" that people > need government, need parental molding to keep from becoming monsters! Ha! > Monsters perhaps, but there may be nonimperial monsters that are possible to > spawn ...) It seems more interesting to take people whose seedlings of > subjectification are still multiple and not totalized into an imperial > formation ... This of course brings in the whole feral children controversy. > Was the Wild Boy of Aveyron just an autistic child who got thrown into the > woods because his parents couldn't handle him, or was he really a wolf child > who became autistic because of lack of language? The feral children argument > is always used, in paean after paean (and how paeanful these are!), to > demonstrate that, yes, without language, without social subjectification, we > would be totally nonhuman. Yah, ok, so what? Are these children examples of > the highest power or the lowest power of that nonhumanness? Has anyone yet > attempted an appreciative phenomenology of the consciousness of these feral > children, tried to appreciate what their mindstate might have been like, what > connections it might have made? Or have we assumed it remained on an "animal" > level -- whatever that means, as if "animality" were a monolithic stupidity > and not a cognitive / visceral / intensive multiplicity ... OUR stupidity > regarding animals and their experience has been so rampant and is just now in > the seedling stages of being overcome it is no wonder that when comparisons > are made to animals, these children come out as stupid brutes. But has anyone > ever done a deleuzian take on the feral children problem? Is autism the only > possibility outside of signification and subjectification? If as Stern points > out there are emergent selvings from the intensive ambience of the milieu, > then couldn't we imagine entirely foreign types of selves emerging from a > forest experience? Deleuze in The Logic of Sense discusses how a consciousness > without the construct of the Other might be. > But in our example, we have a number of different toddlers and infants > together who can co-socialize each other. Let's say we're on an island with no > rampant predators and plenty of roots and berries that these children can > sniff out and feed themselves with. Let's throw in some toddlers with > babbling, prelinguistic, almost on the threshold of linguistic, states, so > there's some possible direction but without shaping it can go in myriad ways. > These toddlers can become the organizers for the social field. If we come back > in twenty years, what might we see? > Or, if we see this as unlikely due to infant dependence (again, the > discourse about feral children should be entirely reexamined), then perhaps > let us imagine an island of infants raised entirely by autistic, retarded > adults, or by schizophrenics. What will we see upon returning? > It would be nice to see a historical or (pre)historical perspective on > developmental practices and resulting consciousnesses. Regardless of how > accurate you think it is, I think Julian Jaynes provides some interesting > imaginative breaks in the history of consciousness with his Breakdown of the > Bicameral Mind and the notion that up until past Homer, humanity was not > "conscious" but almost in a sense schizophrenic -- hearing voices and so on. > If we look at paleoanthropology, we have to assume that between the ancestors > of chimps and humans, and the emergence of what we would call "fully human" ( > o god what ideology hides herein), there had to be multiple stages and lines > of development within the hominid, "proto-human"(although this term is > assumptive and perhaps arrogant) phenomenology. If we posit a hominid stage of > development without speech, are we talking autistic adults raising children? > How about children raised in monasteries with vows of silence? Does their > subjectivity center around bells and the sounds of voices resounding in the > cathedrals? Both individual- and species- infancy (babies and hominids) seems > to hold many potential lines of flight which could be explored... > > (un)leash >
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