Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 11:56:53 +0000
From: Daniel Haines <daniel-AT-tw2.com>
Subject: Re: guilt as symbolic mediator


Kalapsyche-AT-aol.com wrote:
> 
> Daniel--
> 
> I really enjoyed your comments in this posting, but I'm a little confused on
> the critique you're levelling against Freud here.  When you talk about re-
> emphasising the social in social reality, are you claiming that this gives us
> a different perspective on Freud's notion of the ego that allows us to
> critique it?  This would make sense to me because the ego in Freud seems to
> largely the result of transference relations.  Secondly, in the above portion
> of your letter, you seem to differentiate unconscious desire from the demands
> of social reality and claim that the latter represses the former.  At this
> point I'm a little bit confused as to what a non-social unconscious could
> possibly be.  In Capitalism and Shizophrenia Deleuze and Guattari claim that
> all desire is social desire.  Since all that belongs to the realm of desire in
> D&G is unconscious, this means to me that all desire must be social in nature.
> The case is really no different in psychoanalysis (Freudian, Kleinian, or
> Lacanian) where the unconscious gets structured symbolically, which is to say,
> socially.  For me, the difference between liberatory and castrated desire in
> D&G seems to be dealt with in terms of Molar and Molecular flows, but this
> doesn't quite work either insofar as D&G talk about molecular fascism in a
> number of different places.  With these points in mind, I was wondering if you
> might expand a little more on what you mean by a non-social unconscious
> desire.

hi kalapsyche,

thanks for these thoughts! i think my response to both these points
actually comes to the same thing-->

on the question of "emphasising the social in social reality"  what I
meant was that there is a tendency to confuse "Reality" with "social
reality" - that is, the entirety of what is, was, and what becomes
(which is very big in the sense that "big" is completely meaningless as
there is nothing else to compare it to and nowhere to compare it from
anyway!) with the sum of our social/human existence (which is,
relatively, rather small).   When freud talks about the demands of the
reality principle he is (sometimes) only really talking about the
demands of the social reality principle, that is, the principles that
produce social cohesion -- such as, perhaps, the incest taboo and the
oedipus complex... (??);  so I guess the answer to your question is
"yes" - "this gives us a different perspective on Freud's notion of the
ego that allows us to critique it" because if we read reality principle
as social reality principle, then the whole idea of ego as mediator
between reality principle and pleasure principle appears in a different
light - and the ego is just the superego in another guise in that it
wants to impose social obedience on the unconscious: it wants (social)
reality to maintain "control".

which  leads to your second point about the way I'm opposing a social
reality principle (and also now a social ego) to the unconscious. as you
say, the unconscious is social too - that, after all, is a vital part of
d&g's attack on freud - he closes desire in on itself in the family,
disconnects it from the flows of the socius...

this is a very complex area but my basic notion here is pretty simple (I
think!).  i would distinguish between the idea that desire "is" social
and the idea that desire invests the social field.  For me d&g's
concepts about the unconscious as desiring production let us see "the
unconscious" as some kind of label for what we might encounter at the
limits of our "selves" - which is material flow, as the flux of matter
itself, immanence - "the white heat of existence, burning me".  it is
pre-personal, a continuum of intensities, the inhuman sex.... it is
therefore not "social" (as in produced BY the social or existing FOR the
social)... BUT it does connect up to the social flows, flow across the
socius, invest in the social, etc, etc...

so when I  imply a "non-social unconscious" I don't mean that it is
disconnected from the social, but that it is not produced by the social;
it is transformed, mediated, sometimes even metamorphosised by the
social, but it is not social in origin - because then it is to do with a
relation to others and reducible to a logic of lack.  then it would be
fixated on objects and things, produced by the lack of an other.  it's
origin is matter - it is an aspect of matter, and matter is not just a
social construct (even if the word "matter" is only part of a particular
narrative etc, etc....).

hope this answers your questions and makes sense!

cheers,

dan h.99
-- 
http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/chupacabras/48/     
http://www.tw2.com/staff/daniel/

Ware ware Karate-do o shugyo surumonowa,
Tsuneni bushido seishin o wasurezu,
Wa to nin o motte nashi,
Soshite tsutomereba kanarazu tasu.

We who study Karate-do,
Should never forget the spirit of the samurai,
With peace, perseverance and hard work,
We will reach our goal without failure.