Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 17:49:30 +1000
Subject: Re: anthropology


Eric/All,

Eric wrote:

> The psychoanalytic anthropology I am proposing involves a
> certain relationship to time and an openness to the event.  It means
> never to forget, never to forget.  In remembrance lies destiny.  It is a
> matter of working through and rolling the bones.

Most of your post I agree with. I found Breton on art quite interesting.  A
couple of weeks ago I saw a Richard Serra interview on TV.  He is the most
articulate artist (said to be the greatest living sculptor) i ever heard or
read.  Very forceful and opinionated.

But when you speak of anthropology in the above paragraph, I realize we're
not using quite the same language..

I think philosophy is heir to science,  Major transformations in humankind's
concept of   humans' nature and  their role in the world followed
discoveries of Galileo, Darwin,and Einstein.  This approach doesn't
contradict what you say about time, and certainly involves openness to the
event when new discoveries change the way we think about hunan bodies,
brains, minds.

Such changes are likely to result from study of the human genome and
investigation of how genes initiate, terminate and  replenish the hundreds
of thousands of substances which constitute the trillions of cells of a
human body.

As for the psychoanalytic aspect of this endeavor, I was much impressed with
the Lyotard paragraph you quoted recently.  See below.

"Never to forget" acknowledges the physiology of memory. Neuroscientists and
molecular biologists may bring  us a better understanding of how the
mind/brain creates and loses memories which  are the basis of "being", and
being human.

Psychoanalysts posited "unconscious" memories", and it seems to me that
Lytoard in the quote below, recognizes this when he writes of the void of
experience in infancy.
It doesn't end with infancy.

We have memories of pleasant and traumatic events in childhood and
thereafter, a void in  memory of everyday experience, which perhaps
persisted in the "unconscioous" and influenced future behavior. For that
which cannot be recollccted,  "Never forget" would not apply.

Lyotard quote:

"It is not "I" who is born, who is given birth to. "I" will be born
afterwards, with language, precisely upon leaving infancy.  My affairs
will have been handled and decided before I can answer for them - and
once and for all: this infancy, this body, this unconscious remaining
there my entire life.  When the law comes to me, with the ego and
language, it is too late,  Things will have already taken a turn. And
the turn of the law will not manage to efface the first turn, this first
touch.  Aesthetics has to do with this first touch: the one who touched
me when I was not there." (Lyotard)

I'll add couple of quotes which seem relevant to recent discussions:

"We seem to be brought up in a world seen through descriptions by others
rather than through our own perceptions. This has the consequence that
instead of using language as a tool with which to express thoughts and
experience, we accept language as a tool that determines our thoughts and
experience." (von Foerster)

There is no truth that does not rest ultimately upon what is evident to
us in our own experience."(author unknown)

Lyotard quote:

"It is not "I" who is born, who is given birth to. "I" will be born
afterwards, with language, precisely upon leaving infancy.  My affairs
will have been handled and decided before I can answer for them - and
once and for all: this infancy, this body, this unconscious remaining
there my entire life.  When the law comes to me, with the ego and
language, it is too late,  Things will have already taken a turn. And
the turn of the law will not manage to efface the first turn, this first
touch.  Aesthetics has to do with this first touch: the one who touched
me when I was not there."

Hugh