File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0307, message 43


From: gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 08:42:49 -0500
Subject: RE: a question of quotes - Marx, Lyotard and critique



Eric/All,

By way of further example, I wonder if an excerpt from Freud's Interpretation 
of Dreams might be discussed with respect to postmodernism and language games.  

In a footnote, Freud endeavors to answer the charge of his very first reader of 
his work who said "that the dreamer often appears too witty."  

Freud's response:  "That is true, so long as it applies to the dreamer; it 
involves a condemnation only when it application is extended to the interpreter 
of the dream; if my dreams appear witty, this is not the fault of my 
individuality, but of the peculiar psychological conditions under which the 
dream is fabricated, and is intimately connected with the theory of wit and the 
comical.  The dream becomes witty because the shortest and most direct way to 
the expression of its thoughts is barred for it; the dream is under constraint."

Freud cites an example wherein a woman dreams of a man pointing to a sign-
boardtacked to a tree which reads "uclamparia--wet."  Freud surmizes from this 
that uclamparia refers to a eucalpytus tree found in the region (context) the 
woman is coming from and that wet is the reverse of Dry, which happens to be 
the name of the man she just got out of a relationship with.  (A favorite line 
of this person is "You know I must drink because I am always dry.")  
Moreover "Dry" also, in its Germanic origin, refers to "three" (Drei), and 
these can be hooked up to the Three Fountains found in a certain 
monastery...and so forth.

It's no wonder, in this example, that Freud's reader would cast doubt 
about "wit."  What I want to suggest, though, this time via Deleuze, that there 
is something "short and direct" about this dream under constraint.  Though 
Freud seems to suggest that clarity is barred from the dream, in a "postmodern" 
fashion I want to forward a kind of thinking wherein this is PRECISELY the 
shortest, most direct, LEAST ABSTRACT form of consciousness.  

In his work on Cinema, Deleuze discusses post-war cinematography that relies on 
a crystal.  The crystal is responsible for "false moves" in its radical cut-ups 
and juxtapositioning, but Deleuze submits that such moves are not abstract.  He 
uses this model, in fact, to cast doubts on what I take to be a  
Romantic "imaginary."  The "power of falsity," for Deleuze is a "becoming."  He 
links this to Nietzsche, and I think we can see an example of this crystal in 
such works as Zarathustra, which I believe shares much with Freud's 
descriptions of dreams.      

Language games and the crystal are already found in a film, commercial, and 
late night comedy.  In effect, we are surrounded by a culture that continually 
says, "You know I drink because I am dry."  There is something VERY DRY (i.e. 
non-abstract) in all this, and as the bartender asks, "What'll you have?"

I realize this example does not begin to approach the political and ethical 
question (more later), but perhaps Freud's Intrepretation of Dreams and 
Deleuze's Cinema Crystal might play a role in it.  For all its quirkness, 
Nietzsche's Zarathustra is a powerful text along these lines (of DEVELOPING 
more lines of flight.)  

best,

geof

   






Quoting Eric <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>:

> Lois,
> 
> Interesting that you should say with regard to me that "the goal is to
> stay within Lyotard."  In this ancient city of language, Lyotard is a
> street I know well, where an old friend certainly resides, but it is one
> I hardly get the chance to visit much nowadays. Certainly, during the
> past year the presence of George W. Bush and his administration seems to
> have overshadowed everything else and I now view with loathing America's
> current prospects as we embark upon this strange new world of the 21st
> century.  Lately, ethics and politics carry an even greater urgency with
> me and I turn more frequently to contemporary voices to get some bearing
> on what our current possibilities for resistance and refusal might be.
> Badiou is certainly a voice who resounds with urgency even though I
> often disagree with the harsh and sometimes blunt directness of his
> phrasing. Steve and I may disagree on theory, but I think we tend to
> converge on the issue of stance. 
> 
> Since you ask about Wittgenstein, I agree with you that he remains
> important and think his formulation of language games makes a pivotal
> move in the development of twentieth century philosophy. I think you are
> also aware, however, that while Wittgenstein remained an influence, the
> presence of the concept of language games in Lyotard did not really last
> much beyond PMC.  
> 
> By the time of the Differend, Lyotard critiques this concept for its
> latent humanism since games presume agency.  In its place, he advocates
> instead an ontology of phrases, which moves away from Wittgenstein's own
> implicit religiosity.  
> 
> As time went on, Lyotard also began to question his own presentation in
> the Differend and he returned once more to Freud to a much greater
> extent in his later writings. Here I think a hinge might be found with
> your psychoanalytic concerns and this could lead to a fruitful topic we
> can discuss further. As you know, Wittgenstein tended to dismiss Freud
> and he remained fairly apolitical. To the extent Lyotard makes the moves
> he does, his philosophy is an interesting development of Wittgenstein's
> ideas, leading into a different direction than the more orthodox
> analytical reception.  
> 
> Are you familiar with Lyotard's essay on Emma?  This might be a good
> place to start considering postmodern psychoanalysis in relation to
> Lyotard. (The essay has recently been published in "Lyotard -
> Philosophy, Politics, and the Sublime".) Here is what Lyotard says:
> 
> "When reading the later Wittgenstein....one remains struck by his
> recurrent observation that one does not need to know the rules of the
> language game in  order to master or play it. But one worries about the
> very expression 'play of language,' which does not clearly determine
> whether it is the speaker who plays the language or the language that
> plays the speaker (as one plays the piano)....Along these lines I sense
> a way to philosophically approach a matter proper to psychoanalysis.
> Analysts deal only with phrases and eminently partake in their
> certainty. Indeed, the talking cure is a treatment through phrases,
> although one that comes at the price of stretching the sense of talk
> just as far as that of phrase. As much as I am informed, by the Id-side
> to which I am singularly the host or hostage, I can presume that in this
> talking, the kind of phrase that guides the cure is the affect. The
> affect is a curious kind of phrase, one Freud isolated from those
> classed under the general function of Reprasentanz."
> 
> I think this question of the affect, the inarticulate phrase, is where
> the discussion must go in order to encompass the question of how a
> postmodern psychoanalysis might be possible. It also dovetails with my
> own concerns regarding ethics and politics as the paralogy of the
> negative.  
> 
> My questions to you are these. What do you regard as the ethics and
> politics of psychoanalysis? and What interested you in particular about
> that quote from Lyotard on Marxism that precipitated this current
> thread?  
> 
> In answering these questions, perhaps we can find a way to link up with
> Steve and Hugh's more general concerns regarding justice and
> emancipation.
> 
> eric 
>   
> 
> 
> 




   

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