File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2002/phillitcrit.0211, message 9


Date: Sat, 09 Nov 2002 11:32:13 -0500
From: Lou Caton <lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu>
Subject: PLC: THE WISH NOT TO KNOW, a reply




Regarding the note below on psychology, history, and not knowing...

I'm a bit confused about what the writer below is observing.  It seems
to me that there are many approaches to history, subjectivity, and "not
knowing" that carry a psychological bent.  What would the writer say
about Lacan, Deleuze, Guattari, Brown, Foucault, and/or Laing to mention
just a quick few?  Aren't these writers doing exactly a psychological
interpretation of history?

Lou Caton
Westfield State College
lcaton-AT-wisdom.wsc.ma.edu

PsycheCulture-AT-cs.com wrote:

>      Why have psychological approaches to the study of culture not
> become the dominant interpretative strategy?
>
>      I suggested in recent posts that those with a knowledge of
> psychology must begin to get out of their shells in order to
> "encounter the manner in which unconscious phantasies are PLAYED OUT
> ON THE STAGE OF SOCIAL REALITY."
>
>       In his important book, DERACINATION, Walter Davis states that
> "History is a practice grounded in a system of guarantees...That
> system has as its deepest motive and appeal the assurance that certain
> things will not be known ( p. 7)."
>
>       One would expect that the "psychoanalysis of culture and
> history" would be the master social science, that the disciplines of
> anthropology, sociology and history, not to mention to the humanities,
> would be dominated and perm eated by the effort to ascertain the
> PSYCHIC SOURCES of societal ideas, ideologies, events, etc.
>
>       The objective would be to explain the purpose and meaning of
> cultural and historical process as a reflection and articulation of
> unconscious conflicts, anxieties, fantasies, etc.
>
>       We must entertain the view that disciplines exist PRECISELY IN
> ORDER TO NOT KNOW THINGS, that the fundamental meaning and purpose of
> much (academic) thought is to NOT KNOW (this is what Freud meant by
> "repression").
>
>       Davis talks about the horror of history, and the willingness to
> begin to recognize that the horror "comes from us and not from
> somewhere else."
>
>       The fundamental resistance--the essence of contemporary
> thought--lies in the idea that what is happening out there COMES FROM
> SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN OURSELVES. History, sociology and anthropology as
> conventionally practiced re present the effort to SPLIT OFF THE
> SUBJECT FROM THAT WHICH THE SUBJECT CREATES AND DESIRES, to pretend
> that the horrors (war, genocide, the atom bomb, etc.) come from
> discourses that are SEPARATE FROM THE HUMAN BEINGS WHO CREATE THE
> THEM.
>
>       Everyone strives to know nothing by splitting off the self into
> culture and history, then pretending that it's all coming from "up
> above" or "out there," as if we are not constantly in the process of
> creating culture and his tory through the externalization and
> projection of our own unconscious fantasies, anxieties and conflicts.
>
>       Of course, reality is a social construction. Of course,
> cognition is shaped by discourses that are "culturally constituted."
> However, the fundamental question is WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF THOSE
> FORMS OF SOCIAL REALITY THAT HUM AN BEINGS HAVE CONSTRUCTED?
>
>       The academic enterprise builds upon the effort to avoiding
> posing and answering this question. It's not that "the subject does
> not exist" (the current hegemonic discourse), but that the academic
> enterprise strives to DENY TH E REALITY OF THE SUBJECT in order to
> pretend that HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE.
>
>       This is mysterious obfuscation. It's as if it all happens by
> itself in a realm separate from human beings. It's fundamentally a
> religious perspective.
>
> With regards,
>
> Richard Koenigsberg
>
>
> Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
> Director, Library of Social Science

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