EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 5: THE SEDUCTION OF THEORY

Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (JAAACS), 2013

2017

This paper posits that an infusion of psychoanalytic concepts into the teaching of sociology in undergraduate liberal arts curricula offers a route to expanding students’ understanding of how self and society are entwined in a condition of mutual crisis in contemporary society. We argue that the liberatory project at the core of the liberal arts is served well by linking the critical perspectives found in these two disciplines. We provide as specific examples from our own teaching: (1) a demonstration of how Freud’s concept of neurosis has an affinity with Marx’s concept of alienation; and (2) a discussion of how the torture sequence in Orwell’s 1984 presents an inversion of a psychoanalytic treatment through which the power of propaganda is illuminated. We conclude that teaching the two disciplines in tandem helps students grasp how the self is a socially constructed entity and how the orthodoxies of neurosis and social control are available for critique and change.

the minnesota review, 2024

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, theory became a “cognitive good” throughout the American academic humanities. The rise and uses of this new high-tech good fit the “new spirit of capitalism,” to quote Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s 2018 book by the same name, a post-1960s “ideology that justifies engagement in capitalism.” A neoliberal ethos and disposition animated theory and possessed theorists, as well as spaces that circulated theory, such as the University of Minnesota’s Theory and History of Literature book series, theory journals, and the University of California, Irvine’s School of Criticism and Theory. Meanwhile, capitalism incorporated the nature, scope, and social effectiveness of critique by way of theory in American higher education; theorists worked in a university where neoliberal forces saturated and directed professional and intellectual protocols. The academic humanist Left’s promotion of theory, for instance, facilitated the formation of the “university” as a theater for culture war conflicts, shifting attention inside and outside the academy away from underlying changes in capitalism.

2005

New Formations

The paper examines Stiegler' use of psychoanalytic concepts, focusing on how the proletarianised or blissfully numb mind may begin to work its way towards 'a life worth living'. The emphasis is on the process rather than the final outcome. Winnicott's concept of relationality and Lacan's concept of time in analysis can be aligned to the concept of pharmakon. Stiegler's autobiographical account How I Became a Philosopher (2009) and the initially 'stupid' hero of the Lego Movie (2014) are used as examples.

2014

Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California, 1995

He had collectors, largely younger people working in the music and motion picture industries, yet Berman chose to give much of his arE away, and under those conditions, no gallery owner could represent him. For a short period, the possibiliry of financial success seemed to excite him. In a lemer to Jay DeFeo tn ry61, after making his first sale ever to a collector, he crowed that he felt like a "pro." In 1958, after his London and New York shows, he declined further public exhibitions of his work to devote his energies exclusively to his family and to making art. He told Grace Glueck of the Neu Yorh, Times that his shows and sales "have been happening, somehow, at just the right time. But I only want a taste of it. This may be the last show I'll have, so why interview me? I really don't make this scene." He felt that the best thing about the recent spurt of sales was that his wife had been able to stop working. He did not spum buyers, but he had little patience for planning exhibitions, interviews, and projects. He did not want to be, as he put it to another repofter, part of the "straight art husde wearing beat clothes."2 After Berman's death in an automobile accident on his fiftieth birthday, he loomed in the recollections of his friends as a model of the consummate artist, Ulopio ond the Privote Reolm 213 a modern-day saint, a pelpetually self-creative, phoenixlike being.3 Yet he had assumed no prophetic airs, following instead a path of restrained quietism. The feminist artist Cameron recalled that "Wally was never very expressive verbally. His sryle was to be very cool, very hip, which meant you didnt talk about things too much. You presented people with things and got their reaction."a Both Bruce Conner and Michael McClure felt so indebted to Berman for the direction of their careers that they were wary of the power he held over them. Yet neither could remember a single instance when Berman had acrually tried to convince them of his viewpoint. His inspiration carne in the form of casual ideas that fermented long after he had gone home.t Jay DeFeo admired Berman because he was "narurally cool," which she hastened to explain did not mean that he pur on any affectations. It was his total dedication to creativiry that she admired. Joan Brown agreed: Berman was "cool" because he didnt come off like he was cool. She found him to be one of her most supportive friends, a fact she recalled with some curiosiry because she could not recall any instance of his giving her overt encouragement. I was tremendously influenced by Wally Berman. But by him as a person, not by his work. He just stood, for me, for the whole idea of the individual. And maybe I could never have articulated it at the time.. .. Well, you follow your nose and you do what's right for you. He sensed that how I was and what I was doing was very right for me. He got those feelings and that message across ro me. I understood it clearly, although again, it was not verbal. We were not a verbal bunch and we didn't need to be at that time.' Filrnmaker Stan Brakhage thought that Berman was the creator of "whole new forms," not only in his own work, but by his suggestions to his friends.Z For Michael Fles, an environmental and neon artist, Berman's example created"avery subtle sense of commuruty, acreative communiry a certain hip, ephemeral vibe, and that's been lost. The an works per se were simply, as in 214 Mythopoesis ond Self-Norrotion ''l all vital art, products of a certain life style."8 Berman focused attention away from the art work as an object to its function in relationships between people. Berman's creation of an assemblage or a Poem demanded something in exchange, a response that allowed rq/o people to expose themselves to each other in ideally more intimate and meani"gful ways. In the memories of his friends, Berman assumed a central symbolic role as personification of actualized youthful ideals. Berman had resolved the contradiction berween ambition and ideals plaguing his friends and attained "otherworldly" success. As we look more closely, we shall see that domesticiry and art were the rwo poles around which Berman constnrcted his life, and in many respects they were inseparable. \What made Berman "cool" involved commitment to companionate marriage, shared parenting, dedication to craft, Ioyalty to friends, compassion for those in pain, values that most Americans of the time accepted as an ideal for personal behavior. He lived with an unwavering focus on private, inward concerns and the truth of immediate experience. Yet he could not ignore public life. His first effort to speak to an audience outside his immediate circle ended in humiliation. The analysis he brought to the relationship of private and public spheres will help us understand more fully the ideal project of the avant-garde beween r955 and ry7o, as well as how the concern with inner truth made elite artists relevant to contradictions gripping American society. Age of lnnocence: "Arl is love is God" "He never thought about having shows," Shirley Berman recalled about her husband: Occasionally he sold work for hardly anything at all. He usually gave things away.I worked at dress shops in Beverly Hills part-time. As long as he was doing his work and he was satisfied with his work and his friends Utopio ond the Privote Reolm 215 'Walter Hopps recalled that the paintings, each a rendering of Hebrew lefters, Utopio ond the Privole Reolm 217

The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of this work could have happened without the support and informed discussion of my psychoanalytic colleagues in Ireland and Britain to whom I am most grateful. Rob Weatherill, Dublin, Spring 2010. tioning? Surely, comes the reply, communication is crucial for the smooth operation and the self-ordering of systems. Surely, it is more important than ever to speak. However, the speaking that is required amounts to the transmitting of information, approximating to digital communication, through operational channels and protocols, analogous to cell and tissue signalling systems. Speaking with precision; nothing else will do. Forgetting Freud? molecules cool down. The digital revolution is creating this cooling effect-isolating, automating, marginalising, bit by bit the human qua human. Eventually, perhaps, the whole thing will proceed without us, when awesome processing power, akin perhaps to nuclear energy, finally overpowers. 4 The claim by some opponents of contemporary psychoanalysis that it is unethical, that it turns the moral universe on its head, might be conceded to some degree in what follows. However, it is no weltanschauung; it is not prescriptive, not a religion or an ideology. Freud says at the end of the New Introductory Lectures, "Psychoanalysis is, in my opinion, incapable of creating a weltanschauung of its own", and he goes on to warn, "[a]ny of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it... we cannot help him". 5 Bion referred to psychoanalysis as a probe, no world-view, no consolation, no safety within a religion, none of the "momism" of popular therapy. Beyond religion, beyond psychoanalysis, the ethical tears through all stabilising notions revealing the depth of our problem-the extent of contemporary freedom and indifference. Freud was increasingly realistic; not peace and harmony-we should prepare for war! 6 In relation to the death drive, an ethical call if ever there was one, Freud states at the end of Chapter VI of Civilisation and its Discontents: "In all that follows I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man... that constitutes the greatest impediment to civilisation". As civilisation is precariously held together by the other great instinctual pole, Eros, Freud concludes that it is, "this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven". 7 Here Freud names the ethical coordinates. What is argued in the 10 essays that follow is the renewed engagement 8 of psychoanalysis with the world, beyond post-structural relativism, the crisis of meaning, and the retreat into the academy. The analyst explores and loosens the threads of meaning, deconstructs and punctuates the polysemy, knots, chaos and indeterminacy of language, and must also be the one who is alerted to real absence. Forgetting Freud? up for you-but also a new infantile whinge with its retreat into the loving embrace of the mother which is simultaneously a retreat from the world. This retreat, or more properly ressentiment, has long been a feature of the wider culture in the West. Andrew Smith 10 was the man who disappeared, who belongs to no one and knows no one. His body was discovered in his flat in North London by a neighbour, someone he had never talked to, who smelled the decomposition of the body and phoned the police. This was two months after Smith had died. There were no details of Andrew Smith's next of kin and nothing to identify him with anyone, family or friends. He was buried with no one to grieve him. Journalist Ariel Leve followed up his lost story. She discovered he had been fostered by a working class elderly couple who already had two children of their own. His foster mother died of cancer in 1978 when Andrew was only 13. He lived with the father, but gradually and unaccountably withdrew from family and friends who in turn lost contact with him. He was last seen by his sister in December 2004. In that same year, there were seven million people living alone in Britain, four times the number recorded in 1961. By 2021, it is estimated that 37% of all households will be single occupiers. The figures for aloneness are rising 20-30% faster in the 22-44 age group. Adam Phillips illustrates the retreat of the academic into self-satisfaction. "Sane now" is the title of the last chapter of his recent book. 11 Here, the author's "religiosity" comes to the fore which exemplifies this absence of ethics in the guise of the ethical. "Deep sanity", he describes as keeping opposites in play, listening endlessly and never judging. Here, contra Freud, the analytic position is generalised to a whole way of life of evenly suspended attention. According to Adams, the deeply sane do not need a number of things. They don't need to be understood; they don't need recognition; they don't need relationships subject to contract (because they don't expect relationships to last); they see their talents as gifts (not apparently something hard-worked for); they know that wanting is frustrating and getting can be even worse; so they are ironic in their pleasure-seeking, and real pleasure-seeking is known by the deeply sane to be risky, but that doesn't the Word and the Real. Chapter Three follows Levinas, who regarded psychoanalysis as unethical, and thereby implicitly challenges psychoanalytic practice and its relation to suffering. Chapter Four returns to the all-important yet psychoanalytically foreclosed subject of seduction. All the complex ideological battles within psychoanalysis, as well as its more recent professionalisation, can be seen as systematic attempts to stop the play of seduction. Chapter Five continues that theme with a complex discussion about the nature of sexual enjoyment and the effects of sexual abuse. The main illustration is Nabokov's Lolita. Chapter Six considers our "faith" in the value of the analytic process. The analyst has to have