A split between matriarchal and patriarchal mytho-religious complexes

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 1:24 am and is filed under Ray's Integral Blog. 4 Responses to “The goddess Yellama-Renuka”

Edward Berge Says: June 18th, 2007 at 8:31 am All of which adds to my point that “Tantra has its roots in pre-Aryan goddess religion.” The “freedom” from latter sexual repression is not so much from a rational, liberatory framework as from a worldview much closer to nature and sex but pre the differentations and integrations that make for “equal rights.”

ray harris Says: June 19th, 2007 at 12:58 am Hi Edward, Yes, magic-mythic, and in this matrix there seems to have been a split between matriarchal and patriarchal mytho-religious complexes, with the matriarchal placing an emphasis on fertility and sex magic. More on this later.

ray harris Says: June 19th, 2007 at 1:03 am Btw Edward, I agree that we can loose the magic-mythic stuff. My point is that the rational and integral stage becomes sex positive because sex negative morality itself based on irrationality and myth. It was once thought that masturbation would cause all sorts of ailments, but we now know masturbation is harmless. The same irrationality applies to homosexuality, nudity, etc…

ray harris Says: June 19th, 2007 at 12:55 am Hi Goethean, I don’t mean to suggest it is B&W at all. Re the Aryan invasion. The reason that it is thought that the Aryans migrated was because of their influence outside India, notably Iran. If the Aryans were indigenous to India then how to explain Iran and the linguistic links to European languages, as well as the existance of Dravidian languages in the south of India?

How can selection be theorized without presupposing an agent that selects?

Ontological Questions Regarding Salience and Selection

Posted by larvalsubjects under Ontology Sun 3 Jun 2007

Suppose we begin with a couple of widely different contemporary intellectual trends: evolutionary biology and Althusserian social structuralism. In a very vulgar version of the former theory we are told that organisms come to be in their particular species-form through adaptation to an environment. In Althusserian thought we are told that persons are merely props of structure and that structure is itself the true subject (we’re no longer supposed to talk about the qualities of agents). In the vulgar version of evolutionary biology, the environment is understood as a container that is there present-at-hand, existing in its own terms and by virtue of its own nature, and that the organism is either well adapted to this fitness-space or poorly adapted. In the case of Althusser, we are told that the agent integrates social-structure without remainder, or is open to a homogenous and self-contained social structure without remainder.

Yet matters are far more complex than this. In the case of evolutionary biology we have the question of why a creature becomes open to this or that tendency within the environment. Why did a bat discover sonar rather than vision or scent? What unheard affects are inhabited by other creatures of which we can scarcely imagine? The point here is that the environment cannot simply be understood as something that is there, present-at-hand, but rather there is a selection that takes place in the process by which a species emerges. The emergent organism makes a slice within chaos– it must be chaos as it is bubbling with an infinite number of potential qualities –and in doing so doesn’t simply receive something that is already there, but 1) constitutes new qualities (the qualia, for instance, by which the bat registers sound-waves), 2) constitutes a new form of receptivity, and perhaps most importantly 3) constitutes its own environment and field of objects. The paradox is that the environment to which the species adapts is itself constituted by the species. There is a literal worlding that takes place. Certain features within chaos become salient or singular, and there is a selection that occurs such that noise– the static on the television or radio –is transformed into information. Something comes to resonate where before it did not.

The artificiality of the Althusserian move can be discerned in these observations. In order for an agent to be interpellated, the person must be open to the various elements of social structure. But how is this receptivity constituted? From whence does this receptivity, this openness to structure, come? Appeals to the empirical are often dangerous, yet when we observe that there are a tremendous variety of “social species”, from the mad to the different ideological orientations to those who seem to be living in entirely different worlds altogether, we begin to suspect that Althusser has vastly simplified matters and has not attended carefully enough to questions of receptivity or how selection takes place in the social field and various aspects of the world come to be constituted as salient. Here, once again, we can’t talk about a pre-existing social world. Rather, a world only emerges on the basis of anterior selections that constitute information, relevancy, and salience. How, for instance, does identity suddenly come to function as a salience within the political world where prior to the late 20th century it was largely in the background?

I simply wish to throw these questions out there without now taking a stab at answering them (I have to start cooking dinner!). What needs to be avoided in posing these questions, I think, is any appeal to either teleology or “nature”. Goals and purposes must be seen as resulting from selection and salience, not as preceding the activity of selection and salience. Similarly, appeals to something like human nature are, all too often, mythological and essentialist. If physical science and social theory have taught us anything, order is something that emerges, rather than something that holds for all times and places. Consequently, what is required is an emergent account of selection, not one that presupposes, after the fashion of a vulgar version of Plato, always-already operative selections.

Finally, such a theory of selectivity shouldn’t be restricted to the social world, but should be seen as a general feature of the universe and being through which phenomena come to order themselves. We are told that the laws of physics would be different had the universe cooled differently, that there might be other universes with very different physical principles, and biological science has compellingly demonstrated that species emerge from matter and are not eternal forms. The distinction between the historical and the natural is a distinction that should be abolished in favor of a creative, emergentist, differential ontology. How, then, can selection be theorized without presupposing an agent that selects?

I would fault Butler for taking her own “structuralist” reading of Lacan for granted

Il n’y a pas… from An und für sich by Adam [A footnote, recently composed as part of my seminar paper on Judith Butler. The topic of the paper as a whole remains secret.]

As one whose understanding of Lacan has primarily been mediated through Slavoj Žižek and other members of the Slovenian Lacanian school, I was initially baffled by Butler’s critiques of Lacan in Gender Trouble, as well as the critique of Žižek in Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993) and of Dolar in Psychic Life of Power. A crucial difference between Butler and the Slovenian school is not so much their interpretation of Lacan as such as their decision of “which” Lacan to privilege as the interpretative key for his widely variegated body of work—for the Slovenians, it is the “late” Lacan of the 1970s and 80s, whereas for Butler it is the “middle” or structuralist Lacan appropriated by American scholars (particularly feminists).

The Slovenian approach to sexual difference is based on the famous saying that “there is no sexual relationship [il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel].” It is not that there is some positive model that every concrete expression of sexual difference somehow fails to attain, but rather that every concrete expression is an attempt to cover over the fact that no particular instantiation of sexual difference can “work”—it is impossible to find some kind of ideal “complementary” relationship between the sexes, despite our attempt to define “gender roles” and stereotypical qualities, etc. This insight seems to me to be compatible with Butler’s overall project, and indeed, in his chapter “Judith Butler as a Reader of Freud” in The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Center of Political Ontology (New York: Verso, 1999), and in many other places, Žižek shows himself to be deeply sympathetic with Butler’s work.

The deadlock for Butler, which for me renders her critiques of Žižek and Dolar finally unconvincing, is that when she reads talk of “sexual difference” in these authors, she understands it to mean the immutable structuralist law of sexual difference that she (rightly) rejects as both implausible and damaging, whereas they understand it to mean a fundamental impossibility rendering every concrete instantiation of sexual difference illegitimate. Thus I would fault Butler for taking her own “structuralist” reading of Lacan for granted as an interpretative key for the Slovenian authors, especially given that Žižek has presented himself as “correcting” false impressions of Lacan (including, above all, the reception of Lacan among “postmodern” American academics) since The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso, 1989).

But in the last analysis, it may be more appropriate to attribute this non-encounter to the fact that il n’y a pas de théorie lacanienne—any reference to a unitary “Lacan” is marked by a constitutive failure.

Sex phobia underlies the reactions to sexual speech and expression

Is sex dirty? Ratna Kapur times of india 26 May, 2007

The resounding silence speaks to a deeper discomfort around issues of sex and sexuality that continue to haunt the borders of free speech and expression. The Hindu right has been persistent in challenging representations of Indian women that have not been consistent with their vision of women's gender and sex roles in Indian culture. It frames the issue of obscenity as a violation of women's traditional identity as matri shakti — that is, as wives and mothers, and of the respect for women in these roles. They are concerned with restoring women to their position of respect and honour they ostensibly enjoyed in some long lost ancient 'Hindu' past. The threat of obscenity is also seen as a threat to the purity of women's sexuality — if women's sexuality is not contained within the confines of the family, then men cannot be held responsible for their actions of violating this sexuality...

What is lost sight of is how such representations simply reinforce the dominant, sexist values that characterise women's roles and conduct. Censorship does not challenge this sexism. While there is no question that a good deal of sexual imagery is often very sexist or misogynist, sexual performance and sexual images have an important role to play in challenging conventional sexual norms, and producing more affirming space for consensual and healthy sexual relationships and for the expression of women's sexual agency and presence...Describing sexually explicit images as vulgar, obscene and lascivious, reinforces the sexualisation of women's bodies and the idea that sex is dirty, which in turn encourages the idea that women's bodies are somehow dirty.

The 'kiss' controversy indicates the extent to which sex phobia underlies the reactions to sexual speech and expression. It unmasks the need to challenge the idea that sex is inherently negative and dangerous, and promotes healthier attitudes towards human sexuality. Censorship and bans cannot do this work, but will instead reinforce this perception of sex as bad, of women who display it as whores and of good women as wives and mothers. The obscenity laws are a product of our Victorian past. It is time to move beyond that past, and to produce a space for the discussion of sex and sexuality in ways that are affirming and positive. While we are able to represent brutal rape sequences, and extreme violence on screen, any playful expressions of healthy human sexual interactions continue to be stigmatised and elicit responses that are more indicative of our fear of sex rather than of the dangers it poses to what is after all a resilient culture. The writer is director, Centre for Feminist Legal Research.

The Internet porn revolution May 25th, 2007, posted by ray harris Open Integral

As a society we are still infected by the sex negative attitudes of the Judeo-Christians. We still think sex is still somehow ‘wrong’. We may have moved on from regarding sex for pleasure as sin, but we still think the open discussion of sex and the open display of sexual images and themes as wrong. The idea that sex should remain in the ‘private’ domain of the bedroom has replaced the idea that sex is a sin. This is irrational.

What is wrong with a sexual image? The idea that sex should be ‘private’ is a direct hangover from the Judeo-Christian idea that sex for pleasure is evil. The early church moralists said that sex was only for procreation and that all non-procreative arousal was a sin. They told married couples that sex should be performed in a perfunctory manner, preferably at night with the lights out and with night clothes on - to avoid any extra arousal. I know a lot of people think we have progressed from this extreme position, but I would argue that we have only changed slightly. Many people are still embarrassed by naked body, the sight of genitals and the physical reality of sex.

The internet porn revolution is slowly changing this, but there is still a high degree of moral panic over this. It seems our embarrassment means we cannot think about the issue in any clear way. In today’s Melbourne Age there is an article that suggests that Internet porn compulsion/addiction is affecting relationships...

So what’s the moral panic about? It’s clash between those who think sex should be private and hidden and those who think it should be openly celebrated. Those who think it should be kept private need to answer this question - why is porn so popular? The answer is simple. People have always been interested in sex. It’s a perfectly natural part of being human and a society that censors sexual imagery and keeps it out of the public domain will only create a subaltern desire for those images. I have no problem with graphic sexual images, but I do have a problem with the porn industry. It’s often just crude and artless. Open Integral Posted in Sexology, Ray's Integral Blog 2 Comments »

The Enigma of the Other’s Desire May 25th, 2007 · Foucault Is Dead

Last night I submitted the following abstract for possible inclusion in a conference. I do have some fears that it may be received with a degree of disgust. Which really is worrying, as this is effectively the idea which will be at the very heart of my PhD research:

Subject-Positions in the Sex Industry: A New Synthesis of Irigaray and Baudrillard

This paper proposes a sexual ethics which takes forward the subject as it developed in both Jean Baudrillard and Luce Irigaray. This new synthesis is developed with reference to the sex industry. An Irigarayian view of the sex industry holds that male sex workers can enjoy their work by relying reflexively on the masculine nature of the symbolic order and the hom(m)osexual nature of the libidinal economy. If a female symbolic order were to adopt this structure, women would also be able to participate reflexively in the sex industry (both as consumers and workers). In order to foreclose this possibility, Irigaray asserts an implicitly Protestant view of the moral value of work which would exclude work in the sex industry.

Furthermore, Irigaray’s ‘ethics of sexual difference’ anticipates a culture of respect between the feminine and masculine symbolic orders which would exclude this type of work. Yet, unlike Kristeva and Zizek, Irigaray has thus far failed to address the post-Oedipal decline of the masculine symbolic order. My claim is that this decline creates the space for both the emergence of a female symbolic/subject and a new masculine subject-position: what I call, drawing on Baudrillard, the viral subject. Whereas the traditional Western subject has tended to be explicitly universal, but implicitly male, the viral subject I describe is explicitly male, but implicitly universal.

Thus, men should choose the viral subject, whilst women can choose either the female subject or the viral subject. For instance, a recent television documentary followed a middle-aged woman who is both a committed, serious Christian and a user of male escorts; this example indicates both the improvisation of a temporary female symbolic (via Christian structures) and a viral subjectivity (via the forgetting of power-relations). Foucault Is Dead Tags: boring stuff about me · irigaray · baudrillard · feminism

Toilet designs indicate a particular ideology pertaining to waste

larvalsubjects Says: May 22nd, 2007 at 8:34 pm I didn’t say “greatest contribution” just “central contribution”. I think there’s more to it than the mantra “do as I do”. Rather, Zizek consistently attempts to show how ideology is not to be located in our heads or thoughts, but in actually existing social institutions out there in the world. For instance, he gives a striking analysis of the ideology embodied in French, German, and American toilets in The Plague of Fantasy, showing how each of these toilet designs indicates a particular ideology pertaining to waste. Elsewhere he shows how the modern bourgeoise is, philosophically, a good nominalist, knowing perfectly well that money, for instance, is simply paper and a representation. However, this same nominalist behaves towards money as if it were a sublime and magical object. For instance, many would gasp and be shocked were you to light a hundred dollar bill on fire. Ideology is thus not to be sought in our heads, but in the world out there.

The natural hierarchy that prevails among humans

One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin

In short, half of mankind (actually, more than half, for reasons we won't get into here) is of below average intelligence. This hardly means that they aren't decent people or that they don't have skills, but it does mean that they probably can't actually think complex subjects through for themselves, and that their thinking is very likely going to be both internally and externally inconsistent. Furthermore, they won't even be intelligent enough to spot the inconsistency. And if you try to explain it to them, they still won't get it...

As I have written before, one of the downsides of democracy is that it not only has a leveling tendency, but it leads to a situation in which, as Guenon remarked, "no one knows their place." Because of the aggressive imposition of egalitarian ideals from the top down, this results in a leveling of the higher castes, so that society ends up with a collective soul that is roughly half merchant and half laborer. Not only that, but through the magic of “inverse analogy,” transgression is confused with transcendence, so society ends up “worshipping” the outcast -- the transgressor, the outsider, the person “above” (actually beneath) the law.

But there is a substantial percentage of the population that is not fit to lead, only to be led (not in principle, of course, but in fact). In America this shouldn't really be a controversial statement, as it is explicitly what our founders believed. That's why they created a representative republic and not a democracy, the latter of which should be a "non-starter" for any thinking person who is aware of the natural hierarchy that prevails among humans... posted by Gagdad Bob at 5/20/2007 07:31:00 AM 36 comments Sunday, May 20, 2007

Families as "pockets of insurrection"

In a chapter of his stunning A People's History of the United States that discusses the rise of the women's liberation movement in the 1970s, Howard Zinn writes:

In the problem of women was the germ of a solution, not only for their oppression, but for everybody's. The control of women in society was ingeniously effective. It was not done directly by the state. Instead, the family was used -- men to control women, women to control children, all to be preoccupied with one another, to turn to one another for help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when things weren't going right. Why could this not be turned around? Could women liberating themselves, children freeing themselves, men and women beginning to understand one another, find the source of their common oppression outside rather than in one another? Perhaps then they could create nuggets of strength in their own relationships, millions of pockets of insurrection. They could revolutionize thought and behavior in exactly that seclusion of family privacy which the system had counted on to do its work of control and indoctrination. And together, instead of at odds -- male, female, parents, children -- they could undertake the changing of society itself.[1]

Zinn's insights here are helpful in thinking (rethinking?) the Catholic understanding of the family. As Catholics, as Christians, we are used to thinking of the family as the basic building block of society.[2] As Zinn points out, in the United States and elsewhere, as the basic building block of society, the family has been used in many ways as an agent of "control and indoctrination."

From a radically Catholic perspective, since the central social reality is the Church, and not the state, it is more helpful to think of the family as the basic building block of the Church -- the new society -- rather than the basic unit of the state, or of society.[3] Indeed, in Catholic circles you sometimes hear it said that the family is the "domestic church." If, as radical Catholic theologians like William T. Cavanaugh and Michael Baxter have argued, the Church is (also) a political reality, an alternative social body and way of life that will always be at odds with the societies in which it finds itself, then the family, as the "domestic church," will also be a revolutionary society that resists indoctrination into the state's system of domination and violence, or, drawing on Zinn's terms, an ecclesial "pocket of insurrection."

_______

[1] Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, Revised and Updated Edition (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), pp. 503-4

[2] Cf. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, nos. 211, 213.

[3] The Compendium is confusing on this matter. The above reference seems to say that the family exists for society, yet elsewhere it says that the state and society exist for the family. Cf. ibid, no. 214.
Posted by Michael J. Iafrate at 1:16 PM Trackback Links to this post

I find Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s teachings on gender to be far more radical

My soul has rebelled against gender stereotypes since as long as I can remember, even when I was a Hijab-wearing Muslim girl. I often tell people that I find Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s teachings on gender to be far more radical (and certainly more liberating) than even the most radical feminists. This post is mostly a compilation of the Mother’s most important writings on gender, and related quotes from her (see under the cut below for these). These articles and quotes emphasize one main idea: that the soul, and certainly the Divine, is not limited by human conceptions of gender. As one grows spiritually, these gender distinctions automatically disappear. The dualities and differences only exist at the terrestrial level...

Although the transcendence of gender is a popular idea in many spiritual traditions, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother go further than all other sages in terms of their idea of the transformation of matter itself, and envision a future species which would be a prototype of a new creation — beyond all dualities and therefore also beyond gender. So for them, transforming the body itself was also crucial and even the physical differences were not something that were permanent. However, this was to come much, much later. Hardly anyone today is ready to attempt what the Mother attempted during the last two decades of her life — the transformation of the physical body.

Of course I have no knowledge of Mother’s attempt at physical transformation from direct experience. What I do know from direct experience is that when you contact the inner being, mental distinctions start to disappear. I would say that losing gendered thinking altogether is crucial to developing the soul...

Source: Various books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother referenced at the Search for Light website and the Light Endless Light website. Posted by ned on May 8, 2007. Filed under Contemplations, Notes.

In most instances racial interpretation can safely be ruled out

Sri Aurobindo in The Secret of the Veda explains that, in the struggle between light and darkness; truth and falsehood, divine and undivine is described [5], and Agni by defeating the Dasyus, allowed the creation of a heavenly world.
Whilst, the Aryan Invasion Theory vs. Indigenous Aryan Theory still remains an unresolved controversial discussion, in general, Aryans have consistently been associated with lighter, brighter colours as opposed to the Dasa/Dasyus who have been ascribed with darkness in numerous Hindu texts. However, although it is generally accepted that the Aryans had a fairer skin complexion compared to the Dasyus, nowhere does any of the Hindu texts explicitly state or even imply that references to colours associated to each group was applied to the skin colour of either group.
In fact, the ‘varna’ of these distinct groups merely attributes symbolic colours to a certain cosmological quality (guna)/energy/aura associated with each particular group; white corresponds to clarity (sattya), red to energy (rajas) and black to darkness (tamas), and this in turn as described by Koenraad Elst is projected into the social spectrum to represent the qualities of the various classes in society: Brahmins are white, Kshatriyas are red, Sudras are black and Vaisyas who have mixed qualities are represented as yellow [3].
Hans Hock, an expert linguist commenting of Hindu literature states that the racial interpretation of the Indian texts “must be considered dubious” and “early Sanskrit literature offers no conclusive evidence of pre-occupation with skin colour”; whilst the world or Aryans is often described with words such as “light, white, broad and wide” and the Dasus/Dasyus were described with words such as “darkness or fog”, in most instances racial interpretation can safely be ruled out [6]...Posted by viknesh jayapalen at 16:44 perspective of a Malaysian Indian msia-indians

A million untouchables

It’s all a matter of chance y’know. Or otherwise why the Supreme Lord has worked it in this way that with every menstrual cycle, a woman releases very few ovum-a couple or two, but with every ejaculation a man releases millions of spermatozoa …. every insemination has almost one in a million chance to proceed on to successful pregnancy….let alone a healthy delivery of fetus. From pregnancy till delivery, the events are most complicated yet beautifully interlinked with each other. drnamrata.rediffiland.com/ Saturday 14 April, 2007 Category : Adventure By Namrata Harichandan 09:49 13/Apr/2007 9 Comment(s)

The demeaning way in which religions view women

WOMEN AND RELIGION Charles Sabillon April 10, 2007 Home

Charles Sabillon attended high school in Texas and has undergraduate degrees in Philosophy, Economics and Law as well as a masters and a doctorate in International Relations. After earning his PhD, he undertook post-doctoral research in the fields of History, Economics, and Ecology. He speaks fluently English, Spanish, French and German. author's web site view author's other articles

Women should take a good look at religions because creeds have never behaved as if females mattered. It is a strange sociological phenomenon, but in all nations of the world, women are more spiritual then men. Independent of the religion prevailing in a country, women tend to kneel and pray in larger numbers than men.
Due to the above, it should not surprise that in all continents women are less inclined to doubt religious dogma than men. For some reason, females accept the arguments of clerics more easily than their male counterparts. Through history, the great agnostics, secularists and atheists such as Socrates, Da Vinci, Voltaire, Darwin, Nietzche or Sartre were all men.
Contrary to men, women will not to defend their faith with violence, but they will verbally do it with more enthusiasm.
Such a situation is an oxymoron considering the demeaning way in which religions view women.
In the holy books of all creeds, it is explicitly said that women are inferior to men. It is also affirmed that women must obey men because that is the will of God. Another thing that all creeds assert is that females are inherently evil and sinful. Whether Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism all view women as a source of problems.
With such premises, it is only natural that all religions have justified the oppression of females. Each has its particularities but at the end, all have treated women as second class citizens or as slaves.
Hinduism is the oldest of the large religions of today for it saw its birth almost four thousand years ago. It is a creed largely circumscribed to South Asia and is based on a caste system, which segregates people based on skin color and several other factors. At the bottom of the pyramid in this caste system, are the Untouchables. They account for about a sixth of the population of India and are the poorest.
Aside from underpinning a largely racist system, Hinduism does worst things with women. Untouchable girls for example, were for centuries given by their poor parents to Hindu temples, where they were used to appease the Gods by satisfying the sexual needs of upper caste men. That such acts happened in the past is bad enough, but the worst is that they still take place today.
There are many other horrible things that Hindu religion sanctions on matters of female oppression, but no matter how bad they are, in the other religions they are just as bad if not worst.
Of the three others, Islam takes centre stage in brutalizing women the most. It literally denies them the right to feel pretty, by veiling them and allowing others to see only their eyes. It denies them the right to education, by asserting that women’s role in society is just to rear children and to serve their spouse. It sanctions men’s right to beat them whenever they are not obedient and it even condones murder whenever they deviate sexually.
Despite the ignominious way in which religions treat women, things were a lot worse in past centuries. It does not matter which moment in time it gets analyzed, there was never a moment when females were not abused.
History shows that religions have never brought any benefits to women. Aside from oppression and humiliation, they have also brought poverty and disease due to their constant opposition to science.
In today’s developed Christian countries, the Church no longer has the power to mistreat women as it did in the past, but it continues to hinder technological progress by opposing science. That ultimately has terrible repercussions on women’s health because it curtails medical advances.
Considering the way religions have treated them, it is indeed a mystery why women still belief in God. They should have not long ago renounced their respective faiths.
Logic suggests that women should not just renounce their faith, but they should also become committed atheists. It is evident that the more they oppose religion, the larger the chances that science will be able to do great things for them. FOR MORE INFORMATION GO TO MY WEBSITE

I identify with the object-cause itself, recognizing the object-cause as my true subject

Larval Subjects 13 November 2006 Some Scattered Observations on Fantasy

One of the unique features of Lacan's account of desire revolves around his theory of fantasy. As Zizek has pointed out, ordinarily, when we think of fantasy, we think of it as a sort of scenario or image in which we envision the satisfaction of our desire or wants. A fantasy, under this model, is a sort of wish. Thus, for example, when I am frantically working to complete some unpleasant task, I might fantasize about sitting in my favorite chair, reading a book that I've been excited to explore. The fantasy consists in my image of satisfaction or of what it would mean to be satisfied. Similarly in the case of my desire for a man or woman. My fantasy might consist of the scenarios I concoct as I imagine finally achieving the sexual bliss or union with the beloved. While, no doubt, this conception of fantasy is related to the Lacanian conception of fantasy, it is not properly Lacan's account of fantasy. If this were all fantasy were, then it would be difficult to see why traversing the fantasy or working through the fantasy could have the therapeutic effects which it has. Anyone who has done serious work engaging with fantasy knows that the traversal of the fantasy effects the very nature of desire itself.

One of the problems with this account of fantasy is that it treats desire as anterior to fantasy. Here I have in mind the idea that there is, on the one hand, basic desires characterizing what it is to be human, while there is, on the other hand, a set of fantasies constructed around these desires which envision their satisfaction. In short, this conceptualization tends to heirarchialize the relationship between fantasy and desire such that desire is treated as being more fundamental or primordial than fantasy. We can very quickly see where this line of reasoning will lead. In conceiving that desire is more primordial than fantasy we will be led to argue that there are natural desires and perverse fantasies... That somehow fantasy departs from universal desire, such that if we only get rid of fantasy we will be on our way to a rectification of desire.

Needless to say, this is not the Lacanian conception of fantasy. We go astray when we conceive desire as anterior to fantasy. As can be seen in the third cell of Lacan's famous graph of desire in "Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire", fantasy is not so much the imagined fulfillment of desire, as it is the frame through which we desire. We must remember that desire, for Lacan and Freud, has no natural object, that strictly speaking there is no object of desire. Rather, as Lacan puts it in Seminar V, The Formations of Desire, desire is characterized by an endless metonymy or movement from one object to another without ever alighting on a final object. Could this not be yet another signification of what Lacan has in mind when he claims that "desire is the desire of the Other"? To say that desire is the desire of the Other would not simply be to say that desire is structured by language, or that desire is the desire to be desired, or that I desire as an-other desires, but also that I perpetually desire what is other. I perpetually desire something else. This reading, of course, is far fetched and departs from what Lacan had in mind with his aphorism. But, nonetheless, it captures the effective metonymy or displacement that endlessly characterizes desire.

Thus, as Zizek has put it, we do not know what we desire. Damned if I know, one might say. I desire without knowing what, exactly, it is that I desire. And so I alight from object to object on the basis of my identifications, seeking that object that would finally stuff my lack full without ever filling it. And it is here that fantasy is involved. For one of the functions of fantasy is to give me a frame through which to desire. Fantasy isn't simply imagined satisfaction of a pre-existent desire, but rather fantasy gives form to my desire, selecting for it an object, in much the same way that a window selects a view for my regard. Simply put, we do not know what it is we desire and it is fantasy that thus functions to structure or in-form our desire.

We can see the relationship between non-knowledge and desire very clearly in the vulgar and commonplace desire of the person eating at the foreign restaurant. If the experience of eating at a foreign restaurant is often intimidating, then this isn't because one has any special attachment to their own national cuisine, but because we no longer know what it is we want within such a space. "Which dish is the dish for me?" we ask ourselves as we break into a sweat wondering whether we'll order the wrong thing or humiliate ourselves by ordering a dish disgusting or less than appetizing even to those familiar with it. What, then, is our first response in such a situation? Well, it is likely that we either ask the person that we are with or the server for advice on what to order.

I like this example because it's so basic and down to earth. While it risks overly simplifying Lacanian theory, it also gives us a nice model for uncovering certain salient relationships at work in the structure of desire. If our first response to the non-knowledge of our desire is to ask the person we are with or the server for advice, then we can very clearly see how desire is bound up with identification. The fact that I refer my desire to these other positions means that I identify with them at some level, that I recognize them as the ones who know. The fact that I trust in their judgment indicates that I take them to have a desire to please or satisfy me in some way. What I ultimately come to choose is bound up with an identification. I very literally come to desire as the other desires, as my companion desires. Thus, as Bourdieau has argued, taste is deeply bound up in social identification. What I desire will, in part, be tied up with those with whom I identify. A judgment of taste is also a judgment regarding the sort of person (group identification) I take myself to be, as well as the sort of person I want others to take me to be. It cannot therefore be said that desire is first anterior to fantasy (though we still need to clarify fantasy). Rather, the two are intimately bound up with one another.

It is this sort of observation that led Deleuze and Guattari to contest the concept of fantasy based on lack. It is my view that Deleuze and Guattari go too far in their critique insofar as there is certainly an experience of lack in the everyday life of any subject. However, Deleuze and Guattari's point is well taken if we bear in mind that there are no originary desires, that desire has to be produced, or that what we come to desire is ultimately the product of a desiring synthesis. Taking a cue from Deleuze and Guattari's influence from English empiricism, we might point out that there's nothing about the brown liquid in my coffee that makes it inherently appealing to a subject such as myself. If I see this brown liquid (coffee) as an appealing object, then this must result from a complex synthesis that connects it to certain experiences of satisfaction and social value, rather than intrinsic features of my desire. In other words, the problem that arises when we begin with characterizing desire as lack, lies in the fact that we tend to thereby naturalize desire, rather than seeing it as the result of a complex synthesis (primarily symbolic in character) that precedes my experience of lack. As Lacan remarks in his "Reply to Hyppolite" in the Ecrits, every act of negation is first based on an affirmation. One revolutionary feature of Lacan's distinction between need, demand and desire is that it allows us to overcome the naturalizing and essentializing tendency of those approaches that tend to equate need and desire, by showing how our desires are themselves produced or fabricated. If desire is the discourse of the Other, then this is in part because the manner in which I become a subject gives form to a desire that did not itself exist before. Although sometimes giving the impression that they are rejecting Lacan, Deleuze and Guattari ought to instead be understood as drawing our attention to the symbolic networks of relations that come to structure and inform our desire. The affirmation which they teach as the mark of a schizo subject is that affirmation that would strive to produce new networks of relations (and therefore new ways of feeling and desire) on the basis of the resources of the network within which we find ourselves. Insofar as the psychoanalyst feels that we are able to transform the very nature of our desire through speech, this must be a deeply psychoanalytic notion despite its occasional romanticism.

Back to fantasy. Fantasy is the frame through which we desire. It is not an image of the object that we desire, but rather is a structure that in-forms or gives form to what we desire. My desire for a particular car, for example, isn't based on the fantasy of me imagining myself related to a particular car, but rather I treat this car as an object of my fantasy on the basis of a fantasy that sanctions this car as an object of desire. In and of itself, fantasies are always intersubjective. They are responses to the question of what I am for the Other and of what the Other wants from me. Thus, although I desire the car it is not the car that figures into the fantasy, rather my desire for this car is an elaboration of this intersubjective fantasy. Perhaps, for instance, by owning this car I will increase my social status and thereby be the kind of man desirable by a particular sort of woman. We must therefore resist the urge to equate the object desired with the fantasy structure. We must not assume that because someone desires this particular object the fantasy is organized around that object. The object might not appear in the fantasy at all. We can refer to this practice of treating the object of desire as equivalent to the fantasy as the fallacy of tracing the transcendental from the empirical. The empirical, of course, is the particular object that I desire. The transcendental is the fantasy insofar as fantasy serves as a condition for my desire. I trace the transcendental from the empirical when I assume that the transcendental must somehow resemble the empirical or the realized states of desire.

This point, obscure as it is, gives insight into how not to understand Lacan's matheme for fantasy ($ <> a), read "the divided subject related to objet a. Generally when one speaks of Lacan's matheme for fantasy it is suggested that it expresses the subject related to the object of its desire. Thus, in the example of the car, we might articulate the fantasy as the statement "Levi related to such and such a car". The problem with this characterization is that it equates objet a, the object-cause of desire, with the object of desire. The object-cause of desire and the object of desire are different, extremely so.

One way of thinking the relationship between objet a and the object of desire is to think it as a relation between cause and effect. Objet a causes my desire, it elicits my desire, it excites my desire, while the object of desire is an effect of that desire. It is that thing that I come to desire. Objet a is thus the occasion of desire while the object of desire is that which comes to be desired as a result of desire. Over the course of his teaching Lacan came to increasingly think of objet a as a remainder, a scrap, a bit of waste, an excess, or shit. These developments are highly significant, because they allow us to better think both why we desire at all and why we cannot draw a strict opposition between fantasy and desire.

If fantasy is the frame of my desire, then this is not because it presents me with a scenario of what it is I desire, but because it relates the subject to that which escapes the subject and prevents it from being complete. In other words, it is a certain moment of incompleteness that evokes my desire at all. Lacan illustrates this point in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, when he relates the cryptic story of seeing a sardine can floating in the water while working as a young man on a fishing boat. As the can floated upon the waves, glistening in the sunlight, one of Lacan's fellow fishermen remarked "Look at that sardine can! You can see it, but it cannot see you!" The fisherman found this highly amusing, while Lacan experienced discomfort and anxiety with respect to the observation. What we have here is an example of gaze, one of the possible manifestations of objet a. However, the crucial feature not to be overlooked is that the gaze in question is not the gaze that we actually experience or that we encounter in the look of the other, but rather it is the gaze that escapes us, that we cannot capture. This is why Lacan works so diligently to distinguish the eye from the gaze. It is not the eye that escapes my desire, but rather the object-cause of my desire is precisely that gaze that exceeds me or which I cannot apprehend.

Is she gazing at me or not? Did she just look my way? Here Sartre's examples of the farm house that stares at the soldiers in Being and Nothingness immediately come to mind. We might also think of the way the heroin of The Secretary experiences herself perpetually under the gaze of her boss. It is this gaze, a gaze of which she is never certain, a gaze which she is forever unable to determine as to whether it is truly taking place, that ultimately wins her love. She does not feel gazed upon because she loves her boss, but rather she loves her boss because she wonders whether she is gazed upon. The gaze is the object-cause of her desire. Her desire for her boss is the effect of this cause. This, then, is the crucial, not to be missed, point: The fantasy does not conjoin the woman with her boss, but rather conjoins the woman with the gaze... She is conjoined with that remainder, that point of excess that always escapes within her signifying economy.In this regard, there is often precious little said about the losange (<>) relating the subject to the object-cause of desire in the formula for fantasy. According to Lacan, the losange does not simply mean "related to" but rather, in a number of places Lacan remarks that the losange is to be read as being equivalent to the mathematical symbols for "greater than" and "less than" (>, <) as in 4 "less than" 5, but also as the logical symbols for "and" and "or" (v, ^). This is not without consequences, for it allows us to render the concept of fantasy more precise and useful in both a clinical setting and in the critique of metaphysical and ideological fantasies. Objet a does not simply express the object-cause of desire, but is also a way of formalizing Freud's so-called lost object of desire or that object of desire that we desire without ever having had it.

Freud first develops this account of the lost object in his unpublished Project essay, but it can be detected in one way or another throughout his writings. The unique feature of this lost object is that it is an object that we only come to desire as a result of having been submitted to some prohibition or law. In other words, the object was never an object that I, in fact, had, but rather I only come to desire this object as a result of having been submitted to the symbolic. Lacan's graph of desire clearly captures this point as can be seen from the fourth cell of the graph where we are given to see the relationship between castration and fantasy. The function of fantasy is to cover over the horrifying truth of castration or the manner in which the big Other doesn't exist or is itself barred. Fantasy gives body and substantiality to the non-existent big Other.Now it is a mistake to understand Lacan's concept of castration as pertaining to the penis and the threat of having the penis cut off. One major differences that separates Freud and Lacan is that whereas Freud seems to treat castration as a mere threat that empirically took place at some point, Lacan holds that insofar as one is a subject one is always already castrated. Castration has already taken place. Under the Lacanian model castration pertains not to the penis, but rather to the sacrifice of enjoyment I experience in being subjected to the symbolic order. If I am to enter into the symbolic order, then I must sacrifice some of my enjoyment. We see this very clearly, for example, in Mill's essay Utilitarianism, where my employment of the greatest happiness principle invites me to evaluate not my own personal happiness, but to impartially calculate the happiness for the greatest number of people even if it contributes to my own happiness. In other words, entering into the symbolic requires a sacrifice of enjoyment... An enjoyment that I never had to begin with (since the state before this contract was even worse than the one after this contract). Freud makes exactly this point in Civilization and its Discontents, when he speaks of the unhappiness we experience as a result of being members of society. If the individual continuously bites at the bit of the social, then this is because the individual sees the social as having stolen his happiness despite the fact that he couldn't exist at all without this collective.

However, despite the fact that I sacrifice some of my happiness in entering into society, bits of this enjoyment continue to persist in fractured forms. In short, there is a remainder that the symbolic cannot quite integrate, that always escapes, that functions as excessive waste. It is, in fact, this remainder that ties me to the social in the first place since my enjoyment of this remainder functions as the motive of my identification: I(a). Now it is precisely here that we can read the variations on fantasy. Most commonly we read fantasy under the model of conjunction. We read fantasy as consisting of the conjunction of the subject with his object of desire. Yet fantasy can also be read as disjunction (me or them), or as the subject greater than the object of desire (domination) or the subject as less than the object-cause of desire (subjection). In each of these cases different desiring relations are effected between the subject and the world. We see, for example, these various permutations of fantasy in Freud's article "A Child Is Being Beaten" where it is first a scene witnessed by an onlooker ($ > a), then me being beaten ($ "less than" objet a), then perhaps me and the child being beaten ($ and objet a), and so on. Each one of these variations is a response to the question of what the other wants and how the other desires me and is therefore a response to the non-existence of the Other or the way in which the Other is barred. The common feature in all of these examples is that the subject is thought in some relation to the lost object, to the object-cause of desire. Or better yet, the subject thinks itself in some relation to this remainder or bit of excess that resists integration into the symbolic.Yet it is precisely this relation that is at issue. For what the fantasy covers over is the the non-existence of the symbolic order or castration. Fantasy treats this non-existence or this thing which is rotten in Denmark as if it were a contingent feature of the symbolic universe, failing to see that it is instead constitutive of the symbolic. We thus get a better sense of what is at stake in traversing the fantasy. My fantasy produces a symptom insofar as it attenuates objet a in the functioning of the symbolic as a way of producing my desire as an effect.

In traversing the fantasy I am led back from the object of my desire to the object-cause of my desire to the castration or separation out of which this object-cause emerges. But in this movement of tracing, my fundamental relation to the object-cause is itself transformed, such that the object-cause is no longer something that I am superior or inferior to, something that I am conjoined or disjoined to. Rather, in traversing the fantasy I identify with the object-cause itself, recognizing the object-cause as my true subject, and thereby dis-identifying the object-cause with the various identifications under which it has been hid. In traversing the fantasy I shift from being a subject of desire to a subject of drive insofar as my relationship to the object is no longer determined in terms of prohibition and transgression of the law such that my object of desire is formed in an identification, but rather I now relate to this excess as the very being of my subject. posted by Sinthome at 1:45 PM 2 Comments:

Anonymous said...Levi, I know flattering leftist homologies have been made by Zizek and others between Lacan's subject of drive and Badiou's subject of the truth procedure, but to me, there is also a conservative side to the traversing of the fantasy. Once you forget the Big Revolution and changing the world and all that (an elusive object of the metonymy of desire par excellence), what is left for you than to turn...pragmatic and utilitarian, perhaps? I couldn't care less about changing the world politics though I go to elections every now and then, I still pay taxes, enjoy my daily lunch and a drink with friends after the hard day's work not to mention some good screwing with my wife a few times a week. Should I traverse my petty bourgeois fantasy? But what if I'm already on the other side? November 15, 2006 4:05 AM

Sinthome said...I don't think it can be said that traversing the fantasy produces one kind of subject or one kind of drive. Maybe you could say a bit more as to what you discern Zizek's conception of revolution to be. Zizek emphasizes drive repetition in terms of repeated failure, and gives very little in the way of a utopian vision. It's hard to see drive as conservative, utilitarian, or pragmatic, as all of these stances involve a belief that one knows what the Other desires. For instance, the utilitarian says, "x is not possible at this time, in this situation". November 15, 2006 6:37 AM

Mumbo-jumbo scholarship

INDIA, ARYAN PATRIARCHY AND DRAVIDIAN MATRIARCHY Ray Harris I've recently discovered the work of Giti Thadani, an Indian lesbian academic. In her books 'Sakiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India' and 'Moebius Trip' she describes an India quite different to the India of the modern conservative politician concerned about morality and preserving Hindu traditions. integral world

In previous articles I've examined Islam and Christianity. Now I feel ready to tackle Hinduism. But first let me make an admission. I'm very sympathetic to what I call Advaita Tantra, nondual Tantrism, particularly as expressed in Kashmir Shaivism (KS) and some schools of Vajrayana Buddhism. This does not mean I'm not critically aware of what can only be described as the mumbo-jumbo of Tantric esotericism. Any scholar of Tantra will tell you that many of the texts are obscurantist and difficult. Yet, such esotericism gave rise to some remarkable philosophy, both Hindu and Buddhist.

Another admission: I spent five years living in an ashram where I had a number of profound experiences. It doesn't matter if these were 'real' or not. I'm actually still undecided about there being a metaphysical reality distinct from physical reality. Modern techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) have shown conclusively that meditation changes the brain. When Buddhist monks say meditation makes them happier they are not 'imagining' it. The work of Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has shown more activity in the left prefrontal cortex of meditators than non-meditators – the left prefrontal cortex is where feelings of wellbeing are located (activated). Other studies have shown how meditation affects the areas of the brain that deal with notions of self and other. As these studies continue FMRI will no doubt reveal that we have considerable control over our own thoughts and mental and emotional 'states'. In other words – meditation works. (What I would like to see is FMRI studies of fundamentalist Christians in prayer and a comparison with serious meditators, now that would be interesting!).

If meditation can make people happier then it has value in its own right, independent of whether or not it proves one or other metaphysical theory. In fact we may be seeing the beginning of a science based, rational philosophy of meditation. If we seek pleasure for pleasure's sake then why not meditate because it is good for us? Forget all the religious accretions.

Okay, so before I digress too much let me also confess that whilst I lived in the ashram I had time to study Indian philosophy to some depth, particularly KS - a philosophy that is very compatible with modern scientific theories of cosmogenesis. For example KS posits a 'singularity' (so called because it is nondual), which self-expands and limits itself by creating spacetime (called niyati and kaala in Sanskrit). The paradoxes of modern cosmology are compatible with the paradoxes of nondual philosophy. There was no time 'before' the expansion because there was no 'time'. There was no 'inside' and 'outside' the singularity because there was no 'space' as we understand it. Of course, KS often described these things in mythic language, but I can assure the reader that the process of understanding the philosophy of KS involved stages of understanding compatible with the findings of developmental psychology. These things can be read in rational and integral ways. Now, I'm not suggesting in any way that KS proves modern cosmology or vice-versa – they are quite different fields of inquiry. No, what I am saying is that KS is more compatible with modern science than the Abrahamic religions that posit a God (often anthropomorphic) that sits outside spacetime and magically creates and destroys the Cosmos. KS is technically atheistic - nondual logic demands it...

Tantra is unique in its frank use of sexual imagery. Spiritual realisation is depicted as the union of male and female, with the goddess afforded a primary position as the creative force (eros) of the cosmos. In KS she is called mahashakti, the 'energy' of creation. I won't go into a description of Tantra here. I believe most of my readers will already be familiar with it, and if not, a google search will have to do. What I want to do here is mention two things:

• First, Tantra has given great respect to women adepts. Tibetan Buddhism tells of one of Padmasambhava's consorts, the Lady Tsogyal. Hindu Tantra acknowledges several great female siddhas and yoginis and the goddess is afforded supreme status.
• Second, Tantra deliberately sought to transgress the religious rules of the Arya. Left-hand Tantra intentionally advocates using the five banned substances of the Arya in their rituals...

In her studies and travels Thadani shows that the Arya has suppressed the goddess. This has been done in both petty and more profound ways. An example of the petty was the number of times Thadani came across naked statues of the goddess covered by a piece of cloth by the local Aryans, embarrassed at her nudity.

The more profound suppression involves the systematic distortion and rewriting of Indian history. Thadani has given numerous accounts of where the feminine of the original Sanskrit has been translated as masculine. She also encountered temples where the goddess had been mutilated and either replaced by or turned into a masculine god. One of the more amusing attempts to rewrite goddess mythology concerns the goddess Kali. There are many examples of artwork showing the fierce Kali standing on the corpse of Shiva with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. In the Shaivite and Shakta traditions the exposed tongue simple represents her fierce, defiant aspect and the iconography is about her dominance of Shiva. But in the Aryan retelling the tongue is said to represent shame – Kali is showing remorse for accidently stepping on her 'husband' Shiva... Ray Harris, February 2007 Harris lives in Australia and can be contacted at: rharris6@bigpond.net.au. Ray has written about Christianity (see his essay "Christianity: The Great Lie") and Islam (see: "The Many Faces of Islam", among many others in the Reading Room), this time he addresses Hinduism.

The action is not addressed to the oppressors but the witnesses

One of the things that struck me about Jodi's claim that she can't see any coherent alternative was the sense of inevitability that it embodied, as if the institution of Christianity or religion could not possibly disappear. Yet historically we've seen all sorts of institutions and religions disappear, and new things emerging in their place.
Additionally, you seem to be suggesting that the very awareness of this, the very awareness of the contingency of institutions, accelerates this process and opens up new potentials for engagement that would not be there without the thought of contingency. Reason must come to see itself as a contingent formation within history, which isn't to say that reason is somehow undermined or dismissed.
I have a tendency to think of a number of these issues in terms of populations, in much the same way that a biologist or an ethnographer might look at processes of speciation. One of the things I've found interesting in this discussion and the original post has been the tendency to focus on the *content* of the discourse, its propositions, whether it grounds itself or not, etc., and to evaluate it academically or intellectually in these terms. What seems to be forgotten in this is that discourses are populations or ways of life that are more or less intense or present within a historical setting or society. That is, we miss the dimension of these discourses as material realities that people live. Materially Christianity has been tremendously successful in the United States. There are churches on nearly every street corner, they own multiple television networks, speech addressing them is present in nearly every major governmental event, there are mass mailings that go throughout the population, they publish a tremendous amount of inspirational and fictional works, etc. It can, of course, be pointed out that the vast majority of Christians are not fundamentalists as Adam rightly points out. But what Adam seems to miss is that the content of a position erases itself in its actuality, reducing itself to what is most immediately present, i.e., the signifier "Christian". As a result, when legislation is enacted its inward content might very well be "nutjob fundamentalist" material, but it is supported by the larger population as this content erases itself and all that is heard is the signifier "Christian". That is, the distinctions disappear. As a result, those moderate secular Christians end up unwittingly supporting fundamentalist policies and public officials as they assume that the signifier has the same content as their own use of the signifier. Hence we cannot strongly draw these distinctions at the level of their material practice.
The question then becomes one of how new populations can be produced, new material forms of subjectivity traversing the social field, new speciations, etc. This is not a question of sterile academic debate where we wonder over whether this or that is grounded, or whether this or that is formally identical to religion, etc. Rather, it is a question of how to get certain strands of communication as material reality out there in the social field. This, for instance, is why I see books like Richard Dawkin's God Delusion or the Left Behind books as far more powerful than an ideological critique by Zizek or others in effecting change. When you see such a book advertised on the major news networks, spoken of in popular press, etc., you also see that the themes of discourse are changing. It's not a question of agreeing with Dawkins or whether he has a particularly sophisticated view of religion, and so on. Suddenly entire populations of youth find themselves with a vocabulary to voice thoughts that might have before been vague and undeveloped, and apoligists find that they must respond-- which entails making concessions --and the discourse shifts as a result. Rather, it's a question of how the field of forces is modified by the emergence of such things that must then be responded to at very basic and public levels outside the academy. I'm not expressing very well what I'm trying to get at here. Perhaps I'm trying to say that it's less a question of whether the position is true or false or the cleverness of an argument, but more the question of the relationship between a communication and an audience, and what potentials there are for producing a new species, subjectivity, or population. Posted by: Sinthome March 25, 2007 at 01:50 PM

Anthony you're correct, I'm talking about liberating the non-religious kernel from the religious flotsam in Jesus' religious teaching. And so yes, I'm certainly talking about a disfiguration. I think Jesus says some non-religious things of value such as loving ones neighbor, defending the marginalized, turning the other cheek, etc. I don't see why any of this need be connected to the Paul Bunyan stories that came to be attached to him. Certainly you weren't thinking that I would somehow ever become supportive of religion, did you? The most you might hope for there is a bit of mild tolerance for it as it isn't going away any time soon. I will also, of course, feel that some of my religious fellows are well meaning and have the right political and ethical aspirations. But that doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to begin seeing belief in divinity and the supernatural as a legitimate stance. Posted by: Sinthome March 25, 2007 at 01:56 PM

"In fact, you would have to erase much of his teaching to get at anything like a ground for ethics of the decent, procedural liberalism the Enlightenment bequeathed."
I always find it odd when you say things like this. I would claim that the Enlightenment has bequeathed many things... For instance, I would see Marx as a culmination of the Enlightenment. It's a little jarring for someone as steeped in Deleuze and Guattari as yourself to have such a difficult time with the concept of creative repetition or a repetition that is not a repetition of the same. I perpetually get the sense that you think I'm defending a position like John Locke's (your remark about Voltaire seemed to suggest this), or a form of rationality like Descartes'. It's more a question of a certain type of spirit and less a question of the content for me. Posted by: Sinthome March 25, 2007 at 02:00 PM

And, of course, Jesus is not the ground of anything... He happened to say some things that I believe are true. Talking of any man as the ground of anything is the whole problem. This is why I side with Socrates over Jesus. Socrates says "ignore me and evaluate what I say". Jesus says "I am God therefore obey what I say". I think this simple difference distils the entire difference between the religious tradition and the philosophical tradition and why they're not ultimately compatable. Jesus, no doubt, was deluded as to his identity and authority, but we, of course, can use our critical subjectivity to determine whether he nonetheless said some true things. Posted by: Sinthome March 25, 2007 at 02:04 PM

Yes, I am convinced that your approach to religion is essentially politically, intellectually, and ethically useless, much like Voltaire's. I value your insights on other things, but religion is not one of them. Love your enemies is not a truth one comes through by way of reason. Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith March 25, 2007 at 02:19 PM

"Love your enemies is not a truth one comes through by way of reason."
Sure it is. It is an exercise in rhetorical warfare at the level of political practice. Take Gandhi. In practicing non-violent protest and allowing themselves to be brutalized by their followers, they earned the sympathy of the witnesses of this violence. That is, the action is not addressed to the oppressors-- though perhaps the unwillingness to strike back horrifies them too --but the witnesses. In doing this, the witnesses come to side with the victims and the power of the oppressors is diminished. Socrates makes similar points at the end of the Apology. All of this strikes me as very reasonable political praxis.
You would have to make arguments as to how you see my remarks on religion as politically, ethically, and intellectually useless. Politically I'm discussing moments in history where fighting against religion in highly religious environments has been successful, thereby undermining the canard that it must simply be accepted. Moreover, I'm troubled by the way in which religion has so often been used as a tool of the oppressors. Here Zinn's opening chapter in the People's History is priceless. These issues would be related to ethics as well. Moreover, I'm simply refusing the common thesis that there can be no ethics without religion or that ethics somehow come from religion. Finally, intellectually, I'm bothered by the way in which religious belief has so often been anti-intellectual and inhibited intellectual development. The Middle Ages put Europe behind for about a thousand years. You can disagree, of course, but really you should make an actual argument rather than simple assertions. Posted by: Sinthome March 25, 2007 at 02:35 PM

Sinthome, "You can disagree, of course, but really you should make an actual argument rather than simple assertions."
It's a blog comment box. If you believe your words have gone past a slightly complexified assertion this is purely fantasy. And, of course, I have my own reasons for disagreeing. The reasonable question always in conversations like these remains "Is it worth my time to write them all out knowing full well it likely won't really change anyone’s views?" Frankly I think you are very convinced and even the discussion of empirical evidence to the contrary concerning the role of religion in intellectual and political life in the middle ages will fail to persuade you of anything other than the average historical summary found in most history of philosophy books.
Non-violent protest is not love. The purpose of Gandhi's movement was not to love the British but to defeat them. Instrumental reason of this sort is not at work in the Gospels. Posted by: Anthony Paul Smith March 25, 2007 at 02:48 PM

It's unclear whether the historical Jesus claimed to be God. It's also unclear that the intellectual "lag" in the middle ages was due to "religion" rather than to a really tenuous political and economic situation. The authority of the pope varied from decade to decade; certain parts of Europe were able largely to ignore it, etc. And on the other side, a lot of the accomplishments of Islam -- in astronomy, for instance -- were motivated by religious needs (precision in locating Mecca for prayer purposes, etc.). Overall, your non-dialectical and ahistorical approach to these questions is astonishingly unconvincing. Posted by: Adam Kotsko March 25, 2007 at 03:01 PM

Black is a color. Race is a social construct

Let’s say that within the Limbic System which controls the emotions, and instincts, feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sexual behavior one particular type of cultural human being took from their environment those Deep Cultural Structures (Nobles) that suited their world view and developed their societies around them. For example, the African who culturally matured in a “relaxed” warm hospitable environment where Nature provided for their needs would have time to focus on and develop their emotions, not worry about feeding themselves thus limiting fighting and also have time to enjoy their sexuality in accordance with what they were close with and respected, Nature. They would develop a sense of community and sharing as well as embrace connectivity because they needed the group to survive within Nature's bounty. The spoken Word was law. Group think!

On the other hand, the European, who culturally matured in a “hostile,” cold ice age environment would have little time to deal with their emotions (in fact they would be a hindrance for their survival), have a difficult time finding resources to feed themselves therefore fighting and weapon development for resource acquisition and control would be a prominent part of their cultural world view. Their sexuality would be confined to the warmth of their caves and because of the confinement would probably increase the opportunity for sexual “experimentation” for inter-group and/or inter-gender relationships. Therefore, they would be more aggressive, protective of their space/resources, xenophobic, technocratic, replace Nature with things artificial and develop deceptive practices for manipulation of the Word for their protection. All leading to Individual think, or at best later, the small controllable “nuclear family thinking”

Similar to the carry over from our early cerebral biological development, I’d say the humans cultural development was also coded and evolved from the environment to create such behaviors. That would mean that today, if we could find out which person would embrace which code of the aforementioned behaviors, than we could very well issue an “African or European” cultural card, depending on their embraced of their ancestral Deep Cultural Structures.

As I see it, the only hindrance to correct coding would be hypocrisy or deceit. For instance, one person from either cultural group, if they wanted to claim African status, could feign “Group think,” when their ultimate goal is to achieve individual advantage. This may be because it’s a part of their ancestral cultural thought and behavior or their own has been hidden and they have adopted another through the adaptation to foreign ideology. For those of us who can't get beyond the idea of skin color or the concept of race, this doesn’t negate the fact that we can issue a “Blacker than me” card once we learn to identify our own cultural behavior and through observation issue them to those who more closely follow their ancestral Deep Cultural Structures which ever one they may be or which ever culture they claim.

Footnote: In this reality, an Asian could be more African than a modern day African if the African has adapted, adopted, as well as practiced, another cultural thought and behavior. Remember Africans, in so called "prehistory," laid the foundation for many of today’s world cultures. Posted by AFRICANVOICE.COM at Monday, March 12, 2007

"White" refers to their advanced spirituality and has nothing to do with race

The Great White Brotherhood is a term used in some metaphysical and Theosophical literature, as well as in Ascended Master Activities, to be an association of enlightened Spiritual Beings, in or out of incarnation, who continue to take an interest in the spiritual development of the human race. The Ascended Masters are believed by some to form such a college.[1]

Originating in the teachings of H. P. Blavatsky as developed by C. W. Leadbeater, Alice Bailey and Helena Roerich, the term Great White Brotherhood was further developed and popularized in 1934 with the publication of "Unveiled Mysteries" [2] by Guy Ballard's "I Am" Activity.[3] This Universal Brotherhood of "Immortal Saints and Sages" [4] who have gone through the Initiations of the Transfiguration, Resurrection, and the Ascension[5] was further popularized by The Bridge to Freedom, The Summit Lighthouse, and The Temple of The Presence. [6]

The Great White Brotherhood is perceived as a spiritual organization composed of those Ascended Masters who have risen from the Earth into Immortality, but still maintain an active watch over the world. The Great White Brotherhood also includes members of the Heavenly Host (the Spiritual Hierarchy directly concerned with the evolution of our world), Beneficent Members from other planets that are interested in our welfare, as well as certain unascended chelas. [7]

The Ascended Masters are supposed to be joined together in Service to our Earth under the name of the Great White Brotherhood. The use of the term "white" is supposed to refer to their advanced spirituality (i.e., that they have a white colored aura) and has nothing to do with race. The later versions of Blavatsky described the masters as [8] ethnically Tibetan or Indian (Hindu), not European. Recent research indicates, however, that this description was used by Blavatsky to hide the real identity of her teachers, some of whom were well known Indian rulers of her time. [9] Library > Reference > Wikipedia

The people of the Christian West (i.e. the United States) had been so poisoned against Muslims

Professor Stanford J. Shaw zs"l 1930-2006 A Personal Appreciation by Shelomo Alfassa (December 24, 2006)

I was deeply saddened to have learned of the death of Professor Stanford J. Shaw at the age of 76. Professor Shaw was an Ottomanist, a world renowned expert on Jewish life in Turkey during and after the era of the sultan. Although I had never met the professor in person, we had struck up an Internet friendship that had lasted many years. As a Turkish Jew and a lover of Ottoman Jewish history, I found a deep appreciation for this man that spent nearly his whole life researching, writing about and focusing on my people. Professor Shaw contributed such a tremendous wealth of knowledge to the body of history on the Jews of Turkey, that the debt of gratitude that is owed him can never be repaid. His academic work strengthened our understanding of what Jewish life was life under the sultan, from as early as the expulsion of the Jews from Spain to as late as the development of Ataturk's modern Republic...

Professor Stanford Shaw was not afraid to challenge the Armenian claims of genocide at the hands of the Ottomans. Shaw stood by his position, one shared by many others, that the wars that the Ottoman Empire faced were brutal to people of all races and various ethnic groups. After studying in the Turkish archives, he took the position that there was no directly intended genocidal attempt and that all parties were liable for the high numbers of deaths due to the vicious warfare that occurred. Professor Shaw realized that the people of the Christian West (i.e. the United States) had been so poisoned against Muslims by wartime propaganda that it was easy for the Americans to jump on the 'blame the Turks' bandwagon. Because of his opinions, Shaw's house in California was bombed in 1977 by Armenian extremists...RETURN HOME