I was walking the trail near the marshy part of the creek when I saw two young women approaching, engaged in conversation, and for some reason I flashed back to France. Walking the crowded sidewalks of Nice or Antibes I would hear people speaking in all manner of strange languages. Whenever I overheard an American I’d cringe a little: the intonations seemed louder, more abrasive than most others. The worst part was that I could actually understand what they were saying. My wife and I agreed: whatever little snippet of American conversation we overheard in passing, the topic always seemed to be about money. So I’m watching these two women approach, knowing with certainty that they’ll be speaking American. As we pass on the trail exchanging smiles, one of them is saying to the other, “…the standard of living…”
My Dream
I woke up at about 3 this morning, had a coffee, did some stuff, felt sleepy, went back to bed for a nap. As I was lying there I was thinking about alternate realities, about how I need to make them the central concern in my practice, about how they’re not just subjective imaginings of the ego but intersubjective, linking people together. I must have dozed off, because it took awhile for me to realize that what I’d just been experiencing had been a dream…
I’m in France, hanging around at some guy’s office or possibly his apartment, I think he is American. I’m standing around reading a magazine without much interest. There’s another guy there too, somebody I did my postdoc with, pleasant but boring. It’s time to go to lunch; they ask me to come with them to a restaurant. I’m trying to save money, so I say no. But then I’m thinking, I really ought to make myself socialize more. Okay I’ll come.
We’re at the restaurant. It’s quite large and very crowded. It looks like the Full Moon, my favorite restaurant here in Boulder. I realize I left my stuff back at the office/apartment. I mention it to the guy whose place it is, and he shrugs indifferently — I figure I’ll have to go back after lunch. These two guys I’m with are having a drink. On the table is a bottle of tonic water and clear square plastic container about a foot cubed: inside the container is the booze, on top is some sort of mechanical siphon for dispensing the booze. I pour myself a glass of tonic, but I can’t figure out how the booze dispenser works. I ask the two guys: they fumble around with it giggling — I realize they’re already drunk and have nearly drained the container. I sip on my tonic.
My two companions get up and walk into the crowd of people standing around inside the restaurant. I wait. I’m surprised to see three young guys sit down on the bench right next to my chair. They speak to each other but do not acknowledge my presence. I sit and wait. I finish my glass of tonic, and start thinking that I ought to order myself a beer. After awhile the three young men on the bench get up and leave. I realize that the restaurant is nearly empty now. I also realize that my two friends must have left. The waitress passes by; she shrugs her shoulders and says in French that it’s strange, but they’ve gone. I realize that she is not going to bring me a bill for the drinks, but that my friends probably didn’t pay either. I get up to leave the restaurant.
All of Mexico Goes Past
Y Tu Mama Tambien is a road movie, a quest for the paradise of the imagination, a place they call Heaven’s Mouth. It’s also a coming-of-age movie about innocence lost, though for the two teen-aged Lotharios it’s the kind of innocence that’s perhaps best left behind. And it’s also a movie about innocence reclaimed, if only for a moment, its traces soon washed away in the gentle waves of eternity.
Julio’s girlfriend’s mother, a Lacanian analyst, asserts that the kids’ relationship is innocent. If so then it’s an innocence characterized by self-indulgence. But it’s not an entirely limitless hedonism: there’s the Charolastra Manifesto (yesterday’s post), recited gleefully by Julio and his best friend Tenoch near the beginning of the long drive from the big city to the sea. It’s the passenger in the car, Luisa, the older woman, the object of the boys’ seduction fantasies, who exposes the emptiness of the code and the duplicity of its adherents. As they drive down the road she lays down her own law (in a comment to yesterday’s post), the law of the Big mOther, naked but untouchable — the kind of law that spawns not mere licentiousness but good-old-fashioned desire.
The two Manifestos reveal one kind of portal in this movie; Heaven’s Mouth is another. Then there’s the car, the means of passage between realities. A lot happens inside the car; a lot more happens when the car stops. But what’s happening on the road, outside the car, as they make passage?
– The car passes a VW bug bedecked with flowers — a couple of newlyweds. Julio’s radio is playing a cover of an old BeeGees tune: “you don’t know what it’s like to love somebody…”
– We watch from the side of the highway as the car drives by, the camera positioned next to a couple of hand-made crosses. Marked on one of the crosses: INRI Adolfo Rios 1955.
– All of Mexico goes past, with its bleak and magnificent landscapes, its picturesque and impoverished vilages.
– At one point the narrator tells us that one of these villages, Tepelmeme, is the birthplace of Tenoch’s nanny, an Indian woman who has cared for Tenoch since his birth, whom Tenoch called “Mama” until he was four. Tenoch says nothing about it; the car whizzes by.
– A barricade blocks their passage. It’s a festival of some sort; a woman comes to the car window asking for a contribution for “the Queen.” As the car passes we see two men stoically holding up a lawn chair on which is seated a young and smiling girl wearing a bridal gown.
– Luisa, whose parents died in an automobile accident, tells the two boys that her first boyfriend too was killed on the road. The narrator interjects: if ten years ago the car had passed this very spot on the road they would have come upon an overturned smoldering truck with two bodies lying next to it and a woman standing over them crying inconsolably. Out the window of the car we see two more roadside crosses.
– On the roadside we watch some military policemen searching two cars. Then the road is blocked temporarily by a herd of cattle. After awhile the cattle move aside and the car starts up again. A police truck passes them, then pulls off the road. Through the back window we watch the police jump from the truck and start frisking some men standing by the roadside.
– The car passes a large group of people walking slowly up the road. Some men are carrying a coffin — it’s a funeral procession. The car passes the cemetery, where a burial is underway.
– As Luisa recites her alternative manifesto the car whizzes by another roadside cross, another police shakedown, some women washing clothes in a stream. As soon as Luisa lays down her tenth and final law — “You’re not allowed to contradict me” — they arrive at the end of the road, which is the sea.
Charolastra Manifesto
1. There is no greater honor than being a Charolastra.
2. Do whatever you feel like.
3. Pop beats poetry.
4. Get high at least once a day.
5. You shall not screw another Charolastra’s girl.
6. Whoever likes Team America is a fag.
7. Whacking off rules.
8. Never marry a virgin.
9. Whoever roots for Team America… (it’s worth repeating)
10. Truth is cool, but unattainable.
11. The asshole who breaks any of the previous rules loses his title of “Charolastra.”
(from Y Tu Mama Tambien)
He Who Does Not Name
One of the issues that arose in Galatians concerned the seemingly inseparable link between desire and the Law, which simultaneously tells us what we desire and forbids us from pursuing it. Can we have immediate access to pleasure, or do we need the Law to experience Paradise? I mentioned in the comments that I’d previously written a related exegesis on Cultural Parody Center. In the interests of continuity of thought here it is.
Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband. So then if, while her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she is released from the law concerning her husband. So that if, while her husband is living, she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God. (Romans 7:1-4)
In Paul’s hypothetical scenario there are two triangles: wife – husband – law; wife – husband – other man. The husband dies but the other man lives. Strangely, Paul doesn’t say that a new triangle forms that links the widow, the other man, and the law; i.e., through her remarriage. Instead, Paul says that with the death of the husband the widow is released from the law. Now what had been an illicit cuckoldry becomes a free relationship between the widow and the other man, not bound by the law. Before her husband died she was double: both wife and adulteress. Afterwards she is neither — she is not named by the law, even though she is still joined to the other man. He too, we observe, is unnamed; throughout he is “the other” (hetero in Greek).
Then, the strange therefore clause: Therefore, brethren, you died to the Law through the body of Christ, in order to be joined to another, who is the risen Christ. It’s not death of the wife that’s envisioned here, but the death of the husband. The “brethren” are represented by the wife/adulteress who becomes the widow; the husband is Christ. It’s Christ’s death that frees the brethren, a death that releases the brethren from the death or diversion of desire caused by the Law’s binding action. There’s a doubling of the wife with the dead husband: he dies to the Law, and she dies through his body — some kind of coupling between the wife and the husband’s corpse. But it turns out that the other man is also Christ — not the dead Christ but the resurrected Christ, the dead husband brought back to life. Which implies that the wife’s husband is always already dead. But she too must already be dead, bound in death to her husband’s corpse.
The Law binds a corpse in marriage to a corpse, and it also binds an adulteress in transgression to the other. Both of these two channels of desire lead to unfulfilled barrenness. Freedom and fecundity result only through resurrection, passing through death to the other side. The dead husband comes back to life as the desired other, the bound wife/adulteress comes back to life as the unleashed and unnamed desirer. And the desire is fulfilled; it “bears fruit.” So: Law either kills desire or channels it into a digressive hetero-sexuality. Resurrection deterritorializes desire, allowing it to attain fruitful satisfaction. And God is on the other side of death, not as one who binds desire but as one to whom unbound desire flows. God is the name of the dead Law resurrected and deterritorialized; God is He who does not name.
New Reality, New Self
But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. (Galatians 6:14-15)
I’m pretty sure this is my last post on Galatians. My interest was in trying to understand what motivates the Christian not just to avoid doing bad but to do anything at all. In Chapter 5 Paul contrasts the works of the flesh (bad) with the fruit of the Spirit (good). How does it work? Paul doesn’t offer much by way of explanation, but I’m going to offer a tentative theory:
The Law creates desire: both the desire to please and the desire to transgress. The temporal authorities who stand behind the Law desire to assert authority over those who subject themselves to the Law. This whole economy of Law and desire, power and enslavement, embody the worthless elemental things of this world (Galatians 4:9). The crucifixion of Christ reveals both the futility of the Law and its fulfillment in a new law: love your neighbor as yourself. This new law establishes the foundation for a new creation.
The old creation is a way of being in the world that’s characterized by the Law, slavery, and the desires and works of the flesh. In contrast, the new creation is an alternative way of being characterized by love, freedom, and the fruit of the Spirit. There is no way of changing or renewing the old creation to make it achieve the desire results. The only thing to do is to kill off the old creation and replace it with a new one.
But the self is part of the creation; the self takes on its meaning in the context of the larger reality in which it’s embedded. Killing off the old creation also means killing off your old way of being in the world. The new reality defines what a self is and how selves interact with each other. You can’t transform your old self gradually into this new kind of person, because your old self is part of the old reality. Realities define selves, and selves take their meaning within the context of realities. Paul says to let the old go: the system of the Law and the self’s enslavement to that system. Instead take your place inside the new reality of love, and there you’ll find a self that can live freely inside that reality.
And that’s about all I can see for now.
Castrating the Big Other
But I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. I wish that those who are troubling you would even mutilate themselves. (Galatians 5:11-12)
We back up a little more in our investigation of Galatians to savor this rhetorical flourish from Paul. Wouldn’t you say that circumcision is a symbolic or metonymic castration? It’s a perpetual reminder not to enjoy yourself too much or else. But Paul says the real stumbling block, the real skandalon, isn’t forbidden desire but rather the cross.
The cross isn’t meant to function as an even more intensified warning — if you don’t stop giving in to your desires you’re dead, just like Jesus. Here’s a guy who follows the Law to the letter, and what happens? He gets killed anyway. Wouldn’t you infer that the Big Other who stands behind the Law isn’t playing fair? And you’d be right, because the crucifixion demonstrates that the power behind the Law isn’t God but the social order that derives its power from enforcing the Law. Jesus did what the Law specified, but he antagonized the priests and the rabbis and the Jewish political leaders. They’re the ones who punished Jesus, holding out the threat of castration or worse for anyone who fails to acknowledge their authority.
And from where do the leaders of the Jewish community derive their authority? They would have you believe that they’re stand-ins for God himself, temporal representatives of the Big Other. But Paul says it’s not so. So where do they get their authority? From those who allow themselves to believe that the authorities represent the Big Other. Back to Galatians 4:17 — They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them. The leaders derive their power not from God but from the people they dominate, from the community that assembles itself around and beneath them. The rulers can rule only if they can seduce people into following them. And people are willing to follow, because they want someone to tell them precisely what God demands of them. Paul warns the Galatians: don’t let them get away with it, don’t give in to your own desire to enslave yourselves.
This is how the rulers get off: by seducing the heirs into being slaves, by proclaiming rules and punishments, by issuing warnings and threats, by commanding respect — by positioning themselves as the Big Other. If that’s what makes them hard, says Paul, then they ought to cut their own dicks off.
The End of the Cannibalistic Economy
For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. (Galatians 5:13-15)
Backing up a little in Galatians we encounter this curious passage. I’m particularly struck by the last sentence: if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. I always thought Paul was warning the Galatians against attacking one another out of spite, envy, mean-spiritedness. But now I’m reconsidering in light of the context.
If you regard the other as an object of your desire, then your desire seeks above all to possess that object of desire. You want to consume the other, incorporating the desired object into yourself. Bite by bite you devour the other, trying to fill yourself up with your desire. But when you’re done eating you realize you’re just as hungry as you were before. Meanwhile you’ve eaten up your desire for the other: your desire is unsatisfied, but the other no longer has that elusive thing you desire. Maybe it has moved on to another other? You look around; you think you see it; you begin sniffing, licking, nibbling…
But you aren’t the only predator: while you’re on the prowl the other is leering at you and licking its chops. You are an object of desire for the other. This is the economy of the flesh, a cannibalistic economy where everybody eats each other.
Paul warned the Galatians that the Law doesn’t just repress desire; it also creates the desire it represses. Desire to satisfy the Law; desire for what the Law prohibits; desire to be punished by the Law — desiring the desire of the Other. The Law eats you up and spits you out as a flesh-eating zombie. But the Law is never satisfied; it’s always hungry for fresh flesh. In pop-psych parlance, the Law and the flesh are codependent.
In place of the cannibalistic economy of the flesh Paul substitutes the freedom of love. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, says Paul. “Fulfilled” means “filled up”: the Law eats the one word, the one logos, and it’s not hungry any more. Freed from the hunger of the Law, the flesh too loses its appetite for flesh. You shall love your neighbor as yourself is the one logos. What do you want? Want that for the other as well. The freedom of love puts an end to the cannibalistic consumer economy of the Law and the flesh.
The War Goes On and On…
Here’s an article from The Nation that summarizes interviews with fifty American veterans of the Iraq war describing their experiences in-country. It’s a very long piece, but you get the idea pretty quickly.
[Note: Link courtesy of Lenins Tomb, a Marxist blog from England. The link might look like an ad, but click the place where it says to go on to The Nation (I don’t remember the exact wording) and it’ll take you to the article.]
Everything is Permitted
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities , strife, jealousy , outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness , faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Galatians 5:18-25)
Desire is perplexing. On the one hand, if we don’t have something like desires animating us then we’re inert matter. It’s hard to believe that we’re motivated primarily by thought, which in turn creates emotions and intentions and the will to act. We are animals after all, and other animals seem to move themselves around in the world apparently without the benefit of consciousness. On the other hand, the New Testament seems antagonistic to desires, regarding them as the source of sinfulness. So what’s the Christian praxis for dealing with desires? Does the Spirit give you the strength to suppress desire, enabling you to live by thought or morality or some other higher motive force? Does the Spirit redeem desire, removing its corruption and restoring it to its natural and good function? Or does the Spirit replace desire with some other motive force?
So far in Galatians 4-5 Paul has been contending that the Law as a list of dos and don’ts was meant to function as a kind of nursemaid. But it’s essentially a slave morality, an outside force that restricts freedom. When Christ sets people free then the Law becomes pointless. Paul even contends that the Law is counterproductive, instilling an awareness of what isn’t permitted which stimulates the desire to do the forbidden thing.
Paul frequently contrasts faith with works, where “work” (ergon in Greek) means effort expended for the purpose of making oneself morally good. Paul regards these efforts at self-sanctification not only as useless but as contrary to the Gospel. Here in Galatians 5, though, “deeds” (ergon) refer to recognizably sinful acts: immorality, impurity, sensuality, etc. If these are the things people do when they’re out of control, then why does Paul call them “works”? I think Paul is saying that, within the slave morality of the Law, moral and immoral acts are equally unnatural and non-spontaneous. The Law simultaneously stimulates the desire to self-justify and the desire to transgress. The resulting sense of conflict and futility makes everything an effort. It’s the life of a slave.
But, says Paul, this futility isn’t necessary. Christ set the Galatians free; they’re no longer slaves but heirs. In Dostoevsky’s famous novel Ivan Karamazov concludes that if God is dead then everything is permitted, that all things are lawful. Curiously, Paul contends that just the opposite is true: if the Spirit sets you free then all things are lawful (I Corinthians 10:23). Has the Spirit put God to death? No, but the Spirit did put to death the slave morality of law-desire-transgression that had come to be identified with God
So now you have a free people, heirs with Christ of the Kingdom. What moves them? The Spirit, says Paul. So again, does the Spirit renew the desires and passions, freeing them from their enslavement to the futile moral economy of the Law? Is the Spirit an alternative means of controlling the inner animal passions, replacing the outer Law with an inner restraint?
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Based on this statement it sounds as though the Spirit kills off the animal wants and passions, replacing them with a different “engine.” And that engine is the Spirit, God Himself. Whatever once motivated the person to feel and to act and to decide is now gone, replaced by an outside force that takes possession of both body and soul. And this is freedom? Sure, it’s easy to do the right things now: goodness just happens, like fruit growing on a tree. Still, it sounds more like complete slavery to me, like the Borg, the pod people, zombies, the undead. No thanks. I think I’ll stick with Ivan Karamazov’s path to freedom.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll see if Paul is able to redeem himself and his version of freedom in chapter 6.
Freedom from Desire
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. (Galatians 5:16-18)
So I’m reading Fink’s book on Lacan, and he’s talking about how important it is for the analyst not to accede to the analysand’s demands. Why? Fink says it’s not so much to keep control of the analytic relationship as it is to bring desire into play:
When there is no lack — when everything demanded is surrendered — desire is stymied. Nothing is left to be desired. Desire springs from lack… Satisfaction buries desire.
When Paul says that “the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit,” what does he mean? One possibility is that Paul is describing an Aristotelian hierarchy of the soul, where the flesh and its desires are “lower” and the spirit is “higher.” The higher should rule the lower, says Aristotle. But Paul has been talking not about internal divisions of the self but about slavery versus freedom, about the Law versus the Spirit. It is for freedom that Christ set us free, Paul asserts at the beginning of Galatians 5. No hidden agenda; no freedom in order that. So why would Paul now start talking about using freedom as a tool to enslave the passions to the mind and the will?
I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. (Romans 7:7-8)
The Greek word translated as “covet” here is the same word that’s translated as “desire” in Galatians 5. I would not have known about desiring if the Law had not said, “you shall not desire.” This I think is precisely what Lacan has in mind. When there is no gap between demand and surrender, when nothing prohibits fulfillment, then there is no desire. Desire is created by the Law, by the prohibition it inserts between you and what you want.
So: prohibition creates lack, and lack creates desire. In this sense desire isn’t a natural urge or passion; rather, it is an artifact of prohibition. So to seek fulfillment of your desires isn’t just to seek natural satisfaction; it is to violate the prohibition that created the desire in the first place. That’s why desire is sin in Romans 7. And that’s also why fulfilling your desires can’t satisfy you. Desire = prohibition; fulfillment = violation.
So, when Christ sets the Galatians free from the Law, he isn’t just making it possible to be good without following the rules. By getting rid of the rules, Jesus eliminates the prohibitions that create desire, which in turn eliminates the temptation to violate the prohibitions.
The Spirit brings freedom from the Law, from prohibition, from desire, from violation. Someone who remains enslaved to the Law experiences desire as a corrupted fusion of passion and prohibition. The Law-bound person can never do what he wants, not just because what he wants is prohibited, but because his wants are themselves distorted by the prohibitions attached to them by the Law. Under the Law want is inextricably bound to the desire to sin. There is no freedom in this kind of desire. But the Spirit releases want from prohibition, fulfillment from violation. Only in the Spirit are you free to “do the things that you please.”
Deconstructing Abraham
Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. For it is written, “REJOICE, BARREN WOMAN WHO DOES NOT BEAR; BREAK FORTH AND SHOUT, YOU WHO ARE NOT IN LABOR; FOR MORE NUMEROUS ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE DESOLATE THAN OF THE ONE WHO HAS A HUSBAND.” And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say ? “CAST OUT THE BONDWOMAN AND HER SON, FOR THE SON OF THE BONDWOMAN SHALL NOT BE AN HEIR WITH THE SON OF THE FREE WOMAN.” So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman. (Galatians 4:21-31)
This is a very strange passage. In Genesis we learn that Abraham had two sons. The mother of the first son is Abraham’s servant Hagar; her son is Ishmael. The mother of the second son is Abraham’s wife Sarai; her son is Isaac. Ishmael becomes the patriarch of the Arabs, whereas the Jews trace their lineage through Isaac. But here in Galatians we have Paul, a Jew, asserting that Ishmael is the father of the Jews.
Paul makes himself clear. The story of Abraham’s two sons is an allegory. Hagar, the bondwoman, is the covenant of Law. Hagar is a mountain in Arabia, which corresponds to Jerusalem. Those who follow the Law are descendants of Hagar, enslaved to the Law. Allegorically speaking the Jews are the Arabs: enslaved, unclean, cast out.
Paul shows his readers that the Biblical story of Abraham contains an alternate weave within itself, and if you pull the right thread the text creates its own reversal of meaning. I would call this a deconstructive reading of the Torah.
Would You Seek Help From This Man?
Last night I (voluntarily) attended one of those newfangled emerging church services, and believe it or not the homily was on Galatians 4:1-7. So I’ll take that as a sign that I’m on the right topic. I have more thoughts on Galatians, but meanwhile I’m still trying to get up some momentum for starting a therapy practice. Yesterday I drafted a summary of the approach I’d like to pursue, in case any potential clients ever happened to find me. What do you think?
THE SALON POSTISME
Do you ever get the feeling that you’d be fine if only the world was different? That if you could just transport yourself to another reality, your weaknesses would turn into strengths, your failures into successes, your indifference into enthusiasm, your frustration into fulfillment? A reality where value isn’t just market value, where you make something besides money, where spending time isn’t just wasting time? A reality where people engage each other instead of undermining or ignoring one another. Maybe there really is such a reality. Maybe you just can’t see it or find your way in. Or maybe it can’t fully come into existence until you start living in it.
Realities are systems of meaning that link individuals to the world and to other people. A reality isn’t just in the world or in your head; it’s more like a web of meaning that links you to the world and to other people. A web of reality is knit together from multiple interlacing strands of meaning: beauty, danger, money, security, sex, power, and so on. We assume there is only a single reality, that multiple realities are the stuff of fantasy and science fiction. But we actually participate in multiple realities every day, depending on what’s motivating us at the moment and what signals we’re attuned to in our surroundings. An unlimited number of overlapping realities can coexist in the world.
Most of the time we participate in realities without paying conscious attention. But we can pay attention; we can become aware of realities and the strands of meaning that comprise them. We can learn what attracts us to certain realities, what repels us from others, what keeps us unaware of still others. We can understand the ways in which realities shape us, and the ways we shape realities. We can become reality travelers, linking ourselves to the world and to to other people in ways that we might never have imagined possible.
The Salon Postimse:
• Portals, Intervals, Alternate Realities
• Deterritorialization, Flows, Differance
• Discovery, Creation, Revelation
• Plenitude
Proprietor: John Doyle
• M.Div., Ph.D. (psychology)
• https://ktismatics.wordpress.com
• by appointment
Masochistic Desire and the Law
They eagerly seek you, not commendably, but they wish to shut you out so that you will seek them. But it is good always to be eagerly sought in a commendable manner. (Galatians 4:17-18)
Paul has been warning the Galatians against those who would require them to follow the Law. They desire you but not in a good way, Paul warns. They desire you so they can reject you, and then you will desire them. This sounds familiar: Hegel‘s master-servant discourse, Girard‘s mimetic desire, Lacan‘s desiring the desire of the other. They seduce you then reject you, which makes them all the more desirable.
Isn’t this principle intrinsic to the Law itself? Doesn’t the Law coax you into following it in order that it might reject you? And then you desire the Law all the more, not just as a manifestation of a goodness that is wholly Other but also as the confirmation of your own badness? So that the more zealously you follow the Law the more corrupt and inadequate you feel?
But it’s good to be desired in a good way, says Paul; a way that leads to acceptance and love and freedom. And so Paul is perplexed: why would the way of the Law remain attractive when a far more appealing offer is on the table? It’s because the Law isn’t just a means of suppressing desire. The Law relies on desire for its appeal, the desire to be dominated and rejected and humiliated — the masochistic desire.
Ktismatics 