Lord of "das Ding"
I used to be embarassed about harboring my secret allegorical reading of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings , but I have recently overcome my shame and would like to ask that you remember that YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.
I'm not referring to Tolkien's novels because I've never been able to get through any of it...but here it is -- the ring represents "the instrumentalization of psychoanalytic theory IN academia." And here is why -- Once you begin to "use" psychoanalytic theory in academia, it thoroughly consumes you, turning you into a ring wraith or Gollum, consumed by its all-explaining powers. But it is so powerful, that it must actually be kept out of the wrong places...
The "ring" is simply too powerful to use.
Got it? I'm not saying psychoanalytic theory should be banned or something akin to what a colleague of mine at Minnesota once suggested, I'm saying that if one uses it as a "tool" or "instrument" it will eventually, like an insatiable demon, eat your intellectual soul and spit it out like a peach pit.
Psychoanalytic theory in the clinic has nothing to do with the above allegory. In fact, there is no clinic in the Lord of "das Ding" as there is no clinic in academia. And here, finally is what Lord of the Rings has in common with psychoanalysis in academia as an epistemological space -- there is much talk of fellowship and sublimated libido, but no sexual "rapport." As some one else wrote, Liv Tyler seems trapped in a perfume commercial. The Ring is pure sublimation as will to power gone mad. There are other aspects of this allegory that shall be revealed, but only to the worthy....
I'm not referring to Tolkien's novels because I've never been able to get through any of it...but here it is -- the ring represents "the instrumentalization of psychoanalytic theory IN academia." And here is why -- Once you begin to "use" psychoanalytic theory in academia, it thoroughly consumes you, turning you into a ring wraith or Gollum, consumed by its all-explaining powers. But it is so powerful, that it must actually be kept out of the wrong places...
The "ring" is simply too powerful to use.
Got it? I'm not saying psychoanalytic theory should be banned or something akin to what a colleague of mine at Minnesota once suggested, I'm saying that if one uses it as a "tool" or "instrument" it will eventually, like an insatiable demon, eat your intellectual soul and spit it out like a peach pit.
Psychoanalytic theory in the clinic has nothing to do with the above allegory. In fact, there is no clinic in the Lord of "das Ding" as there is no clinic in academia. And here, finally is what Lord of the Rings has in common with psychoanalysis in academia as an epistemological space -- there is much talk of fellowship and sublimated libido, but no sexual "rapport." As some one else wrote, Liv Tyler seems trapped in a perfume commercial. The Ring is pure sublimation as will to power gone mad. There are other aspects of this allegory that shall be revealed, but only to the worthy....
9 Comments:
I think that there are quite a number of genres of discourse ( if one can call them that) which are so all-consuming. I once heard someone say in a lecture "perhaps there is nothing which psychoanalytic theory cannot explain".
Two questions then (which I leave completely open):
Are discourses like psychoanalytic theory ( or do they seem) powerful mainly to those who engage in them ( and if yes what does that actually imply)?
Does psychoanalytic theory to some extent create the entity which it analyzes?
Perhaps we tend to be consumed by those things we are good at.
fuo,
i think those consumed by psych theory are actually totally alienated from its practice -- therefore, there is no "good at it" that consumes them.
And, no psych theory is not like analytic philosophy insofar as it creates its objects -- it makes contact with something like libido, which is all too real....
I didn't quite understand your reference to analytic philosophy, especially since "it" consists of such a variety of different philosophical positions. Idealism or nominalism might come closest to creating their own objects, but hardly any one would defend that. Did you have someone specificly in mind?
One of the challenges, btw., from the analytic philosophical side towards psychoanalysis, is Popper's claim that psychoanalytic claims are not falsifyable.
What _I_ was asking was probably closer to a hermeneutic question.
And I strongly disagree that a libido is something "real" (what would that mean?) that we make contact with. That would give it a mystical dimension. Perhaps it is the experience of a force greater than what we experience as "our own" force.
I think the notion "libido" is a certain way of dealing with complex sets of non-univocal forces, and that having "contact" would _not_ leave us without a remainder. Perhaps that is heretic. But that's what I mean by creating its objects. I see "libido" as a metaphysical term, and an idealization. And my question is, what does it marginalize in order to maintain its ideality?
Hmm..I was thinking of positivism and typed analytic philosophy.
Libido shapes our relationship to objects -- without libido, no objects. That is what I mean by "real." That is, neither symbolic or referential. Developmentally one 'finds' objects through the drive -- oral, anal and finally genital.
I don't think there is anything heretical about what you write, but perhaps
I like your last description very much. Here libido is a force, and "finding objects" is a kind of primordial empirical moment. We have all sorts of very interesting concepts at work here, still all at a very semi-differentiated stage: force, causality, moment, object. "Libido" becomes the conceptual glue between non-differentiation and differentiation.
I would lovet to say that "object finding" and libido are my ideas, but they come out of Kleinian theory -- I think it's Winnicott, but I'm not sure!
I tend to rephrase these things because I have never been satisfied with that kleinian or winnicott's description (nor lacan nor kristeve, for that matter). Perhaps psychoanalytic developmental theory has reductionist tendencies anyhow, I might have to admit. We should take interest in them and we should doubt them.
fuo,
Reluctantly, I agree with you about psychoanalytic theory's limitations when it comes to questions of development.
Its practices are still fascinating to me, but theorist beware!
Yes! the facination for practices! My favorite attitude.
Why be reluctant? Every reformulation has tried to deal with its former's remainders. This is a structural, not a practical necessity. Abstraction excludes. Abstraction and causality take different paths. It's productive to be dissatisfied.
I have frequently observed infants in the "oral phase". They put everything in their mouth, yes. They also put an unbeliebable effort into trying to focus their eyes and they love motion, sound (even noise), and colors.
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