Archive for March, 2009

Ice Breakers: Psychoanalysis, Civilization and Unnatural Nature

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

At the end of winter, there is much this city teaches me about how civilization conquers nature, or rather how it acts out its conquest.

This weekend I helped my girlfriend Tess break up ice in her back yard to prevent her basement from flooding when the big melt came. Ice breaking is a primally satisfying activity. You find a chunk of ice that looks defiant and you approach it with authority and a steel shovel. When the weather is just right your victory is assured. The first blow of the shovel blade announces your presence. The second and third cut a thin groove in the ice, a target for further blows. After an hour of self-taught shovel technique, I realize that the secret of shoveling is much like the secret of chopping wood: let the axe (or in this case the shovel blade) do the work.  I lift the shovel loosely let it dangle in the air for a moment (while for some inexplicable reason the words “I sacrifice you in the name of Quetzalcoatl” run through my mind) and bring it down with a relaxed stroke on target. After a few strokes comes the payoff. The crystal lattice of the ice gives way and a chunk breaks off with a resigned sigh. I break off one piece of ice so large it would make a very satisfactory front desk at an ice hotel. This is the beauty of ice. It resists, but when it breaks, it does so with a delightful suddenness. Remember the crumbling glaciers in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. (more…)

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Montreal Haecceities: The Underground City

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Life in my city, Montreal, wraps itself around unseen centers of gravity. What makes all the difference in this city is not the particular architecture — a mix of old world aesthetics, some dashes of large scale brio, a livable human scale, and a few heroically bad judgments — but the ungraspable specters of place that lounge at every street corner.

One night in the fall, for the thousandth time, a francophone clerk at the corner grocery store wished me a “bon fin de journee.” As I walked home I thought about how, for English speakers, there really is no equivalent of a “fin de journee.” This is why I like the French in this city. Not only does their energy keep out the unilingual riff-raff, but they know at some profound level of their being that an “end-of-the-day” is a something, that it is worth noting and naming, and that, without this animating extra-being, a city is merely a collection of roads and structures. (more…)

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Freud: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

No one was more surprised than I was at discovering that a meta-analysis on the effectiveness of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) (psychoanalysis, in other words) published in JAMA last year concluded that “In this meta-analysis, LTPP was significantly superior to shorter-term methods of psychotherapy with regard to overall outcome, target problems, and personality functioning. Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy yielded large and stable effect sizes in the treatment of patients with personality disorders, multiple mental disorders, and chronic mental disorders. The effect sizes for overall outcome increased significantly between end of therapy and follow-up.” It turns out that statistical analyses have made an at least plausible case that those years spent in the “talking cure” are measurably effective, and even more effective than the more putatively efficient forms of therapy like Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. What surprised me most about this study was the surprise that it engendered in me. “Psychoanalysis is effective as a treatment?” I thought to myself. “Who knew?” I realize that I had been perfectly happy handing over the notion of “cure” to other forms of therapy. (more…)

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Heidegger and Gay Marriage

Friday, March 6th, 2009

What attracts me to philosophy and critical theory is that it answers questions. The answer may not be familiar, and indeed the answer may come with another question, but if philosophy can’t engage the questions that we debate, then it is not worth much. We need philosophy more than ever now. The kinds of ethical questions we must tackle at the beginning of the 21st century demand forms of direct and creative thinking. In fact, we find our conventional truths so often undermined today that the need for theoretical thinking is greater now than it has ever been.

All this is in the way of introduction to one of the more controversial issues the United States faces: the legalization of gay marriage. I don’t offer an answer to the question of whether it should be legalized or not (for me the question is not that interesting: of course it should. Full stop). The more interesting question is the source of the opposition to gay marriage. Why care? Naturally, there is a “moral” answer to this question. Opposition to gay marriage is rooted in intolerance, ignorance, hatred, etc. True enough, as far as it goes, but, like most moral statements, it doesn’t offer much in the way of understanding. We dismiss those who oppose gay marriage without exploring the fertile question of why it is such an issue in the first place. (more…)

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Freud’s Virtual Mourning and The Crow’s Flight Beyond Melancholy

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Check the sidebar under My Papers for a new entry entitled “Freud’s Virtual Mourning and The Crow’s Flight Beyond Melancholy.” This paper brings together Freud’s theory of mourning as it evolves throughout his career, Deleuze’s theory of virtuality, Lacanian theory of subjectivity and Alex Proyas’s cult classis film The Crow, based on the graphic novel of the same name. Enjoy.

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Dr. Seuss and Lacan: The Zax and The Origins of Culture

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

The Encounter

The Encounter

Dr. Seuss is so easy to read not just because of the sing-song rhythms of his poetry, but because it is always so comfortingly personal. “The Sneetches” is about understanding and cooperation, The Cat in the Hat is about personal responsibility, and the story that we will look at now, The Zax, seems to be a cautionary tale about the price of irrational stubbornness (or about irrationality in general). The tale is simplicity itself. It begins with an encounter in the desert.

What is strange about this picture is the seeming inevitability with which these two Zaxes are drawn to each other. It’s a big desert, but apparently there is only one path though it. The DeadlockSo the argument ensues, with each Zax appealing to his traditions and education. “For I live by a rule/that I learned as a boy back in South-Going School./Never Budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least! /Not an inch to the West! Not an inch to the East!“

Finally — and this this is the “lesson” that the story imparts — the world just expands around them, ignoring them and leaving them in this fruitless deadlock. (more…)

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