Descartes' god who fools you to think

Rather to escape the ecclesiastical prosecution than for the sake of metaphysical necessity Descartes postulates God as he does in his system – even if Descartes’s reason for postulating God at the top of his doubt is rational it is nevertheless not what he actually experiences, that for his being to think only existence is required. God is superficial here so far. Beyond the being that thinks however is the world one wants to calculate and measure, to create the world by means of technology. An operation that cannot be undertaken by experience and ultimately intuition – it requires science, notably mathematics. Somebody must nevertheless guarantee the existence of physical laws that allows for a scientific examination of the world, for human technological creation. As for Kant God is merely needed to guarantee freedom and not our metaphysical knowledge Descartes is yet an Aristotelian in supposing the world to be created by the transcendent god. But the god of physical laws is miles away from the god of Christian eschatology. Therefore, and also by learning to know  rather than to believe, like Aristotle, Descartes was not a Christian. Descartes’ god fools you to think. A god almost impossible to tell apart from the drive that urges one to want to know.

End of Maya Calendar

Right now the time is facing the end of Maya calendar. Twelve days. Time for a new age is dawning.

want to believe

Incredible how the following words after thousands of years still manage to make a statement against despotism of institutionalized belief, religious or other forms of ideology:

"I do not want to have faith in any truth of which I am told as long as I am able to know what I want to believe and not and doubt again and again on the top of it all."

Critical Reason    

Don't like

The absence of possibility not to like at the popular f...book makes people like whatever they otherwise would never consider to like.

>like<

Despite Plato: A Question of "Rewriting"

“Despite” - a reading of Plato by Adriana Cavarero, notably In Spite of Plato: A Feminist rewriting of Ancient Philosophy, Polity Press, 1995 (1990). I am perhaps not the first to notice, but interestingly the Italian original title does not inform anything of the “rewriting” ascribed in the English translation. The original reads Nonostante Platone: Figure femminili nella filosofia antica, which, as I understand it, simply promises to treat “feminine figures in antique philosophy” – those eventually “despite” (nonostante) Plato. The emphasis of the English transliteration on “rewriting” almost suggests a project similar to and intolerable as the Stalinist rewriting of history. (Cf. Amy Knight, ‘Beria and the Cult of Stalin: Rewriting Transcaucasian Party History’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 43, No. 4, 1991, pp. 749-763.) As Derrida writes, Western philosophy is phallogocentric (Cf. Derrida, La dissemination). The Socratic dilemma of philosophy’s written or spoken for example in the Pheadrus 274a-276b implies, in my view, that “rewriting”, feminist or any other, is still a phallogocentric activity. "Rewriting" reassures the writing it opposes since any writing is phallogocentric. I doubt however that the nonostante of Cavarero entangles any “rewriting” but certainly a feminist reading of ancient philosophy. 

On the Writer

The written as a source of  thinking is mistaken to represent the writer who is known only as a figure of a writer. Do we really know Plato or Derrida, indeed any writer? With all the footnotes and (anti)theses philosophers engage in “dialogue“ with the writer, the person of the writer becomes repressed by the text – there is no-one outside the text, we may say with Derrida (il n’y a pas de hors-texte, “there is nothing outside text”; Cf. Derrida, On Grammatology) Simultaneously, the writer is represented as a spirit or a spectre, or psychoanalytically speaking as an imago of the real person. Albeit the real person of the writer is there, outside the text, but as the writer the person of the writer is repressed by the metonymy of language which structures (and dictates) the text; repressed in the literal sense of being reissued and repressed in psychoanalytical sense of being “forgotten”. Hence the writer whom we suppose to know as we read the text basically underlies the text as a writing subject who is supposed to know. As we are now embarking on Lacan’s concept of the “subject supposed to know” (sujet supposé savoir), that is, the unconscious subject, we may perhaps consider the real person of the writer as the unconscious subject of the text –– a real person who as any other is unconscious and writes his or her desire. (On reading/writing and desire cf. Joan Copjec, Read My Desire: Lacan against Historicists) Unnoticed in the writing of the other the writer is also an unconscious sub-text of that other, drifting metonymically aloft the meaning. Unceasingly, or to say with Lacan: it will never stop being written. Perhaps as there is nothing outside the text it needs to be filled with the text, which often outlives the writer. Therefore the writer is a tool of writing.  

On the Figure of the Father in We Love Africa (and Africa loves us), a performance by Markus Öhrn, Institutet and Nya Rampen

The beginning. Nothing. Nothing is happening. The discomfort of nothing happening. Das Unbehagen. A consequence of the family life domesticated by conformism and consumerism. Idiotic home-masks gaze at us, masks unlike those unhomely ones brought from Africa we hang on the walls as a promise of discovery of magical Africa. However, we recognize the mother and three sons seated in the sofa gaping at us from the screen as we gaze at them. Indeed a gaze turned back, the primal state of things, of the audience seated waiting for the thing to happen on the stage whereas nothing is happening but a projection of nothing happening. We hope for something, for love perhaps, as we deny the Unbehagen starring at us. Yet, we are here for We Love Africa. Fortunately, the Chance is there for the Father to engage in the humanitarian restoration of Africa. We want to help. We Love Africa. We want Africa to love us. So this is a story of love, as “every story is a love story”. The idea is explored previously by the trio Öhrn, Institutet and Nya Rampen in internationally acclaimed Conte d'amour, a love story inspired by the loving father, Josef Fritzl. Is then the story of Africa not a love story too? A story of love, as any other. And of the post-colonial condition of the West. Or is it a demand, that Africa “loves us” just because we love Africa?

The story unfurls on the staged projection in front of us. Then, reawakened and engaged in dread and ecstasy of destruction and cruel deaths, the stupid tranquility of the family boredom is suddenly confronted by orgasmic blood streams pouring over dead decomposing bodies of Africa. In the basement. Orchestrated by the Father. We (who love Africa) are equally involved in the orgies of merciless scene, as we watch in tele-vision, here as well as real. The conformism of discomfort, the exposition of returned gaze in a circle of tired life, lobotomy and authentic life.

The invention of family is perhaps overlapping with the emergence of the unconscious instantiated in human existence indeed as an “eccentric place“ as Jacques Lacan calls it. This was the case, perhaps by the event of the emergence of consciousness, to be obscured at the dawn by language; an event possibly emerged when the ape hit the Other-Ape with a bone. We have it pictured in the unforgettable and ridiculously sublime intro of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or to put it with Hegel: the Self-consciousness of the Spirit is a bone, and/or not a bone but the Self-conscious Spirit.... Nevertheless, it was Sigmund Freud who famously scandalized the good old idea of family supposed to stand firm on the ultimate ground of bourgeois values. No, family was founded on aggressivity, from Totem and Taboo to Civilisation and Its Discontents. More precisely, the family institution was built upon the murder of the primordial Ape which subsequently became the Father. And we learned to talk. Every utterance therefore conceals the truth which eventually becomes unspeakable, or as Lacan points out, the truth can only be half-said. This is why we say “so to say”. There is a fundamental displacement between the truth and the speech. The truth is the event, perishing in time before and after, to paraphrase Alan Badiou. Hence, speech is a symptom of the primal repression of the real and the forever repressed truth. Or, more precisely, of the mythical beginning (un)known to us as the cause of the prohibition of incest.

Not that we became conscious of incest as we know today that it is wrong. But, as the Freudian myth goes, because every single one of the horde belonged to the Ape who eventually became the Father. What once was owned by the Ape is now forever the function of the Father: to guard the Ape's natural right. The institution of the prohibition is then build upon the murder of the primordial Ape who is to be sublated to the function of the Father, whereas also the structure of family relations and kinship are established, on repression as it were. The Ape's was thus natural right to exercise his power in capacity of his unconditional will, animated by aggression and sex drive. The family constitution build upon the murder of the Father is of course a Freudian myth. And the myth, we learn from Claude Levi-Strauss, is precisely something which gives an idea of underlying structure although the structure itself is repressed and unconscious. Impossible to know, the myth of the primordial dead Father however animates the family on the deepest and therefore precisely repressed truth-level of its function: as a discomfort in the culture (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur). And this is what the Father of the We Love Africa learn: to revive the strength of his muscles and erection. Like the Hippies who now and then travel to India or Tibet for spiritual or sexual arousal. The Father of We Love Africa learn over-there, in Africa of his perverse fantasy, how to identify with the primordial strength of the Ape. He, as a  Father, is merely a castrated Ape. What then the Father does not know (or he knows, to put it with Octave Mannoni, but still he pretend as if not...), there is no return other than the unconscious return of the repressed: Africa as an image of Father's failure and impotence to sustain his status as a head of the family and as a white male master of the Dark Continent (women and Africans). 

According to a popular scientific idea, the Ape, who is to be the Father of civilisation and culture, originates in Africa. This is not important as the very projection of Africa in We Love Africa signifies the castrated post-colonial Father, although it may be a racist assumption to instance the Ape in Africa as the “real” progress supposedly begins with the ancient Greece.... Nevertheless, in WLA, there is a dialectics of exploitation and loving care. The West demands humanitarianism as the Father's demand breeds the terror upon his own family. For example, the Father-figure of Josef Fritzl, explored in Conte d'amour of which the Father of We Love Africa is a conceptual continuation, is not an exceptionally pathetic figure as he signifies a post-colonial condition of Western culture and civilisation today, of which the attempts to conceal the impotence are not only pathetic but frustrated, as we may conclude watching the war on terrorism. (The West has lost the battle without fighting even and the real question is what do we do now. Lying in the dust of the ruins of the past world dominion with the face in the sand we perhaps indeed become illuminated alas with our pants down, by the wisdom of love....)

As the internationally acclaimed production of Conte d'amour before, now also We Love Africa of Öhrn, Institutet and Nya Rampen successfully fails to represent the subject of Fritzl and Africa, as it effectively unearths the more important underlying truth: of the function of the Father. The Conte d'amour does not tell the actual story of Fritzl and his debased family. But the performance exposes the discomfort which reminds us, unpleasantly of course, of the very repressed of the family structure: of the family's aggressive foundation of society, as the Oedipal conflicts and Father's violent demand for love indicates. With We Love Africa love is at stake again. The story of impossible love. Ultimately, “Africa loves us” is about love on demand. In media, Africa is pictured as a body in need of Western love and care. We Love Africa initiates an exploration of Western universalism (which is closely related to Christianity if we read Badiou on Paul); the universalism disguised in humanitarian initiatives. But we know also that the West is in no position to play wolves in sheep clothing.... We Love Africa thus illuminates consequences of love and care for Africa, as Western humanitarian universalism basically declares numerous countries and nations of Africa univocally incapable of any progressive action.

Finally, the hunch: the Father must acknowledge his castration: that he is not in position to demand love. The Lacanian formula of love is to give what one does not have. In We Love Africa, as in Conte d'amour, the Father believes precisely the opposite, that love is to give and demand in return. This ultimately puts family relations in discomfort of reproduction of a père-version of love. Love on demand of the Father, or: pure terror.

www.institutet.eu

www.nyarampen.fi

www.markusohrn.org

Breivik med Levinas genom Derrida: om narcissism, våld och metafysik

Vore det långsökt att tolka Breiviks first shooter Weltanschauung som ett uttryck av narcissism? Hans våldshandling är sannerligen ett manifest mer än hans kompendium av avskrifter på mer än tusen sidor från olika nationalistiska och fundamentalistiska historietolkningar. Texter längre än en sida eller tio till tolv teser är inte manifest men tomma tal. Breivik betecknar ändå ett kulturellt tillstånd idag: en identitetspolitik grundad i narcissismens frustrerade förintelse av alteritet, differens och pluralism. Detta delar han kanske vid närmare efterblick och kanske föga förvånande med Solanas Scummanifestet som föredrar ett våldsgrepp om hatobjektet (mannen), liksom muslimen är det för Breivik. Är inte därför ett nyvunnet vurm för Scummanifestet i linje med den cynism och legitim ignorans som konformismen bjuder på: att konsumera våldsfantasier mot den andre (muslimen, kvinnan, mannen) men att fördöma våld som handling. Alternativet är att ta till våld. Och ännu ett alternativ: att inte ta till våld.

Narcissismen handlar om att spegla sig. Breivik speglar sig i en personlig myt. Hans pseudoariska självporträtt frodas genom uppmärksamhet i medier och ger näring åt denna spegling. Att den psykiatriska undersökningen inte fann Breivik mentalt instabil är inte konstigt. I facebooksamhället hör narcissismen till vardagslivets psykopatologi. Vi kan tala om kommunikationens reducering till ett ”utbyte av nyheter” idag, vilket redan Heidegger anmärker i Till tänkandets sak/Zur sache des denkens. Eller, ”nyheter” i form av statusuppdateringar och gillaträffar och motsvarande, som inte syftar till kommunikation men upprätthåller en självändamålsenlig, alltså narcissistisk, dynamik och ekonomi i form av konkurrens mellan ”vänner” om graden av synlighet i medier. Har inte Breivik förskjutit det virtuella rummet för representation och extension av identiteter till den fundamentala synligheten i det mest reala, har inte han verkligen skjutit sin väg ut i verkligheten?

Narcissismen är ändå ingenting som bör ”botas”. Men samhällsinteraktionen bör definitivt inte grundas i narcissismen, som i en minimal mening är en själviskhet, vilket i sin tur inte heller skall förväxlas med egoismen. Analyser av nya kommunikationsstrategier i vardagen och hur dessa påverkar individen kognitivt och psykosocialt vore högst önskvärda. Utmaningen ligger i att utforska vem var och en av oss är inför en annan, hur nära eller långt ifrån jag vill eller inte vill vara, till och med, och ifrån den andre. Ett steg ditåt är att beakta Levinas etiksyn i Totality and Infinity/Totalité et infini tillsammans med Derridas kritik av denna etik i termer av våld och metafysik i Writing and Difference/L'écriture et la différence.

Det kanske kan sägas att Breiviks handlingar är totalitära. Och att hans perspektiv också kan tolkas som ett oändlighetsperspektiv vari han installerar sig själv som en storhet: den Andre. Oändlighetens tillrop driver Breivik mot en självets metafysisk som genomförs med våld. Det rör sig kanske om en metafysik-etik av det narcissistiska, absoluta och omöjliga jaget i motsats till en etik som värnar om den andres bräcklighet, grundad i Lagen som lyder ”Du skall icke döda”.

Fly or Buy: Critique of Ideology in the Age of Technological Reason

The crisis of thinking announced by Husserl and Heidegger is seriously now enclosing into a technological determination of being. Nobody cares about critique of ideology as conformism actually manage to enhance our lives by way of technology. It may be stupid to desire an iphone or to engage in a campaign to make people “like” one's facebook profile. However, nobody considers this as a problem. Even "revolutions" are coordinated via facebook today. The conformism offered by technology may be stupid. But it is also advanced. Of course flying a spaceship or spending your money on flashy apps suggests that there are still two sides of the coin. And the throw of dice possibly still does not abolish the chance....

Artscenetrondheim on WOMAN

WOMAN of Institutet at Bastardfestival, Reactions from Artscenetrondheim:

http://www.trondheimkunsthall.com/news/Gender_Tales

Pussy Riot II: Origin of the Fraud or "hysteria" means Pussy

Pussy Riot: s'il vous plait - Have it your way - Enjoy -

a Hollywood style propaganda aim to increase the presence of Russia in the media - as we now too contribute to its distribution. Indeed, who would ever care of ex East? Do we really care? As Medvedev promotes Free Thought in Russia, Putin is watching Wag the Dog... the Slave speaks for the Master and His Master's voice is the voice of the pussies inflicted by Western punk... Indeed, who would ever care about the "riot" without pussies?   

Adresseavisen on Woman of Institutet at Bastardfestival, Trondheim, 11-12/9 2012

"Det var veldig ubehagelig"


http://www.adressa.no/kultur/article4792883.ece

Woman by Institutet, Trondheim, Bastardfestival, 11-12/9 2012

WOMAN by Institutet

Trondheim, Bastadrfestival, 11-12 September 2012

*

Man's desire for Woman is a symptom of what he lacks: What he lacks he desires.

The problem of the man: Woman possesses what he desires: the lack.

He... he has a penis - but, he has no idea what to do whit it. Eventually, he wants to embody Woman.

Woman is a phallus, the symptom of man's desire. The phallus is a signifier of the lack.

We know this: Woman holds the lack, desired by man.

It turns him on. And he becomes aware of his penis.

The Greek word for instrument is “organ”. Man believes his organ makes her enjoy.

Make the enjoyment of Woman instrumental! Orchestrated by man...

Having a penis and holding a phallus are two very different things. Woman holds the phallus;

The phallus (!) is not a penis!

Could he possibly supplement her enjoyment, while she enjoys? Give Her MORE.

Woman enjoys. There is nothing MORE to it.

He fills Her. With love, with bliss, makes her complete. Make himself complete.

Woman enjoy. Are you not? [to the female audience] Do you? [to the male audience] Want to fill Her lack? In each other's arms, are you aware of him [to female audience], are you aware of her [to male audience] when it CUMS?

And this is what the man cannot: enjoy the penis alone... He is not capable to orchestrate anything with One instrument alone. No Woman, no organisation of man's desire. Without Her; the man is doomed, to man-sturbate, left alone to la jouissance de l'idiot...

Man lacks what he desires. His lack is REAL. Really a problem.

And he desires Woman.

He desires. Every-Thing for-It-Self.

Her, partial objects:

a foot,

a tongue,

an eye...

Every PIECE of Her he desires. With each piece he creates: Woman.

What does the man want?

Be true to his desire.

So be It.

So be It.

So be It.

So be It.

Be. It. Be. It.

Be.

I.

Be.

I.

Be.

I.

Ai

Ai

Ai

Ai

Ai

http://www.avantgarden.no/program/woman/
http://www.avantgarden.no
http://institutet.eu
http://ervikcejvan.blogspot.se

nOne of the Two: Idiot of Love

Intimacy of desire and eroticism of drive: separate instances intertwined in the idea of love. Hence, from a displacement of desire and drive, love emerges as spiritual, religious, idealist and mystic concept. The knowledge of love is awareness of a narrative of one's desire for the enjoyment of the other; retracing the desire at the void of being or the force of life, the Freudian drive. Libido. Any desire is wish and fantasy. Always at work, indeed in manic-erotic obsession the idea of love, of loving beloved person is more than just desiring the agalma (Lacan's objet petit a). The compulsory instance of this misperceived identification of the fantasy of beloved with the actual person want-to-be story of "true love". The problem of love-idealism of the Two is however posed by psychoanalytic practice of love-transfer, which renders love as pure altruism; disinterested to profit on the economy of desire – but to profit on money – whereas the previous animates the idea of the love of Two. Yet, there is the idea of Love of Two that cannot be disregarded as illusion: the idea of One; impossible idea, as of the Two becoming One in Love there is no-one of the two left. This is an operation that annihilates the subject, for good or bad. Love idealism is then the idea of absolute void, an annihilation of Being. And the One is impossible to make "in love". What truth is now revealed in this dialectical movement of reasoning? The truth that One is always already One-self. So, why make one self an idiot of Love?

Recommended reading: J. Lacan, Encore.

It takes balls to be Pussy

"On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced Western criticism of the trial as politically motivated and said there were "elements of a clash of civilizations" in the Western condemnation."

http://freepussyriot.org/news/female-punk-rock-band-appeals-conviction-russian-church-critical

Pussy Riot incident renders traditional antagonism between West and Russia meaningless as the "clash of civilizations" may be a matter of the internal political splitting in Russia. It is hard to believe that Pussy Riot are the only Pussies against Putin. But a significant note is that the action took place in the church performing a prayer to Maria. The hope for heavenly intervention agains Putin sends clear message about his monumental position in Russia. Putin's only rival is no less than the Mother of God! So, is there any real opposition, on the level of public opinion, really against Putin in Russia today?

Western sensationalism and false idealism which calls for an indeed impossible rescue mission not only attacks Russian idea of justice but motivates a serious conflict which at this stage, given Putins fast position, will only harden his rule and eventually mobilize or renew traditional Russian hostility to the West. Subsequently, in relation to the West most Russians are perhaps ready to choose to support the existing system than to introduce Western idea of democracy and justice. The former is not an option as Putin's propaganda apparently succeeds to create an apocalyptic vision of non-Putin Russia but perhaps most significantly because any change in Russia now requires an intervention of Biblical proportions. What is the core of this impossibility? Perhaps the people of Russia are perfectly contained to do anything but to prefer to be pussies.      

Speculative/Philosophy and so on

Exploring new frontiers of thought speculative philosophy is basically working on a level of fantasy. This is why the nature of desire and knowledge, as within the fantasy, was elaborated by Plato, closely connected to the idea of truth. However, working on the level of fantasy, philosophy's search for truth thus requires a company of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis and its discourse of the location of the real/ontic not in our faculties but beyond such Kantian discourse: into the domain of the unconscious; an eccentric place, whereas the locus of the subject is not entirely void but a force – the Freudian drive, force of life, Eros: a force of gravity, invisible and known only by its effects; a gravity holding together the singularity of individual being, related to the world and other singularities, animated and other, as an alien One to the Whole. Now, this circular reasoning, from the question of fantasy to the (false metaphysical) question of the Being - by dialectical necessity of the movement of thought - we arrive at a fundamental question, reasoning initially on the hypothesis of the ontic status of the subject of the unconscious. A move towards “ontology” locating the space of relations and non-relations in-between singularities to investigate speculative thought, the thinking itself, to anything it thinks (is thinking), as a fantasy to truth, is ultimately a move from Heideggerian "thinking" returning to philosophy - after its dead. 

The Subject Spoken

Consciousness is, psychoanalytically speaking, accompanied by the unconscious. The unconscious is articulated in language by means of distorted and disrupted elements of meaning, which on a level of understanding pertain to nonsense – the subject of psychoanalytical interpretation. Locating the disruptions in relation to the overall context of meaning the site of the trauma is revealed in a symptomatic occurrence of the signifiers of the unconscious meaning in the speech. While the subject speaks it is also according to Lacan spoken by the unconscious. Any strictly semantic analysis of the unconscious, as the unconscious according to Freud “knows no contradiction”, misses the hidden meaning of the unconscious. Both sides of the meaning, the conscious and the unconscious, which accounts for the whole meaning, and ultimately the truth, is structurally impossible to grasp at once. As Lacan claims, the truth can only be “half-spoken”. The other half is embodied; the language of speaking body, which is enjoyment (jouissance); a language by which one is spoken.