The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
now with neo-Freudian, post-Structuralist proof

This year, TiR decided that, in keeping with its annual, past practice of merciless interrogation of its namesake proposition, now seemed as timely a moment as any to peek into the works of one of our historico-theoretical (yes! this, some would maintain, is really a word) moment's Mr. Himselfs, to see what useful perspective, if any, he could provide.

The results were uncanny.

We give you Mr. Jacques Lacan, Himself:

The intolerable scandal in the time before Freudian sexuality was sanctified was that it was so 'intellectual.' It was precisely in that that it shows itself to be the worthy ally of all those terrorists whose plottings were going to ruin society AND THANKSGIVING.

from "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious, or Reason Since Freud"

For Freud's discovery was that of the field of the effects in the nature of man of this relations to the symbolic order and the tracing of their meaning right back to the most radical agencies of symbolization in being. To ignore this symbolic order is to condemn the discovery to oblivion, and the THANKSGIVING experience to ruin.

from "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis"

But it is important to note that one only has to make a conceptual shift and move the night spent with the lady from the category of pleasure to that of jouissance, given that jouissance implies precisely the acceptance of death -- and there’s no need of sublimation -- for the example to be ruined ALONG WITH THANKSGIVING.

from Ethics [of Psychoanalysis]

Philosophy in the Bedroom comes eight years after the Critique of Practical Reason. . . . Which explains the unbelievable exaltation which any reader not forewarned by academic piety receives from it. Nothing which might have been explained about it will ruin this effect EXCEPT DURING THANKSGIVING.

from "Kant with Sade"

TiR was further astonished to see confirmation of the above words of the master, as some might almost seem to put it, in the teachings of his apostles.

Sitting at his right hand, Badiou:

Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, AND ALL THANKSGIVING is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy.

from "Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art"

Only this philosopher's convention can avoid the incessant cutting of the knot, the ruin of all THANKSGIVING-RELATED historicity.

from "What is a Philosophical Institution? Address, Transmission, Inscription"

It is necessary to prohibit that catastrophe of presentation which would be its encounter with its own void, the presentational occurence of inconsistency as such, or the ruin of the One AND THE ONE'S THANKSGIVING.

from Being and Event

Democracy triumphs on the ruins of communism AND OF THANKSGIVING, say our prose writers.

from "Of an Obscure Disaster: On the End of the Truth of State"

[W]e are witnessing the ruin of what might be called the great collective enterprises -- ALSO CALLED "THANKSGIVING" -- which we once might have imagined carried within themselves the seeds of emancipation and truth. . . . In view of this program, it can be certainly said that the metaphysics of truth is ruined WITH THANKSGIVING and classical rationalism is insufficient. . . . The world needs philosophy to be re-founded on the combined and blended ruins of metaphysics and modern criticism of metaphysics, OF THANKSGIVING AND MODERN CRITICISM OF THANKSGIVING.

from "The Desire for Philosophy and the Contemporary World"

And sitting at his left, of course, Žižek:

Respect for other's beliefs as the highest value can only mean one of the two things: either we treat the other in a patronizing way and avoid hurting him in order not to ruin his THANKSGIVING illusions; or, we adopt the relativist stance of multiple "regimes of truth."

from "The Antinomies of Tolerant Reason: A Blood-Dimmed Tide is Loosed"

The enemy is perceived as the "liberal" . . . From the standard perspective of enlightened rational pursuit of self-interests, the inconsistency of this ideological stance is obvious: the populist conservatives are literally voting themselves AND THANKSGIVING into economic ruin.

from "Somewhere over the Rainbow"

However, the difference between animals and men is crucial here: for animals, such traumatic ruptures are the exception, they are experienced as a catastrophe which ruins their way of life AND THEIR THANKSGIVING; for humans, on the contrary, the traumatic encounter is a universal condition.

from "No Sex, Please, We're Post-Human!"

You formulate your identity on the fantasy that the Other is the one who automatically wants to steal from you. . . . the Other wants to steal from us our precious enjoyment, usually the fantasy behind the racist idea of David Duke --blacks, others, they want to ruin the American way of life AND THANKSGIVING.

from a 1994 interview

What else could we expect from the author of "In His Bold Gaze My RuinED THANKSGIVING Is Writ Large"?

Irigaray, meanwhile, provides a very useful corrective to the outlooks hidden (or not so hidden) in much of the above. However, if we read her correctly, she seems to reach full agreement with them on a point apparently both inescapable and of irreducible truth:

To resolve the economic problem without treating its cause amounts to man going a little further into exile from himself, from his world, and hastening a little more quickly his ruin, that of the species, that of the planet -- AND THAT OF THANKSGIVING.

from Between East and West: From Singularity to Community

Truly a pointlessness

[i.e., this post, blog, etc.]

                          that surpasseth all understanding.

posted by TiR at 7:01 AM