| Lutecium a non-school of Lacanian/Freudian Psychoanalysis San Francisco, California |
| Language and Representation of Rhapsody and Overcoming through Diasporic Writing and Art Workshop by Rebecca Bauknight, Ph.D. |
| This Workshop is offered Sunday, February 1, 2009, 10am - 2pm Flood Building, 870 Market Street, San Francisco Room 838 ________________________________________________________ |
Badiou suggests that there are two models of subjectivity that are pervasive in today’s world…one model engages the subject in
enjoyment/jouissance of the body at its limits. Badiou offers examples of the artist that utilize their bodies as experiment of the body’s
limits. Orland and Robert Flanigan come to mind. Within this paradigm the subject fully identifies with his or her body. The subject
experiments with the limits of the body by moving death into life. Can we not also say that the neurotic is moving death into life within
this first paradigm of subjectivity? In reenacting or acting on identifications and symptoms that exist at this juncture where death of love,
feeling dead, is an effect of fixed identifications related to subject and other, the neurotic sustains deadness in life. These artistic
expressions of moving the body to its limit by staging pain is the outward expression and representation of the neurotics internal
dilemma - moving quietly beneath the image management that veils symptoms within those that are exceedingly careful not to expose
their bizarre fantasmic play on the edges of death and life…to others and to themselves…especially to themselves.
The second model induces a split between the body and mind/soul which anticipates integrity and wholeness within an afterlife. Life
can be found in the sacrifice of the body. Giving up the body’s pleasures, the fanatic who denies sensuality or may sacrifice the body
for a greater good, uses the body as an instrument to the point of death. This is a subject willing to use the body for the greater
purpose and cause.
Badiou points to the power of death in both Eastern and Western scenarios, the neurotic and the fanatic. Neither scenario enables
new forms. New forms are necessary in order to generate and create new subjectivities and new political forms. Badiou speaks to the
creative process that Lacan begins to recognize in his reading of James Joyce. Badiou speaks to a position that enables subjectivities
to be created and resurrected through traces of events.
The subject can begin to identify with the sinthome by moving very idiosyncratically through observed traces that can only be
experienced by the subject through the real of the symptom---it is this connection between the subject and the world through this trace
that enables the subject to move into more flexible psychic processes rather than remaining fixed at the level of identifications and
significations that defend against the overwhelming and repressed excitatory erogenous zones of the body.
In this workshop, we will talk about bodily fixations that select the particular mirror stage identifications and the significations fill in lack.
We will explore Tony Morrison’s fictional characters in the Bluest Eyes and we will review David Marriotts recent book of poetry
Incognegro to locate Badiou’s and Lacan’s understanding of jouissense. We will consider the idea of moving our pleasure into
knowledge; pleasuring knowledge through moving flexibly and creatively through the traces that words yield and that the body, the
voice of the author, leaves behind for each one of us to rediscover…in the spaces between meaning and significations…the subject
and identifications… through bodies of knowledge. What Lacan referred to as “jouissense.”
enjoyment/jouissance of the body at its limits. Badiou offers examples of the artist that utilize their bodies as experiment of the body’s
limits. Orland and Robert Flanigan come to mind. Within this paradigm the subject fully identifies with his or her body. The subject
experiments with the limits of the body by moving death into life. Can we not also say that the neurotic is moving death into life within
this first paradigm of subjectivity? In reenacting or acting on identifications and symptoms that exist at this juncture where death of love,
feeling dead, is an effect of fixed identifications related to subject and other, the neurotic sustains deadness in life. These artistic
expressions of moving the body to its limit by staging pain is the outward expression and representation of the neurotics internal
dilemma - moving quietly beneath the image management that veils symptoms within those that are exceedingly careful not to expose
their bizarre fantasmic play on the edges of death and life…to others and to themselves…especially to themselves.
The second model induces a split between the body and mind/soul which anticipates integrity and wholeness within an afterlife. Life
can be found in the sacrifice of the body. Giving up the body’s pleasures, the fanatic who denies sensuality or may sacrifice the body
for a greater good, uses the body as an instrument to the point of death. This is a subject willing to use the body for the greater
purpose and cause.
Badiou points to the power of death in both Eastern and Western scenarios, the neurotic and the fanatic. Neither scenario enables
new forms. New forms are necessary in order to generate and create new subjectivities and new political forms. Badiou speaks to the
creative process that Lacan begins to recognize in his reading of James Joyce. Badiou speaks to a position that enables subjectivities
to be created and resurrected through traces of events.
The subject can begin to identify with the sinthome by moving very idiosyncratically through observed traces that can only be
experienced by the subject through the real of the symptom---it is this connection between the subject and the world through this trace
that enables the subject to move into more flexible psychic processes rather than remaining fixed at the level of identifications and
significations that defend against the overwhelming and repressed excitatory erogenous zones of the body.
In this workshop, we will talk about bodily fixations that select the particular mirror stage identifications and the significations fill in lack.
We will explore Tony Morrison’s fictional characters in the Bluest Eyes and we will review David Marriotts recent book of poetry
Incognegro to locate Badiou’s and Lacan’s understanding of jouissense. We will consider the idea of moving our pleasure into
knowledge; pleasuring knowledge through moving flexibly and creatively through the traces that words yield and that the body, the
voice of the author, leaves behind for each one of us to rediscover…in the spaces between meaning and significations…the subject
and identifications… through bodies of knowledge. What Lacan referred to as “jouissense.”
Fee:
$80 professionals / $60 intern / $40 students
$80 professionals / $60 intern / $40 students